From the way gulls scramble

“From the way gulls scramble and jostle each other for bits of bread, you would imagine that a single gull would be most happy to eat alone. But if you throw a crust to a lonely gull, it calls in a way that brings every other gull within hearing to the spot. Perhaps it doesn’t know how to calculate, or just doesn’t know how to restrain its squawks of delight. Maybe it isn’t really an individual, but simply the subordinate organ of a gull-group something like a communist.”

– Alan Watts, Does It Matter? (1970)

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The so-called physical world

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the mysterious ‘it’