Saying "the least obnoxious biohacker" is like saying "the best-smelling dog turd". Let's get that out of the way.
A lot of factory standard from the unga bunga bullshit genre (my personal favorite), about reconnecting with nature, wearing flat shoes, eating enough animal fat, and doing mindfulness. This time, the mindfulness came in the form of martial arts, which is always good.
Pedram cusses too damn much! Nothing wrong with the occasional fuckword for added zest, for a little zing, but there's a delicate balance to maintain and it's painfully apparent when you can't recognize that. Was a time swear words made you edgy and relatable. Now, especially with the battery of cringe books like "Unfuck Your Mind" and "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck", it feels like a marketing gimmick.
Much of the book did, unfortunately. It was very self-help, but the thunderbolt never came, and he never tried to sell me anything. He suggested I buy some exotic herbs, but I won't be doing that.
He briefly talks about the connect between mindfulness practice and epigenetic expression of healthier genes, which is true through the filter of stress reduction, but a connection I never made directly.
He talks about how TV skews our perception with a worldview "that is inaccurate and dark, which drives us to feel unsafe, unloved, alone, and unattractive", which confirms my bias.
He says, "there's just as much space between the electrons of our cells (to scale) as there is between the stars in the sky", which sounds incredibly wrong. I'm not an astrophysicist or a biologist, but cells come in different sizes and electrons are subatomic particles. The electrons need to be atoms, the atoms need to be molecules, then the molecules need to be cells. We skipped a whole bunch of orders of organization, here, Doctor.
He talks about phasing out or at least limiting caffeine, and he's probably right. I got off coffee and I'm sleeping great, and sleeping great makes everything else in your life great. Bastard.
He talks about how work is better remote, which is an enormous relief. I'm coming off that piece of crap book The Future Is Analog where that loser David Sax was insistent that the only way to engage with reality is to be forced to during a misery inducing commute so "knowledge workers" can "garner more creativity" or whatever. I was incensed. Our boy Pedram comes at it entirely from the other side. Allow me to paraphrase:
"Hey, motherfuckers! Who the fuck wants to work? Nobody! Work fucking sucks, am I fucking right, dicklickers? PISS! It's better to work from fuckin' home so you can-- ASS!!!!-- spend more time with your family, friends, loved ones, and pets while simultaneously minimizing your environmental impact and being happier and more cocksuckin' productive."
Thanks Pedram. Yes, I'm inclined to agree, remote work has been a big step toward reducing pollution, although we all know it's polishing banisters on the Titanic until the energy and manufacturing industries get it together or come to a screeching, Fallout 3 style halt. It's also much better for mental health and work life balance, contrary to what bootlicking cowards like Sax (who has been working remote since 2000) will tell you, so long as you have a life. If your only contact with the outside world is commuting to work, then yes, of course that will seem more beneficial. But why is that the only contact with the outside world you have?
Pedram, in his middle-school-boy-in-the-cafeteria vernacular, encourages us to be more than our jobs and use technology to our advantage, as a means of minimizing our exposure to and getting the hell away from technology so we can walk the dog and do kung fu in the woods or whatever. And I think that's beautiful.
He also name-dropped Mark Hyman, who is one of my favorite Instagram kook doctors purveying unga bunga bullshit. Dude's name is 'Hyman'. Are you kidding me
Overall, Urban Monk is a pretty good book if you can come at it with a grain of salt and separate the good science (and good pseudoscience) and solid, Tedpilled, join-me-in-the-shrub-my-brethren advice from its self-aggrandizing and somewhat fratty advisor.