BITE-SIZED PHILOSOPHY | CHILDHOOD
Alan Watts on the Lie We Tell Children about Agency
How Our Flawed Understanding of What a Person Is Produces a Lifetime of Frustration
Like most problems, this one isn’t new.
It’s been floating around in the ether for quite some time, whispered into journals or spoken in drunken slurred speech on the way home from the bar when the speaker knows that no one will remember their words.
We tell children that humans have agency, that we make our own choices and, therefore, are responsible for our lives. We then prevent children from making as many choices as possible, funnelling as much of their life as we can into a prescribed mold (that all evidence suggests produces despair, anxiety, dread, and meaninglessness).
The brilliant philosopher and psychoanalyst Alan Watts outlined this problem years ago in this wonderful lecture. He began by pointing out the flaws in our very understanding of what a person is; we define a person as a being, separate from the world in a certain sense, that has agency — that is, control and responsibility over its own life.
