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# 2022-03-01 - On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan | |
# Watts | |
I did not find this book very satisfying. I have to agree with | |
another online reviewer who wrote "And with the sudden tinkling of | |
the unseen bell I put the book down and did not pick it up again. | |
Just so much smug western white male self love from this ivory tower | |
icon. There is, to be fair, a good deal of insight in his collective | |
writings, but there is far more cumbersome rubbish one must slog | |
through to find it." | |
Below are a few quotes from the book that i found interesting. | |
Thus bamboozled, the individual--instead of fulfilling his unique | |
function in the world--is exhausted and frustrated in efforts to | |
accomplish, self-contradictory goals. Because he is now so largely | |
defined as a separate person caught up in a mindless and alien | |
universe, his principal task is to get one-up on the universe and to | |
conquer nature. This is palpably absurd, and since the task is never | |
achieved, the individual is taught to live and work for some future | |
in which the impossible will at last happen, if not for him, then at | |
least for his children. We are thus breeding a type of human being | |
incapable of living in the present--that is, of really living. | |
For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a | |
hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which | |
you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will | |
still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never | |
be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now, I've | |
arrived!" Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity | |
because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you | |
how to be alive now. | |
In other words, you have been hypnotized or conditioned by an | |
educational processing-system arranged in grades or steps, supposedly | |
leading to some ultimate Success. First nursery school or | |
kindergarten, then the grades or forms of elementary school, | |
preparing you for the great moment of secondary school! But then | |
more steps, up and up to the coveted goal of the university. Here, | |
if you are clever, you can stay on indefinitely by getting into | |
graduate school and becoming a permanent student. Otherwise, you are | |
headed step by step for the great Outside World of family-raising, | |
business, and profession. Yet graduation day is a very temporary | |
fulfillment, for with your first sales- promotion meeting you are | |
back in the same old system, being urged to make that quota (and if | |
you do, they'll give you a higher quota) and so progress up the | |
ladder to sales manager, vice-president, and, at last, president of | |
your own show (about forty to forty-five years old). In the | |
meantime, the insurance and investment people have been interesting | |
you in plans for Retirement--that really ultimate goal of being able | |
to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all your labors. But when that | |
day comes, your anxieties and exertions will have left you with a | |
weak heart, false teeth, prostate trouble, sexual impotence, fuzzy | |
eyesight, and a vile digestion. | |
All this might have been wonderful if, at every stage, you had been | |
able to play it as a game, finding your work as fascinating as poker, | |
chess, or fishing. But for most of us the day is divided into | |
work-time and play-time, the work consisting largely of tasks which | |
others pay us to do because they are abysmally uninteresting. We | |
therefore work, not for the work's sake, but for money--and money is | |
supposed to get us what we really want in our hours of leisure and | |
play. In the United States even poor people have lots of money | |
compared with [other parts of the world], while our middle and upper | |
classes (or should we say "income groups") are as prosperous as | |
princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. | |
Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment | |
is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy. | |
... | |
But there is another possibility. Instead of checking out, let us | |
ask what the trap means. What is implied in finding yourself | |
paralyzed, unable to escape from a game in which all the rules are | |
double-binds and all moves self-defeating? Surely this is a deep and | |
intense experience of the same double-bind that was placed upon you | |
in infancy, when the community told you that you must be free, | |
responsible, and loving, and when you were helplessly defined as an | |
independent agent. The sense of paralysis is therefore the dawning | |
realization that this is nonsense and that your independent ego is a | |
fiction. It simply isn't there, either to do anything or to be | |
pushed around by external forces, to change things or to submit to | |
change. | |
... | |
To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, | |
and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play. | |
author: Watts, Alan, 1915-1973 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Alan_Watts | |
LOC: BD450 .W3 | |
tags: book,non-fiction,philosophy | |
title: The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are | |
# Tags | |
book | |
non-fiction | |
philosophy |