Bitterness

Bitterness is the most repulsive trait. Anything that is bitter is forced not to rely on attraction, but to impose itself upon the world. The problem is life has a habit of making people bitter. Sometimes it happens early in life. People themselves can make you bitter and as a result they’ll make you unlovable.

I’m reminded of the three vinegar tasters, Buddha, Laozi and Confucius. Confucius tastes the vinegar and says it is sour. Laozi tastes it and says it is sweet. The Buddha tastes it and says it is bitter. I like this myth because it takes three philosophies and clarifies how they’re ultimately just perspectives, rather than absolute truths.

You can spend your whole life absorbed in Buddhism or Catholicism or any other idea for that matter and come to see it as an absolute truth. But then zoom out a little and you can reframe a philosophy. Buddha says life is Dukkha, unsatisfactory. But is that so? Is this an absolute truth or just another flavor?

For vast numbers of people this is not really possible, to look at their worldview from a detached perspective. When I see recordings of Buddhist monks, they often seem entirely convinced that life is bitter, they can’t detach themselves from this conviction. The sourness and sweetness are still there, they just can’t taste it any longer.

But I look at bitterness as a kind of end state. Out of all the religions and philosophies that have sprung forth in India, only Buddhism truly seems to stand the test of time. Spengler looked at Buddhism as Indic civilization entering senescence. It’s the only philosophy left for a body approaching its end. In secularized form it is becoming a kind of cosmopolitan world religion.

There’s a problem doctors have with old people. They tend to love to eat grapefruit, but the fruit contains an enzyme that interferes in the metabolization of many medicines. And yet the elderly will continue eating the bitter citrus fruit, for the same reason old people grow addicted to coffee. Once you near the end, your taste receptors fade away all you can still taste is bitterness. You find yourself forced to learn to enjoy the bitter flavors the world has to offer.

There is another option however. You can force yourself to forget what you learned. Electroconvulsive therapy is used for this purpose, I doubt it would be as effective if it did not cause retrograde amnesia. They test it on rats and find the animals are eager to drink sweet water again, they forgot whatever negative association they had with it. It is in essence as if they died a little.

It seems these are the three options you’re left with once you learn to recognize that foul bitterness the vinegar has to offer. You can choose to embrace the bitterness, you can try to forget what you learned or you can refrain from taking more.