The Introverted Thinker Newsletter #004

A philosophical piece on why 'life is like music', a fascinating podcast series on the dark side of internet use, and much more.

May 09, 2021

Welcome back again!👋

This is the fourth edition of this newsletter, so we’ve made it to our first month. Here’s to many more.🥂

This week’s excerpt is from an article I wrote about how we should change our outlook on life to look at it like a piece of music, rather than a journey towards an end goal. It is inspired by a speech recorded in the 1950s by my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts.

Enjoy.

Why ‘Life is Like Music’ and You Need to Dance Your Way Through It🎶

Alan Watts, the psychonaut and philosopher from the 1950s, on what life is about.

What if I told you that life is like music and we are meant to play our way through it, not work?

It’s almost like we’ve created a construct that life in itself is one big journey geared towards a final purpose, through which the only way to get there is to work until your stress hospitalizes you.

According to Alan Watts, a philosopher, and explorer of consciousness, life is indeed like music, and we’ve missed the whole point of it. Alan Watts can simply be described as a lover of life and a great spiritual and philosophical teacher of the 1950s and 60s.

Born in South-East London in 1915, Watts turned down a scholarship from Oxford to study and went on to become an Episcopal Priest. He then migrated to California where he lived the rest of his years. He ditched Christianity and when asked by his students what he actually was, he settled for “spiritual entertainer.”

In recent years, Alan Watts has been going through a digital resurrection. His work was forgotten and buried under the carpet for decades, but with the emergence of Youtube and social media, this all changed. Watts thankfully recorded every single one of his lectures during the 50s and 60s, and people have been captivated by his words in the last decade specifically.

He was heavily influenced by Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen philosophy, popularising them in the West. He had a talent for explaining complex things in simple and eloquent language. He was a great orator and a true poet. Watts published 25 books, and his unique mysticism continues to influence millions of people to this day.

Music Composers Don’t Only Compose Finales🎻

Life is best understood as an analogy with music. There is no purpose for all of this, we don’t exist to reach an end. The point is to enjoy life for what it is in the moment, and most of all, be playful with it. In Alan’s words:

“The physical universe is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever, it isn't going anywhere.” — Alan Watts

Music as an action is playful. No one works the piano, they play it. Watts always seemed to reinforce this point that we need to seek joy out of playing the chords of life.

If life was geared towards a final purpose with an end goal of whatever you want it to be — maybe success or even an afterlife — that would be like having music composers who only compose finales.

What kind of world would that be? Can you imagine if all music was produced for its end purpose only, completely disregarding the beauty of the process? The truth is that a song or a composition is only beautiful and effective if there is an equal application of effort throughout.

But guess what? We are living in a way where we only focus on composing finales. We live our life more along the lines of an analogy of travel: Travel is fixed on a destination and we have geared ourselves up to journey towards the end goal.

Music is different from travel, and we should live according to the analogy of music.

The Main Problem Is the Schooling System📚

Alan Watts had a perfect answer as to why we live in a manner that is focused on a final purpose, his answer was the schooling system. For a quarter of our lives, we are chucked into this system that prepares us for an end goal; to get a job in the real world.

From the age of 3/4, we are chucked into Kindergarten with this “come on kitty kitty kitty” attitude as Alan Watts explains. The idea that life is a journey with a destination is drilled into us for nearly 25 years.

We start in Kindergarten, then the big moment comes when we enter elementary school, then there's the big and scary high school. Before we know it we’ve graduated and we find ourselves moving through the college system, where the intensity is higher than ever and the gears only keep revving up.

Then there is grad school, and finally, after close to twenty years, we’ve only just started the true journey. We have earned the privilege of getting to join the real world and getting a real job. Pfft, what a privilege!?

Don’t you see the problem here? It’s all a big long journey for nothing. Do we do all of this just so we can go on to sell insurance to people over the phone whilst we chase numbers to make a certain quota? When you look at it like this it seems absurd that we are all partaking in this system, in one way or another.

We are so focused on moving through this journey that we never just stop to play the music, to hear and feel the beauty of it all.

The Giant Misconception of Life🔮

“The human being sometimes becomes an organism for self-frustration.” — Alan Watts

Alan Watts stands by his one basic metaphysical assumption: That existence is musical in nature. It is not serious in the slightest.

We haven't yet seemed to realize that we have cheated ourselves all through life. Why are we working towards retirement? The whole concept of retirement, where one day at 65 years old, you can take all that money you slaved away for, and finally be ‘free’, is a flawed concept.

You will be impotent, with a lack of energy, and a lot of the time your loved ones will place you into a ‘senior citizens community’ to rot away. Yes, I know, I’ve just said that in the bleakest way possible, because it's true.

Our greatest misconception was thinking of life as a journey, with the special reward of freedom at the end. I’ll leave you with Alan's words, for I don’t think anyone can ever explain it as well as him:

“We missed the point the whole way along. It [life] was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played.” — Alan Watts

An Amazing Podcast Series:

I don’t know about you, but over the last few months/ year, I’ve pretty much been listening to the same podcasts over and over again, very rarely venturing out my few selected favorites. This week I decided to explore more in terms of listening. There is such a wide array of podcasts available to us that we don’t even realize. Here is an awesome one I came across.

‘Rabbit Hole’ by The New York Times

Rabbit Hole is a six-episode podcast series with episodes ranging from 25-40 minutes. It is produced by the same people that made the infamous documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’ that shocked everyone to the dark workings of the addictive internet.

I’ve only listened to the first two episodes so far, but wow is this some interesting and deep stuff.

The first episode covers an interview with a young white American male, who claims he has been radicalized by the internet and youtube in particular. The man who has been radicalized claims his extremist far-right beliefs were formed by toxic content on youtube.

This series is called Rabbit Hole because it follows the trajectory of the man’s Youtube watch history dating back close to a decade. They follow his history and see how his views shape and slowly become radicalized by the way the content he watches changes over the years.

The interviewers of this series link this search of the man’s youtube history with investigating the problem of the Youtube recommendation algorithm. As I learned more about the Youtube recommendation algorithm, I got quite freaked out.

How many times have you found yourself on Youtube for extreme amounts of time just because you keep clicking on recommended videos, over and over again. I’ve been in this position too many times.

In the first two episodes, they interview Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-google employee who worked on creating this terrifyingly addictive algorithm. He goes over everything from how it works, to how it is pulling people deeper and deeper into these radical loopholes that are based on conspiracy theories, and how damaging this is to the world of political extremism.

Overall, this series is crazily fascinating and insightful, it will leave you gobsmacked and quite creeped out at the bleakness of Internet rabbit holes. I wholeheartedly recommend you to give it a listen. I’ll probably write a review of it in next week’s edition once I finish it.

A Book I Read:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Over the last two months, I’ve strictly been reading fiction books. To be honest with you, I’m sick of non-fiction, I find it rare for a NF book to make me become glued to the pages as fiction does. So this week I read another fiction book, historical fiction to be precise.

This book is extremely famous, but if you haven’t heard about it, it’s set in WW2 and is about a young girl who gets adopted after her communist parents are taken into concentration camps, and she goes around stealing books that the Nazis are trying to burn.

Did I like this book? No, not really. It lacked wow-factor. Maybe I’m only saying this because I’m comparing it to the book I read last, which is established as my favorite ever novel. Either way, this book didn’t do it for me, I didn’t like the writing style with its short and snappy chapters.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see why millions of people adore this book, but it’s just not for me. The plot is great and heartbreaking, but it feels more like a book written for 14-year olds than one for adults.

Anyway, next week I have an AMAZING book to review for you guys, so make sure you stay tuned.

The Thinker of the Week

Every week, I include a key historical thinker who has impacted the world through their thoughts and actions. They can vary from philosophers, artists, designers, psychologists, sociologists, writers, eastern meditators, and political theorists.

Matsuo Bashō: 1644-1694🇯🇵

What do you think of when I say the word ‘poetry’? Maybe to you it’s just a pretty bunch of words put together in an eloquent way. You see, the Western world varies from the East in terms of thinking about poetry.

In Zen Buddhist tradition, poetry is considered to be good for the ‘soul’. It is believed to make us more sensitive to the world around us, and wiser of course.

Matsuo Bashō is a 17th-century Buddhist monk and poet. Bashō believed poetry to be a medium that can help us become more calm and wise, ideas central to Zen Buddhist philosophy.

Matsuo Bashō, born in the Iga province of Japan, was a child servant of a local nobleman named Tōdō Yoshitada. This man taught him to write ‘haiku’ poetry.

A haiku is made up of three parts: two images formed by two lines, and a final line that juxtaposes them (contrasts the two opposites). The most famous haiku in Japan is called ‘Old Pond’ and it is by Bashō.

Old pond…
A frog leaps in
Water’s sound.

Bashō’s simple poetry is extremely famous because he had an enchanting way with his words. He wished for his poetry to help his readers reach the two Zen states of mind: wabi and sabi. Wabi means satisfaction with the simplicity of the world around us. Sabi focuses on the contentment of solitude.

Bashō demonstrated these mental states through writing mostly about nature. In this poem below, Bashō focuses on an appreciation of the natural world.

First cherry
budding
by peach blossoms.

Another one of my favorites of his is this one, about little surprises whilst hiking in nature.

Violets -
how precious on
a mountain path.

Bashō sincerely hoped that his poetry would help the reader feel as though they were merging with the natural world, even if for a single second. Bashō’s poetry is important not because of language that will blow you away, but because of the reminder it give us to derive pleasure from the simplicity around us.

There we have it, the first month of the newsletter completed.✅ I had such a fun time writing this week’s one in particular. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you found any of this interesting, please share it on Twitter or tell a few friends about it, I’d be so grateful! Also, leave me a comment if you want to discuss anything.

The Introverted Thinker