That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles

The seeker who comes across an insightful observation about the human condition too often awards bonus points if the thought was expressed long ago. Admittedly, a sage like Aristotle rang the gong fairly reliably when tossing out the aperçus. But admit this, too: “A friend to all is a friend to none” takes on a certain added value when you envision old Ari glowering across the agora at some backslapping hail-fellow-well-met — more than two millennia ago! No doubt the “friend to none” line went over well at the time, but now it earns an extra dollop of respect simply because of its classical origins. It’s not just the Greeks who so benefit. St. Augustine, Descartes, Hume — all are accorded an uptick in the reverence department simply because they are not turning up on NPR, not updating their Facebook pages.

Still, there must be plenty of freshly minted wisdom-for-the-ages all around us that we fail to appreciate. What about self-help books? They could very well be a fount of underappreciated wisdom-from-the-pages. A current best-seller — no doubt beloved by its fans but probably completely unknown to folks browsing just a few aisles away — is Excuses Begone! How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. Sounds promising, no? “Listen to your own heart, and obey whatever is consistent with what you know to be the highest law of all,” he writes. “Subscribe to edicts that encourage you and others to be all that you’re capable of becoming without interfering in any way with anyone else’s God-given rights.” Whew! In one paragraph, Dr. Dyer succeeds in distilling three nuggets of wisdom: the advice “to thine own heart be true” (often attributed to Shakespeare, and to Jesus, but apparently original — I welcome correction — with Haddon Hall, an 1892 light opera by Arthur Sullivan and Sydney Grundy, the poor man’s W. S. Gilbert); the inspiring be-all-you-can-be counsel of the U.S. Army; and the live-and-let-live libertarianism of John Locke.

Ah, but read on in Excuses Begone! Dr. Dyer, whose doctorate from Wayne State University is in “educational counseling,” believes that “our physical universe and everything in it is a vibrating machine.” Readers who utilize his book’s “first principle of awareness” will be able to “realign with the same vibrational frequency of that energy field and access what I call ‘Divine guidance.’” Dr. Dyer, begone!

Maybe a self-help book needs to be able to show some staying power on the best-seller lists before it should be consulted as a potential source of modern wisdom. The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, has spent three years selling as fast as Amazon can unload another pallet. Ms. Byrne would seem to be as one with the late nineteenth-century hymn writer Johnson Oatman Jr., the sage of “Count Your Blessings.” But then it becomes clear that the secret of The Secret is not only about finding contentment in what you have, it’s about wishing your way to a new car and losing fifteen pounds. Quoting tirelessly from “wealth trainers,” Ms. Byrne reveals that the rich “think thoughts of abundance and wealth, and they do not allow any contradictory thoughts to take root in their minds.” Whether they know it or not, this is what made them rich. As for wish-fulfillment dieting: “I am convinced that if we can eat our food in the present, entirely focused on the pleasurable experience of eating, the food is assimilated into our bodies perfectly, and the result in our bodies must be perfection.” Ms. Byrne now weighs 116 pounds, she says, and eats whatever she wants — an immediate disqualification in our savant sweepstakes because, well, bragging is unwise.

Maybe the self-help best-seller lists are not the ideal place to go prospecting for of-the-moment golden insights after all. Better to look where a thinker is free to say anything without regard for sales or critics or potential embarrassment. That would be the blog of Deepak Chopra. The Indian-born alternative medicine guru and meditation advocate has combined Eastern spiritual wisdom and Western media savvy to become a fixture on Larry King Live — he must be doing something right. And, indeed, a look at his blog reveals Chopra as a sound and sober counselor. A bewildered fan sends in a query about emotional attachments in the pursuit of spiritual growth; must she cut off her children? Ah, the question reflects a “tragic misunderstanding of what detachment really is,” Chopra responds. “Two mothers can display the exact same external loving behavior with their children, and one of them could be self-realized and the other not. So don’t think that you have to give up your bonds of love with your children to become enlightened.” 

Could Solomon have blogged it any better? Just when you’re ready to sign up for a $2,775 weeklong “Seduction of Spirit” getaway at the La Costa Resort in San Diego — day after glorious day of meditation, yoga and “mindfulness” practice! — you scroll through the Chopra blog and come across a tribute to his late buddy Michael Jackson. It hardly seems the choice of a wise man to post a photo of himself embracing Jackson. Two days before Jackson died, Chopra reports, the singer “had called me in an upbeat, excited mood. The voice message said, ‘I’ve got some really good news to share with you.’ He was writing a song about the environment, and he wanted me to help informally with the lyrics, as we had done several times before.”

Maybe the path to enlightenment does not lie through the Neverland Ranch. But in this celebrity-besotted era, perhaps the path does pass through Hollywood. If celebrity culture is the hallmark of the modern world, then maybe becoming a celebrity is itself a sign of wisdom. Certainly celebrities believe it, as spending five minutes with Sean Penn will show. What about Gwyneth Paltrow, who also blogs? “A long-term relationship between two people,” the actress observes on her blog, “is an ever evolving organism. Some stay the course, some fall, all stumble.” Why, hammer that thought into iambic pentameter and you’ve got Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

But just when you’re ready to consider Gwyneth Paltrow a sort of bardess of Stratford-on-Hamptons, a few more clicks on her website (which is called Goop) and you find her extolling the “detoxification specialist” Dr. Alejandro Junger. She turns the floor over to Dr. Detox himself. “There is another ‘inconvenient truth’ still hidden from popular awareness,” he observes. “Global warming is just a symptom. At the root of it is global toxicity, the build-up of chemicals that is threatening all life on earth.” His prescription for fighting this scourge: a food-and-drink regimen of Alejandro Jungerian design.

It’s difficult not to despair in this hunt for modern wisdom. Going door-to-door with a lantern, searching for just one wise man — forget about honest — seems the better strategy. But wait: going up to the doors of strangers, carrying something…why does that sound so familiar, so promising? Of course! The Chinese food delivery guy! He is the bearer of wisdom for our times, and his wisdom is found on the little strip of paper nestled inside a folded crescent confection known as the fortune cookie. Here’s a sampling from a recent meal: “The only rose without a thorn is friendship”; “Speak well and you need never whisper”; “Nature, time, and patience are the three great physicians” (take that, Dr. Junger!); “Pray for what you want, but work for what you need”; “Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation”; “Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.”

There’s more wisdom in those sayings than you’ll find on a shelf full of self-help books, than in a week of mindfulness practice, than in hours of blog-trolling. Plus, with the meal that precedes the cookie treat, you get an invigorating dose of monosodium glutamate. But, alas, even cookie fortunes are not infallibly wise. One of the messages found at the recent Chinese dinner offered what seemed to be the ultimate insight, the rewarding culmination of a long search: “Wisdom is found only in truth.” Printed in red ink on the other side of this fortune, though, were the fortune writer’s suggestions for lucky “Daily Numbers” and “Lotto Six.” Playing the lottery, of course, is hardly a wise investment. As for finding wisdom in the modern world, don’t bet on it.