Book: Hiding in Unnatural Happiness by Devamrita Swami. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.

I received this book from a monk while walking on the streets of York (UK) last year. I gave a small donation, and he told me to keep the book, so I decided to read it. He said it was about meditation, but it’s about yoga in general (not the physical practice).

I was not aware of anything related to Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, or anything like that, so it was an enjoyable reading for me. I’m a minimalist, so I tend not to follow the flow of the materialists, and most of the book makes a lot of sense for me.

Here are my raw notes about the book:

  • Materialism isn’t bad. It’s only bad if we use it to replace other things in life like meaning work, a good marriage, kids, and friends.
  • Humans are disposable. If we disappear from the earth, all other species will benefit from it, and no one will miss us.
  • If you think this is the only world and there is no afterlife, that’s going to motivate you to make it as good a place as possible. Are you going to pray to end the crime in your city or are you going to look at the root causes?
  • Every year, desertification overtakes land one and a half times the size of Greece.
  • Humans are a virus that dominates, destroy, multiply, and expand to a different place.
  • An increase in money and luxury above basic middle-class standards doesn’t increase happiness, but many (no one in a class of 200 students) want to live in the middle class.
  • Maximizers try to get the most of everything while satisficers are ok with their choices. Maximizers often get more salary, but satisficers are happier with their jobs. Satisficers usually don’t regret their decisions.
  • Maximizers usually maximize trying to avoid regret but in the end they maximize regret when something goes wrong
  • Humans are just a chemical scum of a moderate sized planet
  • Free-market democracy has turned out to mean, “Can you swim with the sharks?”. As for socialism, “It works fine if everyone is a saint, but if everyone is a saint, who needs socialism”?