The Hoax Alan Watts

In music, though, one doesn't make the end of the composition the point of the composition.

If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest; and there would be composers who only wrote finales.

People go to concerts only to hear one crashing chord - because that's the end.

Same way in dancing—you don't aim at a particular spot in the room; that's where you should arrive.

The whole point of the dancing is the dance.

Now, but we don't see that as something brought by our education into our everyday conduct.

We've got a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression.

It's all graded—and what we do is we put the child into the corridor of this grade system, with a kind of "c'mon kitty kitty kitty...".

And yeah, you go to kindergarten, and that's a great thing, because when you finish that, you'll get into first grade.

And then come on, first grade leads to second grade, and so on...

And then you get out of grade school you go to high school—and it's revving up, the thing is coming...

Then you're going to go to college, and by jove then you get into graduate school, and when you're through with graduate school, you'll go out to join the world.

And then you get into some racket where you're selling insurance. And they've got that quota to make. And you're going to make that.

And all the time, this thing is coming, it's coming, it's coming—that great thing, the success you're working for.

Then when you wake up one day about forty years old, you say "My God! I've arrived! I'm there!"

And you don't feel very different from what you always felt.

And there's a slight letdown, because you feel there's a hoax.

And there was a hoax.

A dreadful hoax.