Looking Back to 2008: Cake and The End of All Things

Cake and The End of All Things
Original post date: September 3, 2008

I know of few people who don't like cake. It just happens to be one of those culinary concoctions that appeals to people based on texture, taste, appearance or varying combinations of the three. Cake has been loved by kings and queens as well as most of us commoners. In essence, it happens to be a great joy for the majority of people.

Imagine you're sitting down at the table and someone brings you the most humongous and delectable cake of your favorite flavor[s] that you've ever laid eyes on. The aroma alone is enough to bring armies to their knees! You're told that this cake is for you and you alone -- you don't have to share it with anyone.

One group of people would tear right into it with great abandon. They would engage in an orgy of pleasure -- eating as much as quickly as possible. Chances are that they would soon make themselves sick as a dog!

Another group of people would address the cake in a more contemplative way. They would savor each bite, reveling in the taste sensations. They would eat slowly so as to a) not make themselves sick and b) get to enjoy the cake over a long period of time.

A third group would eat the cake in a most peculiar way. Like the previous group, these people would eat the cake slowly. However, unlike the previous group, these people wouldn't delight in the taste sensations at all. In fact, their whole focus wouldn't be on eating the cake itself; no, their focus is on being finished with the cake altogether.

In my mind, the first group is hedonists. The second group is [non-hedonistic] Taoists, Deists or atheists. And the third group is adherents to religious beliefs.

Hedonists care solely for the now -- there is no interest in what has been or will be. Their overriding goal in life is to obtain as much sensual pleasure as the present moment will allow. Consequently, the hedonist has a tendency to burn all bridges to the past and to suffer all kind of negative future consequences for unplanned present actions.

As this blog is about Taoism, I'll skip my analysis of the second group because the reader gets enough of that anyway!

As Christopher Hitchens points out in "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything", the interesting thing about religious people is that their focus is more on the hereafter than the present. In fact, in most every major religion, there are a host of taboos against enjoying the many facets of human life (i.e., sins of the flesh) and, instead, all the focus is on the "paradise" of the after days.

Consequently, as with the cake, religion pushes its adherents not to enjoy and savor each moment of life. Rather than revel in the amazing taste sensations laid before us, we're urged to repress our taste buds in the hope that we'll taste the cake and more somewhere down the road.

To read the intro to this retrospective series of posts, go here.