Saturday, July 14, 2012

Waaaaaatts?

I'm reading this great book called "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts. He says some great things.

"Consequently our age is one of frustration, anxiety, agitation, and addiction to 'dope.' Somehow we must grab what we can while we can, and drown out the realization that the whole thing is futile and meaningless. This 'dope' we call our high standard of living, a violent and complex stimulation of the senses, which makes them progressively less sensitive and thus in need of yet more violent stimulation. We crave distraction-a panorama of sights, sounds, thrills, and titillations into which as much as possible must be crowded in the shortest possible time.
To keep up this 'standard' most of us are willing to put up with lives that consist largely in doing jobs that are a bore, earning the means to seek relief from the tedium by intervals of hectic and expensive pleasure. These intervals are supposed to be the real living, the real purpose served by the necessary evil of work.  Or we imagine that the justification of such work is the rearing of a family to go on doing the same kind of thing, in order to rear another family...and so ad infinitum."

He wrote this in 1951.