alanbwt on Nostr: “The question ‘Why should one act?’ has meaning only so long as motivation ...

“The question ‘Why should one act?’ has meaning only so long as motivation seems necessary to action. But if action or process rather than inert substance is what constitutes the world, it is absurd to seek an external reason for action. There is really no alternative to action, and this is not to say that we must act, since this would imply the reality of the inert, substantial ‘we’ reluctantly activated from outside. The point is that, motivated or not, we are action. But when action is felt to be motivated, it expresses the hungering emptiness of the ego, the inertness of entity rather than the liveliness of act. When, however, man is not pursuing something outside himself, he is action expressing its own fullness, whether weeping for sorrow or jumping for joy.”

— Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman