Watt Key Quotes

For what is religion if not a great mystery? It is nothing if not a series of clues, a key to unlocking the greatest secrets of the universe. The careful detective will spend as much time pondering the spiritual mysteries as he does on whatever singular problem has crossed his path on any given day. Guide to the Criminal and Commonplace, M. C. Wheaton

Watts said that real freedom was not freedom of choice but freedom from choice.

In that moment, we were all witness to the dark truth that no matter where you are, how safe you feel, there are sometimes bad people looking for an opportunity to do bad things. And it's not all about winning against them; it's about being brave and not losing against yourself.

Throughout history the mystics have been persecuted, and sometimes executed, for a reason. “Nothing could be more alarming to the ecclesiastical hierarchy,” the philosopher Alan Watts once observed, “than a popular outbreak of mysticism, for this might well amount to setting up a democracy in the kingdom of heaven.

When do we give up, Julie?" he said. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe you can't even if you want to.

It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over the controls of a classic arcade game. It was the sort of surreal image you'd expect to see on the cover of an old issue of Heavy Metal or Dragon magazine.

What are these substances? Medicines or drugs or sacramental foods? It is easier to say what they are not. They are not narcotics, nor intoxicants, nor energizers, nor anaesthetics, nor tranquilizers. They are, rather, biochemical keys which unlock experiences shatteringly new to most Westerners. For the last two years, staff members of the Center for Research in Personality at Harvard University have engaged in systematic experiments with these substances. Our first inquiry into the biochemical expansion of consciousness has been a study of the reactions of Americans in a supportive, comfortable naturalistic setting. We have had the opportunity of participating in over one thousand individual administrations. From our observations, from interviews and reports, from analysis of questionnaire data, and from pre- and postexperimental differences in personality test results, certain conclusions have emerged. (1) These substances do alter consciousness. There is no dispute on this score. (2) It is meaningless to talk more specifically about the “effect of the drug.” Set and setting, expectation, and atmosphere account for all specificity of reaction. There is no “drug reaction” but always setting-plus-drug. (3) In talking about potentialities it is useful to consider not just the setting-plus-drug but rather the potentialities of the human cortex to create images and experiences far beyond the narrow limitations of words and concepts. Those of us on this research project spend a good share of our working hours listening to people talk about the effect and use of consciousness-altering drugs. If we substitute the words human cortex for drug we can then agree with any statement made about the potentialities—for good or evil, for helping or hurting, for loving or fearing. Potentialities of the cortex, not of the drug. The drug is just an instrument. In analyzing and interpreting the results of our studies we looked first to the conventional models of modern psychology—psychoanalytic, behavioristic—and found these concepts quite inadequate to map the richness and breadth of expanded consciousness. To understand our findings we have finally been forced back on a language and point of view quite alien to us who are trained in the traditions of mechanistic objective psychology. We have had to return again and again to the nondualistic conceptions of Eastern philosophy, a theory of mind made more explicit and familiar in our Western world by Bergson, Aldous Huxley, and Alan Watts. In the first part of this book Mr. Watts presents with beautiful clarity this theory of consciousness, which we have seen confirmed in the accounts of our research subjects—philosophers, unlettered convicts, housewives, intellectuals, alcoholics. The leap across entangling thickets of the verbal, to identify with the totality of the experienced, is a phenomenon reported over and over by these persons.

The progressive stack is basically a measure of how much you aren’t like, say, James Watt, the developer of the modern steam engine, the key invention of the Industrial Revolution. Watt was white, male, Protestant, straight, rich, mechanically skilled, and a scientific genius, so you’d better not be.

The most important rule of scuba diving is... If you don't feel right, don't go down

These stories relieve me of the pain of belonging nowhere and give me the key to everywhere. As I once longed for a singular place, a singular ethnicity or plot of land over generations, I now long for its opposite, for a space beyond belonging. I have travelled to many places in order to scope a sense of ownership or repatriation, but as I try to square my politics with my privilege, it seems that my only true inheritance is that I am always running somewhere else.

It does appear from Kessinger’s texts and Google searches that Kessinger was pursuing him. This was a huge deal for an internally paralyzed schmuck with no game. The symbolism of the key was also a huge signal not only from Kessinger, but received loud and clear by Watts.

I need his dreams. Life isn't life without them. And if he can give me the dreams, I think I can hold the rest together.

The Device consists of a small telescreen, headset, and keypad. It combines the functions of telephone, radio, television, newspaper, and encyclopedia. Users are warned not to attempt to open the housing of the Device, or the power supply will explode. Every Device is keyed to a specific user, by means of electrodes built into the headset that recognize his unique brain-wave pattern. Signals from the Device are relayed by a network of thousands of tiny satellites in Low Earth Orbit, collectively known as the Cloud. The Device is so cheap and so useful that it soon becomes an indispensable part of daily life. It’s impossible to buy, sell, communicate, or travel without one. The Device becomes a de facto national ID card, to be carried at all times. Children are issued their own Device at the age of eight.

I wasn't ready to feel as bad as I did. I'd never felt so lonely.

A vertical movement toward market incentives is noticeable, nonetheless. As industrial capitalism arises in England in the eighteenth century, new economic structures raise the stakes for commercial ventures: tantalizing rewards lure innovators into private enterprise, and the codification of English patent laws in the early 1700s gives some reassurance that good ideas will not be stolen with impunity. Despite this new protection, most commercial innovation during this period takes a collaborative form, with many individuals and firms contributing crucial tweaks and refinements to the product. The history books like to condense these slower, evolutionary processes into eureka moments dominated by a single inventor, but most of the key technologies that powered the Industrial Revolution were instances of what scholars call “collective invention.” Textbooks casually refer to James Watt as the inventor of the steam engine, but in truth Watt was one of dozens of innovators who refined the device over the course of the eighteenth century.

APPENDIX KEY POINTS IN THE BOOK

I'd never compared myself to being dead before, but it was the only thing I could think of. The only thing worse than the situation I faced.

A Sasquatch-like creature. Those were their words, not mine. I didn't even know the word Sasquatch. Had I known the problems it would cause - just the suggestion I'd seen such a thing - I would have never opened my mouth about it.

I felt something rough brush against my leg. I yelped and jerked it away instinctively. "What?" Shane asked. Before I even lowered my head, I knew. Underneath me I saw the sleek gray body gliding below.