What Happens When You Only Pursue Pleasure - Alan Watts | After Skool
Summary
This episode explores the futility of pursuing power and control, arguing that a fully predictable future is essentially the past and lacks the excitement of surprise. The speaker uses vocational guidance examples to illustrate how prioritizing money over genuine passion leads to a wasted life, whereas true mastery comes from doing what you love. He critiques the Western obsession with omnipotence, noting that the endless pursuit of pleasure inevitably descends into pain, as seen in historical examples like the Roman Colosseum. Ultimately, the talk advocates for a state of "desirelessness" …
Topics discussed
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The question of desire in vocational guidance
Pursuing passion over money in career choices
The value of mastery and a life of interest
Critique of raising children to repeat unhappy lives
The naive desire for total control and creation
The illusion of technological omnipotence
Why a predictable future is already the past
The necessity of pleasant and unpleasant surprises
Disillusionment with the ideal of power
The confusion of responsibility and dictatorial power
Sponsorship: Indeed, Visible, and Uber Eats
The Western world's hang-up on power and control
Understanding that you do not want to control everything
The pursuit of pleasure and its limits
Ancient Roman excess and the need for greater shocks
The descent from pleasure to pain in the Naraka world
Thoughtless pursuit of pleasure leading to the hell world
The answer to 'what do I want?' is 'I do not know'
Bodhidharma's 'I do not know' and desirelessness
Stages of not knowing what you want
Reasons for not knowing: having it and not knowing yourself
The godhead as an endless mystery to itself
Letting go of control as an access to power
Wasted energy in self-defense and loss of divine energy
The principle of giving away to receive more
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