Wisdom Of Youth - Alan Watts

An inspirational speech from the late Alan Watts on what can be learnt from younger generations.

Footage used:
BBC Planet Earth
Kauai - The Lost World - Canon 5D Mark II
New York City Timelapse (Empty America)
Amazing Nature Footage Full HD
Alaska - Uncharted Waters - Canon 5D Mark III

Music Used
Max Ritcher - On the nature of daylight

All energies of life
have in them

a possibility of an excess,
of going too far.

When you bring up your children,
you tell your children

your various far-out ideas and
the children suddenly believe in them.

I'm horrified! Oh, my god,
what will they do next?

But everybody
feels that way

in regard to the strength of
the younger generation that is coming on.

'Cause this younger generation is
[garbled speech]

When we think about young people,
we have terrible ideas.

We think that we know what life is,
and that they have to be told

And that they will learn it from us,
and be like us.

We don't take
that attitude when

we see the new vegetables
come up in the spring.

We don't say the vegetables
have to be educated to be vegetables.

We say, 'hooray, at last,
young vegetables

with all the life and energy in them,
new meals, for everything.'

So, when we see young people
come up, we might say, 'good gracious.

Isn't this great to see the human race
is still doing its stuff?

I wonder what
they'll have to teach us.'

Because wisdom doesn't come
from above down.

It comes from below up.
That's where the wisdom is.

Surging into us.

The old people,
they have a function.

But in order to fulfill that function
they have to understand first...

that... they can learn
from the young sources.

If they understand that,
then they can be wise, and be teachers.

If they don't understand that,
they never can.

To be wise you have to-
that's the meaning of the saying

"To enter the kingdom of heaven,
you have to become again as a child."

From the child's point of view,
the things which the adult

considers irrelevant to survival
are perfectly important.

And so children collect pebbles
and colored glass

and all sorts of trivia which they
consider as precious as diamonds.

The adults say, oh pff!
Frippery.

But they really
have the secret.

Now the child,
as child...

doesn't know how to play
the adult's game - it is a power game.

And so has to be educated to learn
the values of the power game

to learn what's what
and what is important.

But when he has mastered that game
he realizes it has no rewards;

that all the things that the adults
thought that they were

gaining by their power game

are, after all, not worth having.

That's why you can be
rich and miserable.

So that having learned,
and having seen through

the adult power game,
you come back to the point of a child.