Alan Watts on recording life overtaking experience

In many societies across the world, we find a dominant habit of record keeping as part of the daily focus. Paperwork, recording, data-capture, spreadsheets, documentation and report-writing have become a staple of many organisations across the world; whilst our education systems and business models are firmly structured around ‘capturing data’ - oftentimes valuing this data above all else.

We can see this same pattern playing out in our social lives, with a fixation on capturing and sharing our life experiences via smartphones and through social media often infiltrating our enjoyment and engagement of simply being in the moment. But what happens when the capturing of life becomes more important than the living of it?

In this week’s episode of Two Inconvenient Women, Holly Everett and I explore the different ways that our cultures are encouraging an shift away from ‘living’ and experiencing life towards a fixation on reporting on it. We explore questions such as ‘When did the record of what we’re doing become more important than what we’re doing?’ ‘What is it that we’re trying to do with our obsession with capturing and recording?’ ‘Are we starting to rely – even trust – data more than our own lived experience?’

In this episode we reference the following:

·      Photography Life – When the photographer doesn’t shoot (article)

·      Engaging Iain McGilchrist: Ascetical practice, brain lateralization, and philosophy of mind (article)

·      How do you know? Psychology Today (article)

·      Bad Data - Peter Schryvers (book)

·      The Master and his Emissary – Ian McGilchrist (book)

·      RSA animation: The Divided Brain (video)

·      Alan Watts – Be Here Now (articles & podcast series)

·      Your Three brains – Centre for Health & Wellbeing (article)

·      Ofsted – Office for Standards in Education, UK (website)

·      “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid” - Albert Einstein (image)

·      The Blanchard bone (website) 

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