Why It’s Impossible to Know if a Situation Is Good or Bad Without Seeing How It Will Affect the Future

In another brilliantly illustrated episode of After Skool, British philosopher Alan Watts, who previously posited that life should not be considered a journey because the end is not the primary goal and that happiness is always more valuable when it is sought, explained through a wonderful parable how difficult it is to determine if a situation is good or bad at the time, as it’s impossible to know how and/or what this situation will affect in the future.

…Maybe the whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad because you never know what will be the consequences of the misfortune or you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.