How To Ditch A Corporate Career – Stanley Betts Interviews David Edwards

Stanley Betts is a talented, 23-year-old video editor and filmmaker. His video, ‘Why Pascal Was Right – Benefits of Being Alone’, has been viewed 1.3 million times on YouTube. Stan began podcasting with a refreshingly honest interview with his dad, the playwright Torben Betts. The theme of the interview was ‘My Dad’s Advice For Surviving Your 20s’. A plan was mooted for Stan to interview me (DE) on related themes. In the event, the questions quickly became focused on how I had become interested in meditation and how I ditched my corporate career in my twenties.

Below, is an extract, edited for clarity, followed by a link to the podcast. In a second podcast, we will chat about Media Lens and my forthcoming book, ‘A Short Book About Ego… and the Remedy of Meditation’ (Mantra Books, June 2025).

Fleshy Robot Has A Rethink

Stanley Betts (SB): ‘And, what was the point where you came across meditation, and you came across its value? Was it in your twenties’?

David Edwards (DE): ‘Yes, it was in the 1980s, in my twenties. I started reading about Taoism, the ‘Tao Te Ching’, books by Alan Watts, who I know you’re a huge fan of.’

SB: ‘Like, how did you even get to the point where you’d be reading the ‘Tao Te Ching’? Did you just stumble across it in a bookshop, or did some friend give it you?’

DE: ‘At university, I read Jean-Jacques Rousseau… His argument was that if you’re in tune with nature, living in a natural way, there is a goodness and a bliss which you can’t find in our sort of society. And if you read his book, ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’, it’s a guide to mindfulness. He said the whole problem with modern men and women is that we’re never in the moment. We’re stuck in what he called ‘prévoyance’ – we’re looking forward, we’re totally focused on a time that may never come. We’re never actually here. And when I read that – his association of happiness with nature and a natural rhythm of life – it really rang true for me from my own experience. Although I didn’t really understand my experience at that point, it just made sense. I felt there was something there.

‘And then, actually, when I was living in Sweden, I visited a second-hand bookshop and found ‘Nature Man and Woman’ by Alan Watts, and he talked about Zen. Even the first paragraph of the book was very much about falling in tune with the natural world. And so, I just sensed that there was something real there. And once I read that, that was it – I was on my way, you know. And I didn’t understand Zen at all. I didn’t have a clue what Watts was talking about, but I sensed there was something there. And I just stubbornly pursued all of that as much as I could and have continued ever since.’

SB: ‘And when you discovered this, was this the same time you were working at that corporate job? Was this the job when you were, like, at a helpline?’

DE: ‘Yes. I worked in tele sales for an American company selling computer accessories in White City, London. I traveled every day an hour and a quarter on the Tube to get there and an hour and a quarter back. And there were 10-15 of us in an office, answering calls ordering accessories, which would then be delivered the same day. It was like an early version of Amazon, you know, rapid delivery.’

SB: ‘Okay.’

DE: ‘We had red lights and blue lights flashing on the ceiling. If the phones rang more than five times, the blue light would flash. If they rang for longer than ten times, the red light would flash, and people from accounts and sales were expected to rush in and hit the phones. So, I’m taking calls all day with this computer, inputting orders for computer accessories. It was awful. The people there were great, but it was such automatic, tedious work.

‘And I started reading, ‘The Tao Of Physics’ by Fritjof Capra. And a book that really hit me hard was Capra’s ‘The Turning Point’. Now, he wrote that in 1982, predicting a turning point that would see human civilisation move away from the madness of the fossil fuel economy to a solar economy, renewable energy. We’re still waiting for that ‘turning point’! It hasn’t come yet!

‘So, I was reading these books about Taoism and about alternative philosophies. And I was working in this computer accessories company as a sort of fleshy robot. And it was a huge conflict because they were two completely separate worlds… And people said to me, “What are you reading that stuff for?” My family said to me, “This is madness! Why are you reading about Taoism?” And there did come a point, actually… I left the tele sales job and went to work for British Telecom in the West End of London. I was managing a department of 12 people, mostly twice my age – I was 25. I had no management experience, no telecoms experience; so, I was, you know, completely out of my depth.

‘At the same time, I started reading books by Erich Fromm, who I absolutely adored. I read everything by Alan Watts, all these guys: Christmas Humphreys, Teddy Goldsmith, Jonathan Porritt. And I thought, “I’m finding my work really stressful managing all these people, and I don’t think this enthusiasm for alternative ideas is helping me because I’m kind of divided. I’m doing my job with one arm behind my back.”

‘So, there actually came a point where I literally threw my books away – the Taoism, Watts, Humphreys. I hid them away and even threw many of them away – I turned against the whole thing. But that didn’t last long because it was so bloody boring to just be involved in this business world.

‘Then what happened is the whole green thing. In 1988, James Hansen, a NASA scientist, stood up before the UN and said we’ve got a serious problem with climate change. So, then I started reading a lot about green politics and green philosophy. I started campaigning with Friends of the Earth in London. We were protesting around London dressed as energy-efficient washing machines. I’ve got the photos to prove that, by the way, and it’s hugely embarrassing! Everybody thought you were completely mad. I mean, people think you’re mad campaigning about climate change now – imagine in 1989!

‘The whole thing really came to a head when I read Joseph Campbell’s book, ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces.’ Campbell said, if you put something dead at the heart of your life, you will experience life as a deadness. So, for example, if, as I had done, you put money at the heart of your life, you will experience a deadness in your life. And the further you go into that deadness, you’ll experience more deadness. You think you’re going to get through the tough times, the stress, to find happiness, but you just get more deadness, with added responsibility and stress.

‘You have to put something that’s alive at the heart of your life. And what might that be? Campbell said, “follow your bliss”, which sounds a bit twee. But he said, find the thing that doesn’t just give you pleasure but gives you such fulfilment, such delight, that you’re happy to do it for ten years, for nothing, without any reward.

‘You’re willing to devote ten years of your life, or whatever it takes, to do this, and your reward is doing the thing in itself; you’re not concerned about the results. You’re certainly not concerned about money. You’re not thinking about fame, status – you’re doing it because you love to do it. Well, I loved to write stories. I loved to write observations, philosophical thoughts. I’d done that a lot even at university. I love to write, and I love to read about mysticism, about following your bliss.

‘And I was in this management consultancy as a marketing manager in a company outside London, and one day I had an argument with the chairman, who said: “David, if you don’t know that, you shouldn’t even be sitting there!” And I thought, “Jesus Christ!” You know, it was hugely insulting, humiliating.

‘So, it was a lovely sunny, Friday afternoon, July 12^th, 1991. I was 29. I dropped off a resignation letter and walked home. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. And I just thought, “Okay, I’m going to write.” In fact, I told a friend, “I’m going to be a writer!” He said, “No, no, no! Either you’re a writer or you’re not a writer. You’re not going to become a writer, live as a writer! Be a writer! Don’t try to become one, you’ll never get there.” It was fantastic advice. I think I had £3,000 in the bank, and I spent the next ten years just writing hundreds of pages of stories and articles, reading everything. Joseph Campbell recommended that we read the people we love and then read the people they loved. So, then you widen your interest and go deeper and deeper into it.

‘And, actually, for ten years before I started Media Lens with David Cromwell, I just wrote and had no money in the bank, taught English maybe three hours a day. When I had enough money, I would go on the dole and continue writing there – when more students came along, I’d do a bit more teaching. It went on like that for about ten years. And it was fantastic because to go from stressful corporate jobs – where I’m managing people and there’s just so much pressure – to teaching Thai kids of, say, fifteen-years-old for three hours a day, and then going home and reading anything I wanted, writing anything I wanted, was just heaven. It was heaven, and I never missed the money.

‘You have to make something that you love the heart and centre of your life. This is what I was talking about before – you can’t make somebody else the centre of your life; you’ve got to find the centre of your life in yourself and follow it and follow it, and don’t give a thought to results. I know people hate it when I say it – I did a media alert on this – I got this wonderful backlash from journalists saying that I was a complete arsehole. I love it! It’s one of my favourite articles. They said, “You absolute plonker!” because I had tweeted you’ve got to just write what you love and give it away for free and don’t give a thought to making money. They said, “You’re just encouraging people to be exploited.” I think they thought I was some editor out to exploit young talent or something; they got the wrong end of the stick.

‘But if you just do what you love and aren’t goal-oriented, that’s how you find your bliss, and that’s how you make your life feel alive. And that feeling of aliveness is worth so much – it’s worth so much more than having a load of money, or a big car, or whatever, or a big house. But that, for me anyway, that to me is the right way to go.

SB: ‘Yeah. My dad’s philosophy is to bring down your outgoings, to live as simply as possible, so you can have more time to do what you want. Because the more – you know, the higher the rents – the more responsibilities, then you kind of get stuck in the nine-to-five.’

DE: ‘Thoreau used to make baskets and sell them for money, and he said: “Instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.” I think that’s brilliant. That’s what I did. I tried to live really simply; lived in a small room in Bournemouth, you know. Of course, that becomes immensely complicated if you get involved in a relationship. God knows what it’s like for your dad; it’s a hugely complex thing. But when you’re on your own, it’s a lot easier.

SB: ‘And, you know, with your colleagues, did you sense in your colleagues the same dissatisfaction, with them wanting to leave? Were they hating their work as well? And do you even know if some of them are still in that job or in similar jobs?’

DE: ‘I don’t know. I think everybody always complains about their work, don’t they? Everybody complains about everything, but I don’t think they felt the urge to escape the way I did. I mean, all the time I was living in London – I lived in London for five years; I was in my twenties; amazing social life, lots of friends, going out. It’s strange looking back, actually, because, you know, it looks like a fun life from the outside – but I was just desperate to escape from this work problem. I just didn’t understand that if I had somebody telling me what to do every day and I had to be in a certain office from nine-to-six for two hundred days a year, and to just have four weeks holiday… It felt like a dreadful way to live. I couldn’t accept it.

‘But I don’t think a lot of people had that urge to escape. I think their plan was to work their way through to achieve freedom. I think that’s probably what people do. And so, they dreamed of promotion, of having more money, moving to a nice house outside London, and maybe moving to a more comfortable job at a higher level. But, yes, I know people who, amazingly – I told you about that computer accessories company – a friend of mine has been doing that kind of work ever since, for the last forty years, which is mind-blowing to me. And my managers, I know that they’re still doing that kind of work. And life goes very quickly. I mean, from 0 to 30-years-old seems to last for an eternity, but 30 to 60 goes really fast. And if you blow those thirty years on work that you’re not enjoying… I mean, you know, I can feel, myself, at 63, that regret is a powerful force as you get older. It’s very easy to look back and think, “Oh my god! What have I done with those 30 years?” So, people need to be very careful about that. I mean, you don’t want to be there at 60 and think, “Wow, thirty years have been wasted!”

SB: ‘Yeah. I do occasionally have that kind of “deathbed anxiety”. I’m just, like, lying on my deathbed thinking, “Why did I do this? Why didn’t I do that?” And my problem is I’m always, like, second guessing decisions I make, which is not great because, you know, you’ve just got to make a decision and run with it. For example, I’m going to be moving to a flat, moving from my house. So, it’s a really big change. And I’m moving in with a friend, who’s been my friend all my life. But, you know, it’s a big decision. Choosing the city, choosing who to be in this flat with, sharing this flat with… So, yeah, I’m just kind of going with it, you know, like you quitting your job and writing. I’m interested to know: how did you know what your bliss was? Like, writing? Did you learn that over time, or was there a moment of inspiration where you’re just like, “Oh my god, this is me! This is what I want to do.”?’

DE: ‘I’ve got huge reservations about Ernest Hemingway – the way he killed animals, just shot birds for sport. But if you read his story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” – I think it was the favourite story of his that he wrote – I absolutely love that story. It’s very short, really simple, but you can feel that he’s feeling bliss when you read it. You can feel it. It’s like a meditation – he’s there. He’s totally at peace with what he’s writing, and it’s blissful.

‘And it was clear to me, early on, when I was writing my little stories, you know, my first attempts at observations and stories that I went into – especially with fiction, actually – you go very much into your feelings. If you’re doing it from the head, it doesn’t work. But if you’re going into your feelings and accessing some really strong emotions – of love, sadness, regret, nostalgia, or whatever it is – if you’re in your feelings, there’s a kind of a resonance that you can feel. And if you stay in it, you can transmit that to the printed page. If you’re communicating from the head, you can affect people at the head level. But if you’re writing from the heart, you can touch people at the heart level. And to me, that’s blissful. I mean, I could feel that that was a beautiful, meditative thing to do.

‘And that’s actually true also of political writing. Sometimes I’m writing from my head, and it’s just got nothing; it’s got no life to it. It’s mechanical, boring. If I’m feeling it, you know, if I’m writing from some passion or compassion – for example about the suffering of Gaza at the moment. I wrote an article recently about a little child who was dying of starvation – and if you write from the heart about that, even though you’re adding lots of facts and figures, it’s still a meditative thing, and you can feel that. I can feel the bliss and love as I’m writing. And, you know, I think, if you get it right, then people can feel that when they read it.

‘So, for me, there’s a double thing going on: one, you feel the bliss when you’re writing. But then, if you’re writing something that’s helpful… and, really, everything I’ve written has been about something that’s helped me in some way. You know, if I’ve read Joseph Campbell on “follow your bliss”, do what you love, that’s helped me so enormously. That’s blissful. But then, if I’m writing about that in a way that’s true to how I feel and it helps other people, then that’s wonderful as well. So, everything I’ve written – for example, my first book, “Free to be Human” – just the whole point of that book was to say to people who had been through what I’d been through in my twenties: “If you feel despair, understand that it’s based on a version of reality that’s been manufactured for you by interests that do not have your best interests at heart.” So, I was saying: “The despair you feel is based on a version of the world that is not real, not true.” And the whole point of that was just to say: “You’ve doubted everything else – now doubt your despair!”

‘But that’s how I felt when I read Noam Chomsky, Joseph Campbell, all of these guys… Howard Zinn, Edward Herman. I realized that, “Yes, you know, this version of the world that we think is reality, which seems to be a cul de sac – the idea that life is desperate, terrible – it’s actually based on a completely fake, manufactured version of reality.”

‘So, that’s what I’ve always tried to do: if it’s helped me, and I know very clearly that it’s helped me, there’s part of me that automatically thinks, “Right, how can I help people with that? Can I write that down in a way that helps people?” If I can, great! I mean, it’s just wonderful for me to try and pass that on. So, it could be any lesson I’ve learned myself, but often it’s stuff I’ve read from great thinkers and mystics. And so, for me, that’s just such a blissful thing – to write about these things that I love, that I find interesting, that I think can be helpful.’

DE and SB

You can watch the entire podcast here.

David Edwards is co-editor of medialens.org and author of the forthcoming, ‘A Short Book About Ego… and the Remedy of Meditation’, Mantra Books, 24 June 2025, available here. He is also the author of the forthcoming dystopian, Chomskyan, mystical, science fiction thriller, ‘The Man With No Face’, to be published by Roundfire Books in 2026. Email: davidmedialens@gmail.com