Alan Watts Asks: What Would You Do If Money Were No Object?
British philosopher Alan Watts suggests that we should ask ourselves this simple question and in the answer find the path we should follow.
One of the great problems humanity has been facing for decades is education. And perhaps the reason this is not yet resolved is because most of us are the product of a diverted education whose purpose is to program individuals to be subject to authority and to fear failure above all else. The propaganda we see every day wants us to worship our economy as if it was a god. The paradigm of this system is that it is no less than a cannibal: economy will never reach a climax because there is no such thing; we will continue in a slumber trying to obtain the means —the money— as if it was its own end, instead of teaching children to not be materialistic and to become part of a model that works to make them happy and give them peace. And we all speak of peace, but nobody educates for peace. Education should not teach us how to think, on the contrary, and as David Foster Wallace says; it should teach us that we can choose what we think.
For this there are movements that are questioning how the modern world works. These are made up of agents of change that can transform the already tottering western educational system and are joining the most prominent academy of all (that we sometimes forget to pay attention to): life. One of the most important characters in this movement is the philosopher and writer, Alan Watts, who presents his students with a simple question (that we should all ask ourselves before we ride the defective global economic system train): What would you do if money were no object?
What moves you? How would you really enjoy spending your life? Every single one of us has the answer to this question, but the truly important thing is that it is hard to not be honest with ourselves when they present us with a world in which we can do whatever we love without having to worry about pragmatism. The path is in the answer.
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