A Really Swinging Human - Akira the Don, Alan Watts

Now, what I would call a really swinging human being

Is a person who lives on two levels at once

He’s able to live on the level of being his ordinary ego, his everyday

personality

And play his role in life, and to observe all the rules, and so on

That go with that

But if he is only on that level

If he’s only playing that kind of thing, and thinks that’s all there is

It becomes a drag.

He starts being the kind of person who feels that he’s just

got to go on surviving

It’s terribly important to go on surviving;

to live

And he works at that

And his children learn the same attitude from him

And he says, «Well, I’ve got to survive because I’ve got all these children I

have to support,» and so on, and so forth

And then they take the same attitude, and they breed up children,

and they feel compulsive about supporting them, because they’ve got to go on

And so nobody really has any fun

It’s just… «Ungh!

Ungh!

Ungh!

Ungh!»

You’ve got to make this thing.

You see?

And you don’t have to

See, whenever I get somebody who comes to me and says, «I really can’t go on.

I have to commit suicide,»

I say, «Well, that’s entirely your right.

There’s really no reason why you

should go on, and if you want to commit suicide, do it.»

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Of course, this reduces anxiety;

when they feel free to commit suicide they

don’t really have to commit suicide so much

(Laughter)

You know, you can commit partial suicide

(Laughter)