Does It Matter?: Essays On Man's Relation To Materiality
by Alan Watts /
2007 / English / PDF
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This is a series of essays representing philosopher Alan Watts's
most recent thinking on the astonishing problems of man's relations
to his material environment. The basic theme is that civilized man
confuses symbol with reality, his ways of describing and measuring
the world with the world itself, and thus puts himself into the
absurd situation of preferring money to wealth and eating the menu
instead of the dinner.
This is a series of essays representing philosopher Alan Watts's
most recent thinking on the astonishing problems of man's relations
to his material environment. The basic theme is that civilized man
confuses symbol with reality, his ways of describing and measuring
the world with the world itself, and thus puts himself into the
absurd situation of preferring money to wealth and eating the menu
instead of the dinner.
Thus, with his attention locked upon numbers and concepts, man is
increasingly unconscious of nature and of his total dependence upon
air, water, plants, animals, insects, and bacteria. He has been
hallucinated into the notion that the so-called "external" world is
a cluster of "objects" separate from himself, that he "encounters"
it, that he comes into it instead of out of it. Consequently, our
species is fouling its own nest and is in imminent danger of
self-obliteration.
Thus, with his attention locked upon numbers and concepts, man is
increasingly unconscious of nature and of his total dependence upon
air, water, plants, animals, insects, and bacteria. He has been
hallucinated into the notion that the so-called "external" world is
a cluster of "objects" separate from himself, that he "encounters"
it, that he comes into it instead of out of it. Consequently, our
species is fouling its own nest and is in imminent danger of
self-obliteration.
Here, a philosopher whose works have been mainly concerned with
mysticism and Oriental philosophy gets down to the "nitty-gritty"
problems of economics, technology, clothing, cooking, and housing.
Here, a philosopher whose works have been mainly concerned with
mysticism and Oriental philosophy gets down to the "nitty-gritty"
problems of economics, technology, clothing, cooking, and housing.
