The Wisdom of Insecurity

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I also don't like Watt's point of view depicting labor in general as something negative that everyone of us dreads. Work and employment aren't necessarily but can be fulfilling and meaningful, giving your life purpose. I think it is just wrong to overgeneralize in this context. What Watts describes is more or less a so-called burnout syndrome, and although not uncommon and to be taken seriously, it is not the rule. Watts also describes it as something negative when he talks about the case of someone who still looks to find some job when already being retired because he wants to work. But it is common knowledge nowadays that employment (either paid or unpaid) is important psychologically as it makes us a part of a social network and makes us feel needed and useful. That is why many times unemployed or retired individuals fall into depression. If there is a moment to be enjoyed, it must be a present moment. However, if we are continuously living in an imagined, abstracted future (or past) moment, then when those moments actually come, we will miss them if we are living again in another imagined moment. Although there's scant mention (though some) of Eastern philosophic thought (chiefly Hindu and Buddhist), it's clear that Watts has been there and that it informs his thinking. The first things to heave-ho are the hardest to let go: namely the past and the future. Think of how much rides on those two things. And yet, each is the source of untold unhappiness, desire, frustration. The first, is that the tools don’t work. Despite all the false profundity of the writing, they hinge on an incorrect premise. The nature of reality and human existence doesn’t fit with this picture, or if it does, there is nothing we can do about it.

There is no experiencer, only experience. Building on the abstraction of time, the abstraction of the self is also only present as an extrapolation into your memories of the past. Something appears to be consistent amongst all my memories, so that must be “me”! There is no Law of Attraction, incompatible with physics. No miracles, prophecies or scriptural revelation. In contrast even to the epistemic optimism of science, Watts’ is actually the skeptic, avoiding presuming the existence of things that cannot be perceived directly. It's funny..., I showed this book to one of my brilliant high school students and he took a look at it and called it a self-help book for people who aren't strong enough to think for themselves and read Nietzsche. (Sounds exactly like something I would have said when I was his age, how far have I fallen...) The reason answering these questions is so hard is that both finding the answers and accepting them leads to a lot of pain. Even if you know you’d like to be a painter, going for it is hard. You won’t conform to other peoples’ expectations of you any more, you might not make a lot of money, maybe you can never even make a full-time living.

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But, as a matter of fact, you cannot compare this present experience with a past experience. You can only compare it with a memory of the past, which is a part of the present experience. When you see clearly that memory is a form of present experience, it will be obvious that trying to separate yourself from this experience is as impossible as trying to make your teeth bite themselves. Anywho, I wasn't sure whether or not i wanted to give this four or five stars...and I couldn't help it, not only does Alan do a great job explaining some nuggets of Zen Buddhism to the masses but this book has a funny way of giving some practical application to the whole "letting go" phenomenon that psychologists, twelve-step people and religious enthusiasts alike seem to rave on about. The third explanation is that the ideas do work, and they can be employed readily, but we don’t want to use them. That is, our evolutionary psychological design which was undermining our happiness earlier, is now undermining our attempts to rid the problems of happiness. That, despite our protests, what we are really motivated to act on isn’t happiness maximization, but a blind, Sisyphean quest for greater evolutionary fitness. But, Is It True?

Once again, Watts does not deny the usefulness of the idea of the self. That I’m a consistent entity across time is very practical for maintaining friendships, finding work or getting a bank loan. Watts’ objection, however, is that we mistake this essential abstraction for our fundamental nature. But…those things cost money. Ugh! But maybe if you put your head down, work hard and impress your boss, you’ll get the promotion next time, and then you can buy even nicer clothes, eat even fancier dinners and go to even more expensive clubs! In the meantime, why not just get some credit to pay for all this stuff?You can tell from the audio quality that the recordings are old, sometimes take place in classrooms, yet don’t feel like a lecture. So what’s that about? The irony is that many of us have little patience or use for the present moment unless we are experiencing pleasure. The trouble with pleasure is it cannot exist without pain. And so, we are in a constant retreat from and avoidance of pain. Human beings in general, but particularly in our modern age, live in a near-constant state of dissatisfaction and anxiety. Alternatively yearning or fearing things which are not here. I have been taught by the very liberal community in which I have grown up to be skeptical of anything written by a white man in the 1950s and, in general, I think this skepticism is probably warranted. I can imagine the criticism that might develop from reading a book of philosophy that is so secondhand; why not go straight to the source? But we've already covered that I've been feeling pretty shot and my brain is no longer working as well as it once did. I needed the digest version. And if there is anything objectionable (not that I detect anything, but like I said, my brain is shot), some kind of slant or bias in the writing, it doesn't matter much to me, because I've got the ideas and concepts that I need. At the end of the day, the source for these kinds of things doesn't matter much; it's just getting the ideas and running with them.