The Middle Way: Finding Happiness in a World of Extremes

The Middle Way - authored by Lou Marinoff - is a book which tries to infuse in today's world the ideologies, teachings and practices of the most influential religious leaders - namely Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius(ABC's) - of time immemorial. Aristotle here may be an exception since he does not fall under the religious scope as the other two. The book is divided into many chapters, and each chapter here is exploring the various injustices, unfairness and discrimination being experienced by people in all walks of life. The author tries to explain how best can we incorporate the teachings - of not one, but all three - of the above leaders in our lives. As mentioned earlier, each chapter takes on an issue of concern in today's world - to be more specific, a current ideology that is being followed. The author then - followed by his stupendous research which you cant help but admire - lists out how this ideology came into existence, what are its potential pitfalls, how badly has it effected our society, and who are responsible for the current state we are in. As I read, there was one thing which I kept noticing - the author's loathness towards communism or the ideals of Marx. The author just lashes out at the communists whenever he gets a chance. More than once and through out the book he has made it explicitly clear about the perils of communism and its obnoxious effects. By all means he justifies what he writes by elucidating it with examples, but I guess we can only imbibe so much as we did not see nor experience first hand the effects of communism in our lives. Most of each chapter, when exploring a issue, in the book is devoted to the current state we are in, how we got here, and how much are we suffering directly/indirectly. It is only towards the end(of the chapter) that the author makes a effort to explain how we can overcome this difficulty by incorporating the ABC's into our life. The author also implicitly tries to advocate the principles of Buddhism as the way out of most the difficulties. A notable thing about this book is definitely the tremendous research that has been put into it - which evidently can be seen - to explain the cause it is attending it. Also, the author's writing style is very persuasive, which sadly after a while becomes tedious and monotonous. The book brings to light a lot of things which we did not know or in my case to say things which we should have known. To summarize this book I would say that the author brings to many things to the table and tries to address all of them with the same set of tools. He falls short on various accounts to justify that the ABC's can solve or attenuate most of the issues. This book should be definitely be commended for the shear research and information that is thrown in, but it unfortunately falls short of substance.

This is one of those books that will give you new and meaningful knowledge in life. It will help to attain a coherent explanation of many modern issues including the War on Terror and its mistakes. This is a book about peace, love, enjoyment and progress. I highly recommend its reading!

I made it all the way through this book. Enjoyed it for the most part, but I will admit that I'm predisposed to agree with any book that critiques the various polarizations that seem to imminently threaten our society. In a key chapter on intellectual extremes, the extreme poles that Marinoff identifies are the reactionary religous right vs. what he terms the post-modern, deconstructed, collectivist radical left. In terms of rhetorical emphasis, he clearly feels that the extreme left is currently the greater threat to our society. And speaking from the middle-left of the American political road, I think he makes a pretty good case. Not that I want the Bible rammed up my statutes, but the radical left is firmly entrenched in American intelligentsia, where it wields the power to undermine liberal education, suppress critical thinking and open discourse, and subvert moderately progressive causes to a degree well beyond Christian fundamentalism's reach. One word of criticism and caution. In parts of the book, Marinoff's arguments leans very heavily on sociobiology, the notion that behavior differences, e.g. between the sexes, can be accounted for physiologically, as by-products of evolution. While many of the theories promulgated by sociobiologists resonate with prevailing folk wisdom, they remain controversial in the academic community for good reasons. As counterpoint, read "Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology" in the December, 2008 issue of Scientific American [..] It's obvious that Marinoff writes with some biases (the Middle Way is an ideal, after all), but most of the chapters seem reasonably balanced and provoke rather than suppress thought. (Disclaimer: I don't know enough about Middle East politics or history to judge the merits of that chapter.) I enjoyed the chapter on geometry, which I take to be nothing more than a playful digression before delving into weighty and serious matters. And I agree with other reviewers here that the breadth of subject matter is impressive and Marinoff's source material provides rich opportunities for further reading. Marinoff's style can get a bit bombastic when it comes to touting the "Middle Way," but he can also be an engaging, down-to-earth writer on many subjects. Overall, three stars, plus a sympathy star for tackling a lot of difficult subjects with erudition and the best of humanistic intentions. Too bad the extremists who would get the most out of reading this book probably never will.

The author sees Buddhism as the Middle Way between Aristotelianism and Confusianism, between the priority on the individual and the priority in the society. In the first part of the book, the Author gives a brief overview of these three philosophies, while in the second part of the book, he tries to define the Middle Way (buddhism) for all contemporary extremes and polarizations (religion, sex wars, racism, tribalism, unequal distribution of wealth and educational levels in the world, left vs. right political movements, etc.). Although the explanations of aristotelianism are as clear as water (maybe it's because I was raised in the western world), I could not get to the core of buddhism. I do not see life as beeing an infinite series of sufferings from which I need to get liberated... The author intertwines knowledge from very different fields, from geometry, fractals and chaos theory, to philosophy, politics, history, ethology and education in an interesting and novel way. I personally admire his broad knowledge and his ability to correlate topics, although sometimes I find he goes a bit too far with his conclusions. Throughout the book, the author quotes a lot of interesting writings, in footnotes and as reference to the "suggested readings" section, which by the way, is one of the best I have seen lately. Whichever your interests are, this book will surely open for you at least one path for further reading. The author tries to stay in the Middle, but he first makes clear that he believes that there is a truth, which means there is a better way among all posible ways (most beneficial to more people). By some trick of life, truth is perceived as being the opposite of "falseness" (in a linear perspective, one opposite can never be in the middle). So the Middle Way is perfect as long as the Middle lies a bit closer to "the truth". If you believe there is a truth, then some extremes appear to be better than others, so for example the autor makes the following "neutral" statement: "the extreme right is better than the extreme left, since in the extreme right the intention is obvious, while in the extreme left, the truth is manipulated and presented as if it were helping you". So if there is a truth, it won't be in the middle...at least not if we conceive true and false as opposites viewed from a linear perspective. "Trapped!" (Like all philosophers by the way). The other solution to this trap is "deconstruction" or denying that there is a true truth (postmodernism), which the author sees as the worst malady in western civilization, and which by the the way, cannot be true (the liers paradox), or maybe we would need to accept the paradox that both extremes are true (In the western world this is highly difficult to achieve). However, as always, it is easier to find inconsistencies in other people's reasoning, than writing an excellent book like this. If an author chooses to express what he believes to be the true path, his work will be biased in s