Tales of an epic battle

This is not a pooh

Today is a good day ! As we came today close to the end of the presentations concerning the highly controversial book The Tao of Pooh, a very animated and pasionnate debate took place between Mr Genet and a team of joyful and merry fellows, including myself, concerning the value of the taoist message driven by the book and the way it is presented to us. Let's come back on the main points that, I think, shall retain our attention.

VinegarTaster drew first blood

The Tao of Pooh is presented as a set of taoist guiding principles, aiming to help people finding tranquillity and maybe hapiness in their too complex and obscured lives, made inextricable by to much thinking and business. You may say "What a noble goal, this book must be highly exciting !" (I mean, if you're really naive or just kidding). But in practice ... errrr ... Suffice it to say that not the whole group was convinced by the correctness of the opinions exposed it the volume. As a member of this blog and Ray's biggest fan, I can't resist the temptation to share here my point of view on the question. Let me share with you the three main points that I will remember from pooh.

Philosophy lesson : The engie who wanted to be a real little boy

Let's face it : As future engies, we're probably bound to be what the Tao of Pooh describes as Bisy Backsons, that is people emprisonned in complex thinkings, unable to see the simple and little things of life, well ... you got the point, unless you slept for three weeks in english course. So this is it, we should just drop what we're doing, forget the things we learned as they are only meant to confuse us, and wander joyfully in the forest eating honey thinking of nothing and waiting until a fantastic inspiration will come to us. And in the case we got an extraordinary idea, we should throw it away quickly and forget it, just to be sure that not two of them are stored at the same time in our brain (they could try to confuse us ... booh !). And above all, we must stay as savage, brutal, illetrate and ignorant as possible. In one word, remain at the animal state. That's the Uncarved Block principle you see, if we get educated then we're lost, we'll never be clean- and open-minded. There's nothing such as a good rabbit-hunt, running naked in the bushes, to have a clear mind and to develop observation.

OK, I'm kidding. Let be honest : actually, keeping a clear mind is indeed necessary when creativity is needed. The ground theory, although maybe a little simple, could be really valuable I think, and if you get right down to it, the basis upon which this Tao of Pooh is built is not bad, and I do apply most of these principles every day myself ... but this book according to me goes light-years too far. It presents the simplicity principle, but simplicity alone without some rigor is like a human body without bones : It can't stand. Actually, the tao of Pooh for this reason looks to me like the most outrageous and stupid eulogy of mediocrity. According to it, laziness, indolence and ignorance would be three of the highest virtues we should pursue. What kind of society and life do you build on these ?

Logic lesson : Assuming that the conclusion is true ...

There's also a point that I wanted to speak about, and I tried to do it in class, but according to our teacher's reaction and given the fact that we couldn't exchange one simple sentence on the subject, it might be that I wasn't clear enough. Therefore I will explain it again in the following lines.

I was accused of rejecting the book's theories because the examples were built using the characters of pooh and his friends. If I well understood the reproach that was adressed to me, I would be full of misplaced despise for that, because I would have lost my childish dreams or what ... I don't think I never said or suggested anything like that. But maybe this was an attempt to convince me that ideas indeed come from nothing ? Actually that was a very convincing and clever example, as I really don't know where the heck this one came from.

The point that I was to defend was totally different. My problem with the book, appart from the in-depth ideas problems discussed above, was the form. The author used an original formal system to prove his assertions. The concept is quite simple : You have a knowledge of the world, and a property you want to prove. The process is split into two steps : First, you assume that the conclusion is true. Then, you deduce from the first point that the conlusion is true, and that's it ! Simple isn't ? All examples are made this way : The author present us on-demand characters, tuned to behave as good taosits example, and guess what ? It works ... Bloody brilliant, that's a totally taoist approach of logic ! Forget everything. Don't care. I should consider to use this formalism to write my future articles, this would help me to save a lot of redaction efforts.

Goodbye Winnie

As Winnie will leave us soon, I shall adress sincere thanks to Mr Ray Genet for giving us the chance to know this book. This gave me a lot of things to think about, and since I'm not a perfect taoist I will try to learn from this episode. But what d'you want ? Nobody's perfect ...