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Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

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Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#11

Post by StavrosK »

camperman wrote: post #10
StavrosK wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's honour-shame if it's not guilt, though? That's not a rhetorical question.

In honour-shame societies, there is simply no concept of internal remorse or guilt. The correctional vectors are external rather than internal. A member of such a society - and they're almost always collectivist rather then individual - will strive to be honourable while avoiding shame. Here's a Chinese person talking about the difference: "...A majority of the world is Chinese. So am I. We emphasize the extended fam…

That clarifies things a lot, thank you.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#13

Post by hyaline9 »

Alan Watts was a wonderful human being who spoke and wrote eloquently, kindly, and often humourously on all manner of topics concerning the relationship of man and woman to the larger universe. Some of his talks can be found at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=%22alan%20watts%22

From the talk "On Being God": 'The scanning process of man's conscious attention is very much inadequate for dealing with the infinitely many variables of the multi-dimensional processes of the universe.'

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#14

Post by vixen99 »

GB Shaw's "Money is the most important thing in the world until you have enough of it" is a truism aside from hermit existence.

On the other hand, Watts' "Yes, one can take a whole handful of crisp dollar bills and practically water your mouth over them. But this is a kind of person who is confused, like a Pavlov dog, who salivates on the wrong bell. " rings hollow if you have bills to pay.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#15

Post by camperman »

StavrosK wrote: post #11
camperman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In honour-shame societies, there is simply no concept of internal remorse or guilt. The correctional vectors are external rather than internal. A member of such a society - and they're almost always collectivist rather then individual - will strive to be honourable while avoiding shame. Here's a Chinese person talking about the difference: "...A majority of the world is Chinese. So am I. We emphasize the extended fam…

That clarifies things a lot, thank you.

Pleasure.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#16

Post by marincounty »

I have never understood the 'love of money". You need money to live comfortably, but I don't understand Trump, or Facebook money. I find it interesting a lot of men make their "bundle" in their mating years. I have further noticed a more than a fair amount of obtuse, fugly, mean men have a need to make too much money. I sometimes think it has evolutionary roots? As to Allen Watts; he was a success for what he valued. A lot of people ask why he drank so much vodka if he was so happy and enlightened. I personally think it was a different time, and alcoholism just crept up on him and no one really told him to stop. Even twenty years alcoholism was not concerned the killer it is today. As the the money worshipers of this generation--I can't relate. I see the fitly Lookers everywhere--and you are ugly. I always felt the most beautiful women in the world are Amish. I have always felt this way--and it's more than just good Midwestern genes.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#17

Post by badman_ting »

It's interesting and important to know that money is an abstraction, sure. But it's also worth knowing how belief functions in society, even if no one in the society personally believes. Our abstractions can be more real than reality. This is why money works even though it's fake.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#18

Post by fexl »

In the South Pacific island story, when the gold was lost, the money was lost. That was a loss of a physical substance with a unique combination of specific physical characteristics. If it had been silver, copper, platinum, rhodium, or iron, I doubt they would have said "Oh well, we didn't really lose anything." The loss was real.

Some say that gold is useless, but I find it hard to imagine that any substance which is so durable, ductile, malleable, divisible conductive, rare, pretty, non-corrosive, and non-reactive could ever be "useless" to human beings. For example, it is excellent for electrical conductors in a salt water environment. Human beings have also found that those same physical characteristics make it useful as money.

There is no irony in expending effort to dig it up and then putting it back underground in vaults. That's because it is more useful in the form of bars than in the form of raw ore.

Re: Alan Watts: Money, Guilt, and the Machine

#19

Post by forkandwait »

camperman wrote: post #10
StavrosK wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's honour-shame if it's not guilt, though? That's not a rhetorical question.

In honour-shame societies, there is simply no concept of internal remorse or guilt. The correctional vectors are external rather than internal. A member of such a society - and they're almost always collectivist rather then individual - will strive to be honourable while avoiding shame. Here's a Chinese person talking about the difference: "...A majority of the world is Chinese. So am I. We emphasize the extended fam…

Awesome comment. I think of this as the difference between Jesus and Buddha, which I have riffed about in other HN comments. Jesus says: You stand alone judged before God. Buddha says: Your supposed self is an illusion, the collectivity is all.

EDIT: I had an Alan Watts phase growing up, started by cool Episcopalian seminary students who lent me his books; Watts got ordained, then (I think) subsequently defrocked for his carousing.

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