Forum Post: Do you recognize yourself in this description? (Alan Watts on Nonconformists)

http://youtu.be/vhCi_wp6GUw

They live a lot along here and they are mostly not working class people, they are people who dropped out of college, because they saw that it was stupid. And they're that sort of people, we would call them perhaps beatnicks. The city doesn't like them because they don't have lawns and they aren't using lawnmowers. They don't use appliances, they don't need them. They wear blue jeans and so the local dress shops feel put out. They live very simple. Well, you musn't do that. You must live in a complicated way. You must have the sort of car that identifies you as a person of substance and status and all that...There's always a very inconsiderable minority of this "non-joiners" or people who check out of the game. But insecure societies are the most intolerant of those who are non-joiners. they are so unsure of the validity of their game rules, that they say "everyone must play!" Everybody's responsible in a republic. You may try to avoid it and say oh let the senators take care of it an the president, but theoretically everyone's responsible. Now that's terrifying...It's in your hands and you say "what are we gonna do? well i think this way and he thinks that way etc." and thereby we become more and more conformism because people get scared. Herd together, compounded with industrial society, mass production, etc, they all wear the same clothes, and they're sensible clothes, and we get duller and drabber, with the exception of the Californian revolution. The reason is that democracy as we have tried it, started out on the wrong foot. Equality is a mystical utterance. From the standpoint of God, all people are divine, and are playing their true functions. And that is something that is true on a certain plane of consciousness, but come down the step and try to apply the mystical insight to everyday affairs and you get a parody, the idea that all people are equally inferior. That's why police are rude and you must wait in lines. Everybody is a crook, everyone is equally inferior, and that becomes the parody of democracy. This quickly becomes fascism because of the terror of outsiders. Now a free and easy society loves outsiders. It's a little bad for the outsider's integrity. The outsider becomes a holy man. People make him salons, give him food, they really take care of the outsider. Because they know that man is doing for us what we haven't got the guts to do. That outsider who lives up there in the mountain is at the highest peak of human evolution. His consciousness is one with the divine. And great just that there is someone like that around! It makes you feel a little better. He has realized, he knows what it's all about. And so we need a number of those people. Even though they don't join our game, they tell us, you see, "what you're doing is only a game. It's ok, I'm not gonna condemn you, but it is only a game and we up on that mountain top are watching you, we love you, we have compassion for you, but excuse please, we aren't going to join." And that gives the community strength because it tells the government, in no uncertain terms that there is something more than government.