watt's reading responses

Watts' thesis concerns the taboo of religion. Watt believes that by claiming yourself to one religion you become close minded to other religions. (pg. 10) He also believes that people so passionately dedicate themselves to one religion & seek converts in order to solidify beliefs that are questionable in the first place. It seems as though Watts does not have much faith in man's ability in faith. He questions their dedication and their faith itself.
Watts believes that we must conquer nature because we have a feeling of hostility toward it. We fail to realize that we were created by it and therefore feel that we must be superior to it. We fail to "cooperate with them in a harmonious order" (Watts 8).
Watts defines "new experience" as "a new feeling of what it is to be 'I'" (Watts 11). Watts believes that we are all stuck in the same mindset and to break free of that we do not need a new religion to convert to but a "new experience" in order to find what it truly means to "be 'i'".
Watts believes myth to have two seperate definitions and yet uses them to help him when children ask him metaphysical questions.
To find one's true identity Watts believes that eventually, after the "game" goes on long enough" we "wake up, stop pretending, and find that we are all one single self" (Watts 14). He believes that eventually we come to have a profound realization of sorts, we eventually stop "playing the game of hide & seek", or rather God stops playing the game.
Watts' beliefs are similiar to that of Orwell in the novel 1984 in that he believes that it is unusal that someone may realize that the norm or usual way of doing things is "odd, & uncanny and highly improbable" (Watts 6). This describes Winston. It was highly irregular and unusual that he would think that the norm, what he is told to be true, is in actuality wrong or "odd".
I believe Watts to be a very interesting and insightful man, but few obvious connections to George Orwell and 1984.