ALAN WATTS: Are we brainwashed? (video)

AlanWatts.org via Word Porn (WP); Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

 

This is why you're not happy

wordporn.com

Alan Watts asks, What do we really desire? How does conforming to the machine we call "society" to pass on our parent's way of life from generation to generation serve anybody?
 

The Path of Freedom: Vimutti-magga

We can finally glimpse if and how we are brainwashed into some kind of societal enslavement without even realizing it. Watts helps us confront the truth so see why conforming to a job we do not like is idiotic and nonsensical. Following our desires can lead to a miserable life. So what's the solution?

We have 28,000 days that make up our entire lives, so spending even an hour of that doing things we hate in order to try to live up to a lifestyle we were taught by our parents, teachers, and society is a form of psychic suicide.

"We all run on two clocks," says Max Lerner. "One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season.

"The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.”

Are you tired of playing the social game?

(Wiara/Patreon) Tired of conforming to societal pressures and g programming? Are you bored of playing the social game?

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Alan Watts asks: What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like? Let’s suppose -- I do this often in vocational guidance of students, [when] they come to me and say, well: 'We’re getting out of college and we haven't the faintest idea what we want to do."

So I always ask the question: "What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?"

"Well, it’s so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way.

"Or another person says, 'Well, I’d like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses.' I said, 'You want to teach in a riding school? Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him:

Fight the power. Praise the freedom!

"'You do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.

"'Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually turn it – you could eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry too much.

"'That’s everybody issue – somebody is interested in everything, anything you can be interested in, you will find others will. But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like, in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow in the same track.

"'See what we are doing, is we’re bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of lives we are living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it’s all retch, and no vomit it never gets there. And so, therefore, it’s so important to consider this question: What do I desire?