#BookLite

I feel like anyone going through a period of deconstruction should at some point have an Alan Watts phase. 👍🏻

Hand them a copy of The Wisdom of Insecurity and let it do its thing! "For man seems to be unable to live without myth, without the belief that the routine and drudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some meaning and goal in the future. At once new myths come into being – political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness. Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them – for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark." Religions after all offer something to hold onto amid the anxiety and uncertainty and general existential bedlam of being human. And perhaps that's the more interesting question lurking under deconstruction. Once you've pulled the scaffolding down, what exactly are you supposed to build in its place! The antidote to the fear of losing yourself to a high-control or oppressive belief system isn't necessarily to become allergic to belief itself nor to treat every conviction as intellectual contraband. It might be to construct a framework of your own. Something that makes you feel alive rather than obedient courageous instead of fearful and gives you a little light in the darkness without demanding that you surrender yourself.