bookmate game
Alan Watts

Does It Matter?

Notify me when the book’s added
To read this book, upload an EPUB or FB2 file to Bookmate. How do I upload a book?
This classic series of essays represents Alan Watts's thinking on the astonishing problems caused by our dysfunctional relationship with the material environment. Here, with characteristic wit, a philosopher best known for his writings and teachings about mysticism and Eastern philosophy gets down to the nitty-gritty problems of economics, technology, clothing, cooking, and housing. Watts argues that we confuse symbol with reality, our ways of describing and measuring the world with the world itself, and thus put ourselves into the absurd situation of preferring money to wealth and eating the menu instead of the dinner.

With our attention locked on numbers and concepts, we are increasingly unconscious of nature and of our total dependence on air, water, plants, animals, insects, and bacteria. We have hallucinated the notion that the so-called external world is a cluster of objects separate from ourselves, that we encounter it, that we come into it instead of out of it. Originally published in 1972, Does It Matter? foretells the environmental problems that arise from this mistaken mind-set. Not all of Watts's predictions have come to pass, but his unique insights will change the way you look at the world.
This book is currently unavailable
149 printed pages
Original publication
2010
Publication year
2010
Have you already read it? How did you like it?
👍👎

Impressions

  • Soliloquios Literariosshared an impression5 years ago
    👍Worth reading

  • yarushared an impression7 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    👎Give This a Miss

Quotes

  • David Floreshas quoted4 years ago
    As a people, our ideal is to have a future, and so long as this is so we shall never have a present. But only those who have a present, and who can relate to it materially and immediately, have any use for making plans for the future, for when their plans mature they will enjoy the results. Others, with their eyes fixed on the tomorrow that never comes, will bolt down all times present
  • Ксюша Расторгуеваhas quoted6 years ago
    Money is a way of measuring wealth but is not wealth in itself.
  • Kate Lagunovahas quoted8 years ago
    Camus said, the only serious philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide.

On the bookshelves

fb2epub
Drag & drop your files (not more than 5 at once)