Watts Reading Response

Watt's thesis is the philosophy that what is"common knowledge" for humans are changing and are entirely too abstract to result in a clear-cut answer that applies to everyone, if an answer at all. Watt views religion established in societies today are kept extremely private, but for no good reason. He says that the Bible's message and the messages in most religions are hidden beneath too many abstract stories and complex puzzles, that the message becomes unimportant. Watt holds the idea that God is hiding inside everyone. He believes that a devotion to faith only restricts a person's mind and makes them close-minded. Religions are filled with followers who try to be the best and mightier than all the rest. He suggests that instead of a religion, people discover the feeling to be "you".
Watt believes that by attempting to conquer nature humans ignore the relationship the environment has to everything. By conquering and disturbing this interdependence, it disturbs the basis of one's self. "...will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends" (p.9 1st paragraph).
Watt defines this new experience as finding one's self. "we need a new experience-- a new feeling of what it is to be 'I'" (p. 11, 2nd par.). He says that all humans' lives are a hoax; that people must find themselves behind their masks and egos.
Watt sees that myths are used to explain the unexplainable. He uses them to answer philosophical questions whose answers are not concrete. By using a myth, he believes things run in a full circle, just because. Watt suggests a beliefs similar to Vendanta philosophy as a tool to find one's true identity. The bodies and lifestyles humans take on today are only superficial and will not matter in the end.
In the end Watt urges people to break free and "awaken from the ego-illusion and help save the world from disaster" (p.21, 2nd par.). He suggests that the life people live in today are just hum-drum as people live life in a daze, similar to 1984. Watt urges people to rise up and discover what they cannot see now, and insists that they prove to themselves that 2 + 2 does not equal five. By doing so they will awaken to this illusion of life that they have been systematically living in for so long. Just as in 1984. Change, any at all, needs to be made.