Alan watts quotes how to#

It was called education, it was called upbringing. And we were schooled in acting in our childhood, although it wasn’t called that. All people are more or less taught to act.

Alan watts quotes how to#

And, of course, this comes out very, very strongly in the vagaries of fashion, and how to do one’s hair, paint one’s face, et cetera, et cetera.Īnd then, also, there is the role of character-playing. It’s the social institution of what is to be attractive. So, you see, it isn’t just that nature has built into the human organism certain attractive features about other people. She doesn’t look very willowy underneath, as a rule, but she does when dressed in a kimono. And the way that a traditional Japanese woman clothes herself is exposing the neck but looking very flat in front and not at all showing the hips. They pay no attention, though, to breasts-which seem to so fascinate the American male. And so, when you see a well-dressed Japanese girl, her kimono hangs a little bit down the back, like this, exposing her neck. But to a Japanese, the back of a girl’s neck is the most exciting sexual feature. And it’s perfectly okay for her to grow her hair down long and cover it. An American male pays relatively little attention to the back of a girl’s neck. And the word “illusion” is from the Latin ludere: “to play.” It involves the illusion of the parts being separate.Īlso, we know, too, that social institutions govern what we notice. And in playing-playing always involves a certain element of make-believe, that is to say, illusion. Because… in the sense that it has no other object than doing what it’s doing. Everything that comes into it comes from inside-which is a giveaway that the whole thing is really one process, and it’s all a game. But in this network of life that we live in things don’t come in from outside. I mean, when you drive your car up to the shop and you want a new carburetor or something, they pull the old one out and they take another one off the shelf and jam it in. The parts of this network don’t come into it from outside. A machine is a lot of separate parts that are put together, whereas this is different. And that is extremely demoralizing.īut, really and truly, this tremendous network doesn’t have any separate parts. He gives people the giggles about things that they thought were terribly sacred. The joker doesn’t outrightly deride things.

But the person who somehow suggests that society occasionally is something that needs to be giggled at-see, this is the whole position. Non-participation of the monk isn’t so bad. And the worst kind of criticism is the person who pokes fun.

But when you’re not sure you’re right, you have to stifle criticism completely. They knew they were right, and therefore there was no point stopping anybody from criticizing them. And that’s because the people, as a whole, in those days, had a tremendous sense of security. Sort of lean against the lamppost and let it all go on. They could criticize and vilify, even, the most sacred institutions, and the police would stand by and pay no attention. I remember, as a boy in London, going off into Hyde Park Corner and listening to people orate against anything they wanted to orate against.