"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 processingsystem
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 salespromotion
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 fortyfive
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 the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, 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.
I live close to a harbor packed with sailing-boats and luxurious cruisers which are seldom
used, because seamanship is a difficult though rewarding art which their owners have no
time to practice. They bought the boats either as status symbols or as toys, but on
discovering that they were not toys (as advertised) they lost interest. The same is true of
the entire and astounding abundance of pleasure-goods that we buy. Foodstuffs are
prolific, but few know how to cook. Building materials abound in both quantity and
variety, yet most homes look as if they had been made by someone who had heard of a
house but never seen one. Silks, linens, wools, and cottons are available in colors and
patterns galore, and yet most men dress like divinity students or undertakers, while
women are slaves to the fashion game with its basic rule, "I have conformed sooner than
you." The market for artists and sculptors has thrived as never before in history, but the
paintings look as if they had been made with excrement or scraps from billboards, and the
sculptures like mangled typewriters or charred lumber from a burned-down outhouse.
We have untold stacks of recorded music from every age and culture, and the most
superb means of playing it. But who actually listens? Maybe a few pot-smokers.
This is perhaps a Henry Millerish exaggeration. Nevertheless, it strikes me more and
more that America's reputation for materialism is unfounded--that is, if a materialist is a
person who thoroughly enjoys the physical world and loves material things. In this sense,
we are superb materialists when it comes to the construction of jet aircraft, but when we
decorate the inside of these magnificent monsters for the comfort of passengers it is
nothing but frippery. High-heeled, narrow-hipped, doll-type girls serving imitation,
warmed-over meals. For our pleasures are not material pleasures but symbols of
pleasure--attractively packaged but inferior in content.
The explanation is simple: most of our products are being made by people who do not
enjoy making them, whether as owners or workers. Their aim in the enterprise is not the
product but money, and therefore every trick is used to cut the cost of production and
hoodwink the buyer, by coloring and packaging chicanery, into the belief that the product
is well and truly made. The only exceptions are those products which simply must be
excellent for reasons of safety or high cost of purchase--aircraft, computers, spacerockets,
scientific instruments, and so forth."
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 processingsystem
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 salespromotion
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 fortyfive
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 the wretched and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, 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.
I live close to a harbor packed with sailing-boats and luxurious cruisers which are seldom
used, because seamanship is a difficult though rewarding art which their owners have no
time to practice. They bought the boats either as status symbols or as toys, but on
discovering that they were not toys (as advertised) they lost interest. The same is true of
the entire and astounding abundance of pleasure-goods that we buy. Foodstuffs are
prolific, but few know how to cook. Building materials abound in both quantity and
variety, yet most homes look as if they had been made by someone who had heard of a
house but never seen one. Silks, linens, wools, and cottons are available in colors and
patterns galore, and yet most men dress like divinity students or undertakers, while
women are slaves to the fashion game with its basic rule, "I have conformed sooner than
you." The market for artists and sculptors has thrived as never before in history, but the
paintings look as if they had been made with excrement or scraps from billboards, and the
sculptures like mangled typewriters or charred lumber from a burned-down outhouse.
We have untold stacks of recorded music from every age and culture, and the most
superb means of playing it. But who actually listens? Maybe a few pot-smokers.
This is perhaps a Henry Millerish exaggeration. Nevertheless, it strikes me more and
more that America's reputation for materialism is unfounded--that is, if a materialist is a
person who thoroughly enjoys the physical world and loves material things. In this sense,
we are superb materialists when it comes to the construction of jet aircraft, but when we
decorate the inside of these magnificent monsters for the comfort of passengers it is
nothing but frippery. High-heeled, narrow-hipped, doll-type girls serving imitation,
warmed-over meals. For our pleasures are not material pleasures but symbols of
pleasure--attractively packaged but inferior in content.
The explanation is simple: most of our products are being made by people who do not
enjoy making them, whether as owners or workers. Their aim in the enterprise is not the
product but money, and therefore every trick is used to cut the cost of production and
hoodwink the buyer, by coloring and packaging chicanery, into the belief that the product
is well and truly made. The only exceptions are those products which simply must be
excellent for reasons of safety or high cost of purchase--aircraft, computers, spacerockets,
scientific instruments, and so forth."
The Book
by Alan Watts
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