In this new, technological age, Alan Watts explains how seeing reality via only one perspective can lead to a fragmented view of the world; instead, he encourages listeners to adopt both the analytical and the organic.
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In this episode, Alan Watts dives into:
- Living in an age of technology in a culture obsessed with rational control
- How someone can easily be obstructed by their own cautiousness
- The problem of human ecology and how one should best relate to their environment
- Considering what our idea of heaven is and what desires we truly want
- The western model of the universe (intellectual, architectural, mechanical)
- Reductive thinking: seeing the world through a net and making everything into a comprehensible, geometrical unit
- The fundamental difference between a mechanism and an organism
- How understanding the world through only conscious attention can lead to seeing everything as parts rather than the whole picture
- Combining the academic, analytical mind with the organic, ‘gooey’ mind
“Go to the science of medicine. You get a specialist who really understands the function of the gall bladder. He studied gall bladders ad infinitum, and he really thinks he knows all about it. But, whenever he looks at a human being, he sees them in terms of the gall bladder.” – Alan Watts
This series is brought to you by the Alan Watts Organization and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation. Visit Alanwatts.org for full talks from Alan Watts.
Listen to more Alan Watts talks:
Being in the Way Ep. 1: Alan shares a dharma talk on Taoism, the interdependence of nature, and dropping out of karma
Alan Watt’s son, Mark, shares background on Alan’s early life, before introducing two of his father’s specially curated dharma talks focused on karma, in Being in the Way Ep. 2
Therapy, religion, mystical experiences, & Jesus: Being in the Way Ep. 6
The connections between Taoism and relativity, technology and human evolution, culture and separation: Being in the Way Ep. 3
Our place in the universe and how very natural it is to be human, in Being in the Way Ep. 4
The joyous cosmology that we are God playing the roles of ordinary people: Being in the Way Ep. 21