Alan Watts, Time and the Future, his
 description of the seminar goes thusly,
 "In what sense is the future real and in
 what sense is time an abstract social
 convention like the equator? Is there a
 way of measuring irreversible motion or
 are our current notions of time
 obsolete and what of religious hope for
 the life of the world to come?" That's all
 four parts in a succinct paragraph and
 here comes Alan Watts with Time in the
 Future part one. So this is the first of
 a series of four weekends devoted to the
 subject of the future and each session
 is pretty much, each weekend is pretty
 much self-contained. There's a certain
 continuity but it's moving towards a
 center point from various different
 points on a circumference and in the
 first weekend, this weekend, we are
 considering the subject of time and the
 whole concept of the future and the
 point of departure that I would like to
 suggest to you is that time is a social
 institution and not a physical reality.
 There is, in other words, no such thing
 as time in the natural world, the world
 of stars and waters and mountains and
 clouds and living organisms. There is
 such a thing as rhythm, rhythm of tides,
 rhythm of biological processes, but time
 as such is a social institution. In the
 same way that language is, that number
 is, that concepts are, and/or measurements,
 inches, meters, lines of latitude and
 longitude, all those things are social
 institutions or conventions. The word
 convention from the Latin convenere, to
 come together, to agree about something,
 to hold a convention, and thus of course
 in its deteriorated sense, when we say
 of something it's purely conventional,
 that is to say you needn't take it
 seriously. Now of course, are we going to
 take time seriously? That is the big
 question, and it depends what you mean.
 If you don't understand that time is a
 convention, of course you take it
 seriously, and you are driven by time.
 Time is money, time is of the essence,
 and we do, don't we, live in a culture,
 or a complex of cultures in the Western
 world where we are literally driven by
 time. If you read a book like Jules
 Henry's marvelous work, Culture Against
 Man, he documents in the most
 extraordinary way to what an extent this
 particular culture is driven, so that
 even the psychologists have altered the
 word, the old-fashioned word, instincts,
 and now they call them drives, because
 there's this feeling you've got to make
 that deadline, there's something there
 you've got to get to, and people feel
 driven even when, supposing, that
 something's going to happen, you've got
 an appointment coming up, and some people
 find that in a strange way unsettling,
 they are so either eager to make this
 thing or so anxious about it, that in
 between time they can't do anything else,
 they're incapacitated until it happens,
 until the blessed event or whatever it
 is occurs. But in the natural physical
 world there is rhythm and there is
 motion, and time then obviously is a way
 of measuring motion by comparing motion
 with some sort of constant. Now the
 constant in the question of time is a
 circle marked out in 360 or 60 degrees,
 and that is time. We cause a hand, a
 pointer, to revolve around that circle at
 a regular speed, and that gives us a
 constant with which we compare all kinds
 of motions and rhythms. And so the clock
 is just like a ruler and is as abstract
 as a ruler, and must be taken just for
 that, which means in a way not seriously,
 you see. That doesn't mean of course that
 you say, "Well, from now on we're going to
 melt down all clocks and use them for
 something else," because conventions,
 social institutions, are very valuable.
 Corresponding to the watch there is the
 compass, and that also is a circle,
 divided four ways, north, south, east, and
 west. The Buddhists speak of ten
 directions because they have not only
 the eight points of the compass, but they
 add to that above and below. And in their
 mythology they have guardian kings, whose
 duty it is to guard the ten directions.
 And you see them at the entrances to
 temples and places like that. All a
 fearsome aspect. The cosmic traffic cops,
 who are that fierce and are that firm
 about it all, because it is after all
 important that I can meet you at four
 o'clock in the afternoon at the corner of
 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Because if
 we couldn't make that sort of agreement,
 that sort of convention, we couldn't
 convene. And insofar as it is important
 to us to meet, we require these sorts of
 compasses and timers in the vast emptiness
 of the cosmos. But we must recognize that
 these things are, as it were, written
 across vast emptiness. The ground of
 being, as Tillich calls God, has nothing
 in it where you can stand. You can't
 catch hold of it. You can't describe it.
 But you can imagine all sorts of things
 in it. Indeed, perhaps the whole physical
 universe is such an imagination. But
 don't take it for being ultimately real.
 There are, of course, sort of gradations
 of reality. One could say the clock, the
 lines of latitude and longitude, are, and
 words and things like that, abstractions,
 have a rather flimsy kind of reality. Next
 in order will come, of course, what we
 call ordinarily the physical world. We
 say, well, that's material. That matters.
 And so it has a little harder kind of
 reality. And most people stop there and
 they think there's nothing at a deeper
 level than that. And that's simply
 because of the limitations of man's
 consciousness, of his conscious attention.
 Conscious attention is so worked out that
 it tends to ignore all constants. In other
 words, when you move from the Middle West
 and come and live in California, at first
 when you get here you think, oh, this is
 fantastic place. See? It is so beautiful
 and so lush and so on. And you stay here
 after a while, and in a few years you
 start taking the place for granted,
 because it's a constant stimulation of
 consciousness. Also, for example, when
 you're listening to recorded music, there
 is always a kind of electronic hum. But
 we screen that out and ignore it. And so
 it becomes unconscious. Well, so in a
 similar way, there is what you might call
 a continuum, a something or other, in
 which all physical phenomena exist. And
 you ignore it, unless in some way or
 other you can make it hum. And so
 various practices, like performing yoga
 exercises, or Zen meditations, or certain
 kinds of chemicals, can cause your entire
 sensorium to hum. And this draws your
 attention to the ground, the background,
 of everything that you're perceiving,
 which you ordinarily ignore. I think
 there is going around an entirely new
 religion called hum. And hum has no
 organization, no hierarchy, no doctrines,
 only music and ritual. And just hum. If
 anybody asks what's it all about, they
 will say, "Well, come and see." Come in
 here, come and hum. That would be kind of
 nice to have something like that. I don't
 know whether it exists or not, but it
 ought to. But at any rate, the continuum
 in which everything occurs is, of course,
 basically what you are. Only, because we
 get absorbed in details, we forget all
 about it. Deep down, far, far within
 yourself, you know very well indeed that
 you are that. And that what we call
 consciousness and unconsciousness, coming
 and going, life and death, are changing
 modalities within this whatever-it-is-we-are.
 And your identities come and go, your
 forms, your bodies, your this, your that,
 it's all oscillating like everything
 oscillates. It wouldn't hum if it didn't.
 And so, though we are, each one of us, all
 this cosmos and all this universe, its
 ground, we don't know it. Because we
 can't make it an item of knowledge, a
 particular. And we think the only kind of
 knowledge there is is knowledge of
 particulars. A logical positivist will
 argue this to the death and say, well,
 because your thing that is common to all
 makes no difference. It's true. In a
 mathematical equation, you cancel out, as
 irrelevant, terms that are equivalent on
 both sides of the equation. You remove
 them as redundant. But, you know, these
 things aren't redundant. While it's as
 perfectly true that a statement about
 the ground of being is, from the
 standpoint of formal logic, quite
 meaningless, it makes an enormous
 difference to the way a person actually
 feels and behaves, whether he's aware of
 the ground of being or not. The ground of
 being isn't a logical proposition. It
 enters into human life as an extremely
 vivid experience. And the difference
 between a person who sees that and a
 person who doesn't is quite startling.
 They behave differently. It may not be
 the way you want them to behave, but it's
 sure different. And so it's like being in
 love. It's quite unreasonable to be in
 love. But when you're in love, you're
 entirely changed and you behave
 differently, even though you may be crazy.
 So certain crazy things like being in
 love or like being aware of the ground
 of being are immense factors in human
 life, even though from the standpoint of
 academic philosophy and the kind of a
 scientist, scientific, I won't say
 scientific, I want to say scientismic,
 kind of phony science. They don't, they
 shouldn't be matters of scholarly
 attention. Nevertheless, they're
 tremendously important. So within this
 enormous so-called volume, and, but we
 are persuaded all along and all through
 life we begin to build up this precious
 identity which is our part in the game.
 It's like you're playing black, I'm
 playing white, or you're diamonds, I'm
 clubs, or whatever it is, you see. And so
 we get a tremendous emotional investment
 in this identity. And it's fortunes on a
 kind of game, you know, like the old
 fashioned snakes and ladders when you
 land on a certain square and you have to
 go back and so on. All this absorbs us.
 And then finally we discover that the
 props that we've all put together to
 constitute this identity, wearing out.
 And we're not able to keep up this
 identity. And gradually we get old and
 we begin to fail. And then there's all
 this thought that, well, it's too bad,
 it's all over. Because we've got
 bamboozled into thinking that that what
 was really going on. So one of the
 greatest hoaxes in this whole thing is
 the future. I don't know why I should be
 giving a whole series of seminars on the
 future, but it's important to understand
 thoroughly the nature of hoaxes. Now, when
 I'm talking in this sort of way, don't
 take me too seriously. I, in all my
 writing and lecturing, I exaggerate.
 Because if I don't exaggerate, no one
 will listen. Because all philosophers who
 take a moderate tone of voice and say on
 the one hand this and on the other hand
 that, and after all we should realize that
 all points of view should be taken into
 consideration, one reveres them for their
 calmness and their fair-mindedness. But
 when you listen to it all, have they
 stimulated you, have they given you a new
 idea? No. Therefore, to teach in any way
 philosophy, you have to make outrageous
 statements. But with the warning to your
 listeners that you're only doing this
 for effect, to get a point across, to
 provoke thought. Because my position as a
 philosopher is not a verbal position. My
 position as a philosopher is experiential,
 not existential, experiential. That is to
 say, the experience of the ground. And I
 will take any side, weave all kinds of
 patterns, but the whole point of doing
 that is by showing you how various
 opinions cancel each other out. You can
 come to the no opinion, to the ground
 underneath and experience that, which is
 as good if not better than falling in
 love. So, but it's important then you see
 to understand that to some extent, you
 see, this is a hoax. That we believe that
 the future is what we are supposed, what
 we're responsible for and what we're
 supposed to live for. And that we say of
 a thing which we don't think is any good,
 it has no future. Now when you contrast
 that, which is absolute common sense to
 most people living in the Western world,
 it's the future we've got to work for.
 Contrast that with the Indian Hindu
 Buddhist idea of time, whereas, wherein
 which they feel that in the course of
 time, everything falls apart. And that
 therefore, there is nothing to be hoped
 from, hoped for, from the future. Now they
 would say to us, isn't that obvious to
 you? Because after all, don't you see that
 all organisms, all entities whatsoever,
 fall apart in the end? Some go fast, some
 go slow. What do you mean the future?
 Individuals all fall apart, eventually
 whole species fall apart. Something else
 comes true. But for each thing that you
 can consider as an entity, as an
 individual, as a species, its future is
 death. And then they say to us,
 furthermore, you think of time as a
 progress, as something like a stairway or
 an ascending ladder that goes on and on
 and up and up. Maybe it has bumps in it
 where it occasionally goes down, but it's
 like a graph, you know, of a successful
 business corporation, looks like this.
 See? That's how they want their graph to
 look. The Hindu says, this, you're absurd,
 the very thing you use for telling time
 is round. Don't you see, it just goes
 round. And so, look at the stars. Isn't
 everything going round? Aren't the
 galaxies going round? It is going round
 and round, it isn't going anywhere, except
 round. And we say to them, oh, you poor
 Hindus, the trouble with you is that you
 don't have any technology, you have a
 terrible economy, most of you are
 starving, you think life is just terrible,
 and therefore you have a pessimistic view
 of it. Well, that makes them laugh
 themselves silly. They have a pessimistic
 view. Well, the point is, we're not
 pessimistic, because we know that the
 whole thing is a hoax. We know who we
 really are, and you poor Westerners, you
 are bug-eyed, you rush around with
 long noses, you have deep-set eyes, and
 you go poking your noses into everything.
 You send out missionaries because you
 are so uncertain of your own opinions
 that you have to convert everyone else
 to agree with you. And you're quite mad,
 but you live for the future. And poor
 suckers. All you do, of course, by living
 for the future, is you create a great
 deal of trouble, because you think you're
 involved in a process called history. Now
 here comes another, a very important
 matter, history. I've had the most amusing
 discussions with Orientals, and they have
 really no sense of history at all. For
 them, life goes around, and one year is
 pretty much the same as the next year.
 There are rhythms of birth and death,
 there are rhythms of rulers and
 revolutions, and this and that, but they
 don't regard it as having some important
 progression in it. They have chronicles.
 At least the Chinese kept chronicles.
 But keeping chronicles is like keeping a
 diary or a daybook. It's a very different
 thing from writing history, where you're
 trying to make out some sort of sense in
 the course of events. Chroniclers just
 keep the records. And the Hindus didn't
 even bother to keep chronicles properly.
 So it's practically impossible to
 establish the date of a document from
 India, unless it was quite recent. Because
 every time they re-recited it or re-copied
 it, they'd update the names. Because the
 king in it was an archetypal king, and
 every king is an example of the archetypal
 king about whom the story is told. All
 these Hindu scriptures are like our
 fairy tales. Once upon a time. Who knows
 when? A million years ago, twenty years
 ago, it's all the same. Because the course
 of events and the rhythm is cyclic. So, we
 on the other hand, from Saint Augustine,
 was the real troublemaker. I don't really,
 I'm not absolutely sure that the Hebrews
 had a linear theory of time. It's
 questionable. They might have had one.
 Because they did look forward to the
 coming of the Messiah, to the day of the
 Lord, to, they had this apocalyptic idea
 that they were in such a wretched
 situation that there was going to come a
 day when the divine power would
 intervene in human events and set
 everything to right, and there'd be a
 head-knocking session called the Last
 Judgment, and everybody would be put in
 order. Well, what Saint Augustine did
 with that, you see, he rejected the
 cyclic theory of time. Not quite so much
 on account of the day of the Lord, coming
 at the end of time, but on account of the
 incarnation. He was somehow fixed on the
 idea that when Jesus was crucified, that
 was the one, full, perfect, sufficient
 sacrifice for the sins of the whole
 world. It happened once, and if time is
 cyclic, he argued, this would have to
 happen again and again and again, and
 that couldn't be. Therefore, there is
 only one time, one progression of time,
 from the creation of the world through
 its redemption by the sacrifice of the
 cross and on to the final judgment. Then
 time would cease, and we should be in
 eternity. And from this, theologians
 increasingly began to think about the
 historicity of Jesus, and to emphasize
 that it was a historical fact, and that
 history, as worked out in the Bible
 stories from the creation through the
 fall to the doings of Noah and Abraham
 and the captivity of the Israelites in
 Egypt and the giving of the law by Moses,
 all this was worked out as being the
 mighty acts of God, which revealed the
 divine pattern for the course of human
 events. And the funny thing is that
 although many, many historians living
 today are not Christians and not Jews,
 and don't believe in anything of that,
 they still think of history as a
 significant momentum towards progress,
 something that our children's children's
 children's children are going to get. We
 all suffered and lived for them, but you're
 going to inherit this goodie down the
 end of the line. Now, we really don't know
 and can't talk about progress, unless we
 know where we're going, and are making
 progress towards that desired object. But
 most people involved in what they call
 progress haven't the faintest idea where
 they're going. I have found increasingly
 that businessmen and military men are
 astoundingly impractical. They just don't
 know what they want. They think they know.
 I had a long discussion with the Air
 Force strategic people, and they asked me
 and some other philosophers, "What is your
 basis for moral behavior?" So I pulled
 their legs and said, "The basis for my
 moral behavior is pure selfishness, a
 very practical selfishness." Said, "Of
 course, I am talking like this because
 you're all hard-headed people. I'm not
 going to give you any sentimentality and
 stupid stuff about love and so on,
 because you face reality. You're a
 military man, and you have to see that
 the United States of America, as a
 collective selfishness, is properly
 looked after." Now, I said, "Of course, in my
 own personal life, when I'm selfish, I'm
 not too crude about it. I don't run
 around hitting people over the head and
 telling them, 'Gimme, gimme, gimme.' I
 pretend like I'm a public servant, that
 I'm out for their best interests and all
 that sort of thing, but that's
 camouflage." So then I said, "Now, the only
 trouble about this is that to be
 effectively selfish, you've got to answer
 two questions. The first is, 'What do you
 want?' And the second is, 'What do you mean
 by yourself?'" Well, you know, that just
 pulls the carpet out from under
 everything, because what do I want? Well,
 if I answer as this kind of a sensible
 human being, what do I want in life? The
 really important thing I have had from
 the beginning, which is that I'm an
 incarnation of the ground of being like
 everybody else. That's the most important
 thing, because you can't get rid of that.
 The next thing is, of course, I want food,
 I want friendship, companions, love, and
 general singing and dancing and so on.
 And these are more or less attainable
 material realities. But then I look at
 my very wealthy friends, who ought to be
 able to have all these things, especially
 those who are extremely active in
 business, and I realize they don't have
 them. They're the most miserable people.
 Here, you're a great executive of a very,
 very important corporation. To begin with,
 you are drowned in paper. You do nothing
 but scan paper and make decisions about
 paper all day. You may be the director of
 an oil company. You never get within
 sight of oil, except when you drive your
 car. Mostly, you're surrounded with
 statistics about oil, finances about oil,
 and you are smothered in this. And you
 have to spend almost all day in a
 wretched office building in a place like
 New York. You dress like a funeral
 director. You, uh, I've had lunch at the
 board of directors of a very important
 oil company that shall be nameless, and
 it's like eating in a college cafeteria.
 The food was just, I mean, it was good
 food. It was extremely ordinary. But you
 would expect these great millionaires to
 be having caviar and glorious fish and
 aspic and wines and beautiful waitresses
 serving them and to be lounging at
 tables like Romans? No, sir.
 Then, if you've read an article in Look
 this week by Marshall McLuhan and George
 Leonard on sex, the future of sex,
 fantastic, brings up some information
 that what they call the narrow-gauge
 specialized male, that is the sort of guy
 who gets out there and sells, you know, and
 he, um, he mustn't have any feelings
 because that would be unmanly to have
 any feelings, except he can have a kind of a
 gruff, you know. And, but so many of these
 men are like that. And it says that that
 role-playing of that kind of male gives
 you ulcers and all kinds of complaints
 and is more deadly than facing the
 bullets in Vietnam. And they all die
 before their wives because they are
 engaged in the pursuit of a completely
 fatuous goal. This fatuous goal is the
 future and it is symbolized above all by
 money. They make lots of it and have it
 much more than they can even think about
 and they have no idea what to do with it.
 Except make more, except invest it in
 bigger and bigger units of something. And
 while they are harassed about that, and
 they're wondering about the antitrust
 boys, the internal revenue, their
 competitors, and all these ghouls who are
 involved in the game, they lie awake
 nights, they can't go home and throw the
 whole thing off, they have to get
 completely boozed. That's one way out. Or
 tranquilized, which is another way out. Or
 something or other in order to take it.
 And they call themselves realists. You
 see, they're utterly unrelated to the
 physical universe. This is partly, of
 course, because of the education they've
 received. You see, if you go to an
 ordinary school, such as we've had since
 the early 19th century, you discover that
 your education is purely cerebral. You are
 prepared to be an executive, a bureaucrat,
 some kind of clerk. You know the word
 clerk is originally means clergyman,
 because the clerics were the only people
 who were clever. The word clever, clear,
 clerk, cleric, is all the same word
 originally in English. They were the
 literate people. Therefore they did all
 the bookkeeping, that kind of thing. The
 records. They got away with it, you see,
 and they convinced us that the records
 and the bookkeeping is more important
 than the actual goods being transacted.
 So that now people, you see, are much
 happier with money than with wealth. Or
 think they are. Try to persuade themselves
 that they are. They bought a lemon. So
 this guy who thinks he works for the
 future, this great captain of industry,
 condemns himself mostly to misery. There
 are a few exceptions, naturally. As I
 said, I always exaggerate everything. I
 know a few important businessmen who
 have some conception of how to enjoy
 themselves. I was amused to meet a young
 one a little while ago who had created
 one big corporation which had been
 bought up by another of the biggest
 shows going today. He was a member of the
 board of directors and he said, "Now, I'm
 35 years old. I made an awful lot of
 money and I'm going to drop out." So he
 took off for India. Well, then let's go
 and look, we've had a little look at
 business. Let's go and look at the
 military people. They don't know what
 they want either. First of all, they
 invented a weapon which was completely
 insane because it isn't a weapon. It's a
 simply a contrivance for planetary
 suicide. And our weapon is a very
 specific thing. Now, a sword is a weapon
 and notice it's pointed and sharp and
 directional because then you learn, first
 thing you have to know about using a
 sword is where to put it, where to point
 it. And so it is selective. But things
 like biological warfare, poison gas and
 nuclear bombs are not selective. And you
 don't know when they're going to blow
 back on you or which way they're going,
 what the consequences of them are. The
 only thing you can do with them is you
 can pile them up and start playing
 lighting matches in the powder magazine.
 This is a very dangerous game that
 people might play with each other. Well,
 we're both sitting in a powder magazine
 and I dare you to drop that thing. You
 know, we'll blow ourselves both up if
 you don't do what I want. Now, this isn't
 strategy, it's madness. Beyond that, they
 don't, they don't have any objective. It
 would be understandable if we were going
 to Vietnam because of all those gorgeous
 little oriental girls. We were going to
 capture the whole lot and bring them
 back here. But we're not. We are out to
 destroy something called communism. And
 nobody really can figure out what it is.
 Because if Russia is a communist
 country, all it is is one great big
 corporate business. It's one corporation
 instead of a cluster of corporations. And
 it works rather miserably. And I wouldn't
 think you need to fight it. It'll just
 fall apart because it's so boring.
 History of the thing. They were a lot worse
 when the brutal barons governed the
 country. And they are, you know, sort of
 better in a measly way, like in China.
 Things are pretty terrible ever since the
 British and their friends made a mess of
 China many years ago. And China's been an
 awful place. And things again in China are
 kind of dowdy and uniform and dull. But
 it's, so far as basic subsistence is
 concerned, it's probably better than it
 was. But my point is that we are fighting
 abstractions for abstractions. Recently,
 the Congress of the United States passed
 an act against burning the American flag.
 Stiff penalties for burning the flag. And
 those same people who passed that act
 with a great flurry of patriotic speeches
 were actively burning up the country for
 which the flag stands. They are allowing
 every kind of scoundrel-y use of the
 water, the air, the natural resources, and
 exploitation of the people until the
 whole thing is being converted into a
 smog bowl. I flew not so few days ago
 from New York right across the country
 to Los Angeles. And from New York to
 Denver, there was smog over the whole
 country, as far as I could see, from 30,000
 feet. And this is America the beautiful.
 You know, you burn up the flag, it's
 terrible. Burn up the country is quite
 okay, because these people are confused,
 completely confused, between the symbolic
 world and the real world. And so this
 historical thing, you see, which is a
 destiny in the future, always being
 pursued, is completely destructive.
 Because technology, clocks, instruments,
 measurements are fine for people who
 know how to use them, people who know
 what they want. But for people who don't
 know what they want, and who think that
 the clock is the thing, you know, that's
 what you need. I mean, the Russians are
 insane about this. The moment they move
 into a place with their army that has
 some kind of technical civilization, they
 capture all the wristwatches in sight,
 and they cover themselves with
 wristwatches like bracelets. Because
 they're time-crazy too. But those things
 are very wonderful for people, who, as I
 say, know how to use them. Because you
 can make significant plans for the
 future, if and only if, you are alive
 today and now, and know how to live now,
 and know what to do with now. But if you
 don't, you see, you never will. Because
 the only time to start living is
 immediately. Do it. I mean, you know, why
 wait around for something to happen?
 Let's live it up now, let's have a ball,
 you see. But we don't. Because we think
 that if we have it now, we won't have it
 tomorrow. But if you're always saving up
 to have it tomorrow, you'll never have it
 at all. Well, let's take an intermission.
 (kissing sounds)


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