WE SEEM TO BE LIKE FLIES CAUGHT IN HONEY. BEcause life is sweet we do not want to give it up, and yet the more we become involved in it, the more we … - Alan Watts

We fall in love with people and possessions only to be tortured by anxiety for them.

Because of his literal understanding of the Christian myth, Western man has an attitude to death which other cultures find puzzling. The Christian way of thought has made so deep an impression upon our culture that this attitude prevails even when the intellectual assent to Christian dogma exists no more. For it is no easy matter to cast off the influence of our history, to be rid of habit of thought and emotion which has prevailed for close to two thousand years. Western man has learned a peculiarly exaggerated dread of death, because he has seen it as the event which will precipitate him for ever into either unspeakable joy or unimaginable misery. Few have dared to be quite certain as to the outcome, for though one might hope for the mercy of God, it was a very serious sin to presume upon it. The sense of uncertainty was, furthermore, part and parcel of Christian feeling for the insidious subtlety of evil, so that the more one approached sanctity, the more one was aware of diabolical motivations, and of the near impossibility of a pure intent. Many sold their souls to the Devil just because this very uncertainty seemed more insupportable than damnation itself

What governs what we choose to notice? The first (which we shall have to qualify later) is whatever seems advantageous or disadvantageous for our survival, our social status, and the security of our egos. The second, again working simultaneously with the first, is the pattern and the logic of all the notation symbols which we have learned from others, from our society and our culture. It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us (whether verbal, mathematical, or musical) have no description. This is why we borrow words from foreign languages.

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.