BACKWARD or ONWARD? 
or just go back to
PEANUTS GROW UNDERGROUND.
Hoff got off a couple of really good chapters in The Tao of Pooh. I like the "Bisy Backson" chapter, his description of people rushing for materialism, so busy running and trying to make money that they forget to stop and enjoy themselves. I like the parts in the last few chapters dealing with identity, the necessity of feeling good about yourself, finding the courage to keep going in spite of past failures. He does a good job of criticizing other philosophies and lifestyles. It's just when he talks about how you should base your personal philosophy on the characters in the Hundred Aker Wood that Hoff sounds loopy.
For one thing, Hoff tries to paint Rabbit and Owl as bad examples because they are too clever and too knowledgable. I can see what he's desperately aiming at but missing: he's trying to say that people who stress knowledge too much may fill themselves with pedantic, useless knowledge. People who strive to be "clever" above all else may only be superficially witty. But Hoff tries to pass off Rabbit and Owl, two deluded simpletons who think they're clever and knowing, as examples of why clever is dumb, knowledge is snobbish and useless, up is very clearly down, and the Uncarved Block of Pooh's simple mind is the way to wisdom.
Hoff gives another horrible example for why things always work out unexpectedly and serendipitously when you let fate work itself out. Pooh goes looking for "Small" (a beetle), has silly pooh-bear adventures, and eventually finds Small by accident. Hoff acts as though this is evidence that your life will work this way, no effort, things always turn out bright, because it worked for Pooh when he went on his tra-la-la quest to find his beetle friend. He can't see that it's just an ironic plot twist in a children's story. Pooh's life works out effortlessly because Milne is his God, and Milne decided that's how it bloody well better work out.
I am fairly certain that in my wobbly life, Milne is not the deity who makes me piss blood regularly, for no apparent reason. Or maybe he does control my fate, and that's why it all worked out okay. The urologist says it's nothing to worry about, nothing that needs surgery, just a little congenital defect in my prostate, but it won't harm me. I still pass blood every few months, which is awkward when you're at a public urinal, but won't kill you.
So what is the Taoist way to explain to someone at the next urinal why your whiz is bloody? I don't want to offend real Taoists, so maybe I should say the Poohish Taoist or the Hoffy Poohish Taoist way??? I just can't figure how to apply Hoff's "Tiddely-Pom principle" to this kind of situation.
The more it snows
------------(Tiddely pom)
The more it goes
------------(Tiddely pom)
The more it goes
------------(Tiddely pom)
On snowing!
It doesn't work right when you start the first line with:
The more it bleeds
-----------------(Tiddely huh??)
BACKWARD or ONWARD?