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Beautiful Error
Alan Watts; @MoStFeAr
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We never know how circumstances are going to change
And how our need
For different kinds of people changes
At one time, we may need very individualistic and aggressive people
At another time, we may need very cooperative, teamworking people
At another time, we may need people who are full of interest in dexterous manipulation of the external world
At another time, we may need people who explore into their own psychology and are introspective
There is no knowing
But the more varieties, and more skills we have obviously the better
So you see here again the problem comes out in genetics
We do not really know how to interfere with the way the world is
The way the world actually is, is an enormously complex, interrelated organism
The same problem arises in medicine because the body is a very complex, interrelated organism
And if you look at the body in a superficial way, you may see there something wrong with it, hence chicken pox
And those spots that itch and come about all over the place
Well, you might say "Spots are there, cut them off!"
So you kill the bug
Well then you find you've got real problems
Because you have to introduce some bugs to kill the bug
It's like bringing rabbits into Australia
Now that starts going all over the place and getting out of hand
But then you think, "But now wait a minute, it wasn't the bugs in the blood, there are bugs all over the place. What was wrong with this person, that his blood system suddenly became vulnerable to those particular bugs? His resistance wasn't up! Therefore, what you should've given him was not an antibiotic, but vitamins!"
Ok so we're going to build up his resistance, but resistance to what?
You may build up resistance to this and this and this class of bugs, but then there is another one that loves that situation and comes right in
You see we always look at the human being, medically, in bits and pieces
Because we have heart specialists, lung specialists, bone specialists, nerve specialists, and so on
And they each see the human being from their point of view
There are a few generalists, but they realize the human body is so complicated that no one mind can understand it
And furthermore, supposing we do succeed in healing all these people of their diseases
What do we then do about the population problem?
Meaning we stopped cholera, the black bubonic plague, we're getting the better of tuberculosis, we may fix cancer and heart disease
Then what will people die of?
Well then they'll just go on living
There will be enormous quantities of us
And then we have to fix this birthing
Pills for everyone
Then we find, "What are the side effects of those pills? What are the psychological effects upon men and women who are not breeding children in the usual way?"
We don't know
And what seems a good thing today or yesterday
Like DDT
Turns out tomorrow to have been a disaster!
What seemed in the moral and spiritual sphere too like great virtues!
In times past
Are easily seen today as
Hideous evils
Lets take for example the Inquisition
In its own day, among Catholics, the Holy Inquisition was regarded as we today regard the practice of psychiatry
You, you see, you feel that in curing a person of cancer, almost anything is justified
The most complex operations, the most weird surgery
People suspended for days and days on tubes
With X-Ray penetration
Burning
Or people undergoing shock treatment
People locked in the colorless, monotonous corridors of mental institutions
In all good faith, they knew that witchcraft and heracy, were terrible things
Awful plagues
Imperilling people's souls forever and ever
So any means were justified to cure people of heracy
We don't change
We're doing the same thing today
But under different names
We can look back at those people and see how evil that was
But we can't see that in ourselves
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