Alan Watts on solipsism

[Jahmaine]

 

[Jahmaine]

[vizual]

@Jahmaine  Would you want your doctor to not take his job seriously? Do you want your employer not taking his job seriously when he is about to pay you your wages? Do you not want the police to take their job seriously in protecting people?

I think Mr. Watts uses the concept of seriousness kind of immaturely here. And I think what he really means is that life is ultimately meaningless. That we are all born, live and die. And that that period between being and death do not really matter in an absolute sense. But while being alive, your endeavor are definitely serious. If you don't have food, water, shelter, basic safety and security. You will feel this seriousness, you're just being foolish and immature if you deny that. 

[Kksd74628]

@vizual

Being serious and doing things well are completely different things. Being serious is kind of being tensed and thinking too much about the end results. If you focus all your energy, concentration and time to what you are doing right NOW, I would bet that your results are better than actually stressing about the outcome. Alan Watts is not saying that you shouldn't aim to be precise where you need to be, but he only tells you to enjoy life, because what else there is to do. Many people really think that life is about who is the most successful, but actually it is about who is the happiest one.

[vizual]

2 minutes ago, Kksd74628 said:

@vizual

Being serious and doing things well are completely different things. Being serious is kind of being tensed and thinking too much about the end results. If you focus all your energy, concentration and time to what you are doing right NOW, I would bet that your results are better than actually stressing about the outcome. Alan Watts is not saying that you shouldn't aim to be precise where you need to be, but he only tells you to enjoy life, because what else there is to do. Many people really think that life is about who is the most successful, but actually it is about who is the happiest one.

That's spiritual nonsense. If you want to do things well and make real progress you need to have certain standards and goals. And these goals need to matter to you in some way, and matter to the world. If I let you do some meaningless task like searching for needles in haystacks you won't use your capacities to your fullest abilities and you will be miserable after a while. It doesn't matter how present or not present you are. The things you aim at in life matter, to you and also to the world. Seriousness is a basic need in a persons life if he wants to be happy. 

I don't want to dog on Mr Watts personally but he had a lot of personal demons including alcoholism. Surely he had not figured everything out how to live optimally as a human being so I encourage you to at least question the advice on life he gives to people. Don't be blinded by his charisma

[Kksd74628]

@vizual

My conclusion was not from Alan Watts, but from my own contemplation and life experience. Goals are good to track your progress, but actually I have never had any "goals" in playing piano, drums or in making electronic music and I see myself extremely talented in these areas. My claim is that the more focussed you are in the present moment, greater your results will be. I don't know about you, but I personally have lived non-serious relaxed life and I am ultimately happy and I laugh and smile almost every second  

The point of spirituality is to become child again, but do not take this like you should stop doing things well, because as I said earlier, that is not the case. I only encourage people to start seeing life as playing for example see chores like some fun activity, not something you "need" to do. In life you don't need to do anything, but just do those you want to do and, if you want to have good health you should eat healthy. Nothing really changes except your mindset about the situation and that can decide between you smiling or not so in that sense it is kind of radical.

[Asayake]

35 minutes ago, vizual said:

That's spiritual nonsense. If you want to do things well and make real progress you need to have certain standards and goals. And these goals need to matter to you in some way, and matter to the world. If I let you do some meaningless task like searching for needles in haystacks you won't use your capacities to your fullest abilities and you will be miserable after a while. It doesn't matter how present or not present you are. The things you aim at in life matter, to you and also to the world. Seriousness is a basic need in a persons life if he wants to be happy. 

I don't want to dog on Mr Watts personally but he had a lot of personal demons including alcoholism. Surely he had not figured everything out how to live optimally as a human being so I encourage you to at least question the advice on life he gives to people. Don't be blinded by his charisma

I have a controversial view on this matter. I think a person can be an alcoholic and still live life to its full potential. It's just because science proves how bad alcoholism is for your body right now, the many cases in which it doesn't work out and the fact that's it's socially not acceptable to be an alcoholic that it is considered so bad. Imo it's fashionable right now to view drug addicts as people who failed at life. So that sober people can feel they're doing good just because they're being a "good boy".

But I don't think that's true from the perspective of a drug addict(I've been addicted to weed periods of my life myself but the only time it actually became a problem was when I really really smoked A LOT 24/7 for months on end and even then it was not really that big of a problem for me personally, because I did not really treat it as a problem, I just treated it as a part of life that I choose. If anything it deepened my interest in spirituality, music, my will to better my relationships, and more positive effects. Sure, it also cause minor periods of depression. But arguably you could go through that even if you were 100% sober and meditated everyday. At the time I thought it was a bit problematic but in hindsight I can see that it was needed for my development. Now of course an addict that really wants to quit but can't quit is a different story, that person is beating himself up mentally and being hard on himself, and is not enjoying the drug they're doing anymore.

Even though Alan Watts was an alcoholic it does not mean he was not aware of it and choose to do it anyways. I'm pretty sure he was self conscious enough to realize that he had an "alcohol problem" and just realized that for him personally quitting was not worth it because he enjoyed drinking too much. If he is happy and thriving and having great success, what's so bad about having what others would consider a problem. John Lennon had plenty "drug problems" both with lighter drugs and even heavier drugs like heroin but did more for music than most sober people that ever existed. And he also seemed to live a very rich life, enjoying himself and doing things his way, not caring if he's labeled a junkie or hippie.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Asayake

[Kksd74628]

@Asayake

Exactly! As it was already stated, the only thing which matter is that you are personally happy and live a great life, everything else is useless. If addiction makes you unhappy then it is problem, but if it makes you happy, what is the problem? What is socially acceptable and what not has impact only, if you make it impact on you, but if you can live your life without it bothering you too much then I see it as win. There are many paths to happiness, but every path is equally good if you can walk it with great smile on the face .

Edited March 29, 2022 by Kksd74628

[Jahmaine]