Alan Watts Blues

Today is the seventh of July, 2011.
Last night I got to a point where I was pretty miserable and feeling sorry for myself, and thought “I’m going to call in sick today.” I even pecked out a message on my blackberry from the dark side of the moon:
“I feel the need to tell you that today would have been Anita’s and my 27th wedding anniversary. Sick doesn’t even begin to describe the way I feel.”
Today would have been our anniversary. But its not, because the truth is we’re not even married any more. We both took the oath: “’til death do us part.” Even then, far in the back of my mind, I kind of knew or feared this day would come, who knew when?
But the idea of a thing and the thing itself are not the same. And I won’t lie to you, this is a tough one. I really loved that woman. What hurts even more is that I know she really loved me right back. And sometimes when she looked at me a certain way, I knew what it was to be a man. No matter what anyone says, no matter whatever happens going forward, that love is gone from the world. The world and I are both diminished as a result.
In any case, I never sent that message. I went in to work after all. I figured, what the hell? I already feel miserable, what difference does it make? I had a thing to do, and I went in after that.
To my surprise, I did get some work done. And seeing people and engaging your mind is good.
When I got home, I went through the familiar routine. It’s so damned hot, I’ve been keeping the dogs in, so I let them out, throw the ball a few times, get the mail, change, take a dip in the pool, check the flowers and the tomatoes, have a beer. I went and bought some fresh flowers for Anita. Red roses. And I took some time and set them up and talked to her. She scolded me for feeling sorry for myself.
I turn on this computer, a really nice tablet I bought her a few years ago. It’s a pretty decent little thing, but it just crapped out one day. I did some research and learned that the cooling design was insufficient for the video controller, and so sometimes, it would boot just fine, but you couldn’t see anything because the video was kaput. It was frustrating, and so the thing just sat there for months. I wound up building her another computer that she loved, and used a lot.
But then she was gone, and I looked at this sad little laptop, and one day I turned it on, just for the hell of it, and what do you know, it worked! And it has worked fine ever since. Go figure. So I have put it to use in the kitchen as kind of a media player, and it works great. Usually, we’re using it to look up recipes or kick out the jams while we cook, it being in the kitchen and all.
But today I took it out by the pool and listened to a series of lectures this guy named Alan Watts gave back in the sixties.
So there’s a lot to say about this dude’s wacky ideas, but for some reason they gave me some consolation today.
There’s no question he was a smart motherfucker, with a memory like a steel trap, and he had this sort of patrician accent, and kind of a snarky sense of humor. He was one of those people where everything makes sense as long as they’re talking, but afterward, you’re like “what did he say?” He was also kind of a kook, and a charlatan, it was San Francisco in the late ’60s, you know. And sometimes he was just plain wrong. But from time to time he was capable of putting out these really big ideas, that were so profound and useful, that you just have to admire someone who can put thoughts together like that.
The big ideas from today’s lectures begin with the observation that our perception of reality is informed by conceptual systems that are so embedded in our thought processes that they’re beyond question. And our language itself enforces that limitation, and our logic is a function of our ability to formulate thought in terms of language, and we’re wrapped up so completely in these systems of reasoning and thought and communication that we can’t understand things as they really are because we can’t get outside them far enough even to formulate the necessary concepts.
We might be tempted to call them myth systems or religious systems or symbol systems, but our words themselves carry connotations of various sorts that are intrinsically limiting. There’s a lot more to say on that topic that will have to wait for another day.
None of these ideas are actually unique or purely original, and as he would say, “how could they be?” There’s the Whorfian hypothesis in linguistics, and elements from Frazer’s Golden Bough, and Jung‘s psychological theories of symbolism and archetype. And there’s a parallel thread of equally jarring ideas from physics that have forced us to look at reality in dramatically new ways, from relativity and quantum theory to the implications of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. These researches represent mankind’s best attempts to comprehend and explain the nature of reality within the limits of our ability to observe and understand.
He was pretty far out there. Oh, he’s totally capable of being full of crap, but he did have a way of looking at the obvious in new ways, of connecting up ideas from vastly different eras and fields of study, and seeing the bigger picture. And every now and then he can drop a pretty heavy thought bomb on you.
So for example, there’s these two major conflicting mythologies at work in western thought, and both of them are problematic in different ways. He calls them the “myth of the ceramic construct” and the “myth of the automatic construct”.
I can’t really do him justice, you just have to listen to him, but briefly, the “ceramic construct” involves this worldview of an external creator, a supreme being, who in traditional Judeo-Christian and Islamic thought is conceived of as a king, or maybe a judge, and humanity is subservient to Him, and the universe is subject to His will. He made the world and everything in it, including us, in exactly the same way as a potter working in clay. He is a technician, a craftsman, and we are artifacts of His work.
This worldview is not altogether without merit, because first of all, we don’t know shit. So at least to start with, approaching the universe with humility and even caution does make a kind of sense. This is why they say “fear of the Lord is the seat of all wisdom.” But secondly, and perhaps more to the point, this perspective infuses life with meaning, and we and our individual choices are important in a cosmic sense, because the Creator loves us and cares about us. Our Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is rich and beautiful, and works at many levels, and has something useful for all of us. We might see that if we could put aside our bickering over trivialities long enough to realize it.
Too often, people get hung up on the literal interpretation of the figurative, poetic language so often used by the ancients, mistaking the figure for the reference. The deepest wisdom can be wrapped in a story we might tell our children, and each understands according to his or her capacity. There is an outer meaning, and an inner meaning, and maybe additional layers of meaning to these poetical metaphors we find in the words of the prophets, and all are true, in their own way. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” How hard can it be?
There’s a lot more to say there, not all of which matters, and there’s altogether too much nonsense and money grubbing and power mongering masquerading as religion to make sense of any of it.
But it doesn’t matter beause beginning with the natural philosophy of the enlightenment, the business of what we today call “science”, is solely the ability to predict physical phenomena. And for this purpose at least God turns out to be irrelevant. I mean you can go ahead and believe in God if you want, but when it comes to predicting how the universe will behave, or discovering what governs how we human beings behave, it will make no difference whether you do or not. So you might as well just ignore Him as you go about your business.
And that worldview ultimately led to this concept of the automatic universe, operating on rational laws, perhaps laid down by a supreme being, and perhaps not. We need simply to discern those laws, those patterns of cause and effect, through careful, objective observation and we will succeed in unlocking the mysteries of the universe. This approach has been very productive, and has been the source of much good in the world. And perhaps it is kind of like growing up to learn that after all we aren’t the center of the universe, either literally or figuratively. Perhaps we are nothing more than mere specks crawling around on some insignificant rock spinning at the far reaches of a galaxy, among who knows how many others? And the company of galaxies itself is embedded in something beyond our ability even to conceive.
Similarly human behavior is governed by laws and primitive impulses of which we are only dimly aware, derived through evolution for survival purposes, and the whole thing is conceived of as a vast machine, of which we are a not particularly significant part.
This automatic worldview has some predictive capacity, up to a point. But it is just as flawed as the ceramic worldview, for at least two reasons. First, the predictive capacity of the automatic model is very limited. Nonlinear phenomena all around us, from ocean currents to gene regulation to stock markets are essentially unpredictable. Its not a matter of having faster computers or taking better measurements. Unpredictability is an intrinsic property of the phenomenon.
Second, if you really grasp the nature of scientific inquiry, you understand that basically all progress is made through a methodology called “hypothesis and refutation.” A scientist proposes a potential explanation for a phenomenon and tries to prove that it is false. If he or she fails, other scientists try until they succeed or get bored trying. That’s it.
The point is that nothing is ever really proven. A hypothesis is either consistent with all known observations or it is not. Until refuted, one hypothesis is as valid as any other. Any of these theories from relativity to evolution, could be refuted any day by a single contrary observation. They are simply the best explanations of all known observations we have so far. Which is saying a lot, really. That is why Karl Popper argues that hypotheses that are not falsifiable are outside the realm of scientific inquiry.
The scientific method is unquestionably a very powerful tool for eliminating nonsense. But be very careful of those who do not perceive its limits.
So, for example, if you really challenge them, even modern physicists will admit they have no clue what the universe is telling them. As just one of many examples, there’s this idea in physics that is most clearly pertinent to quantum mechanics, called the “observer effect.” That is, the observer is necessarily a part of any experiment, and can’t help but have an impact on the event. In fact, our best current theory holds that the universe manifests all possible states in superposition until observed, whereupon the superposition collapses into a physical event. It’s like when you’re not looking the tables and chairs get up and dance around until you turn your head, quick, and everything’s exactly where it was. Or is it?
How does the universe “know” whether an observer is taking a measurement or not? Somehow, it behaves as if it does. Look it up, it will blow your mind. Thus Richard Feynman’s famous quote: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t.”
You might say, well, we merely need to develop better models and look ever more closely into high energy collisions, or into deep space, or we need to be smarter, or whatever. But if you do, you’re hoisted on your own petard, because that is nothing more than faith, my friend, merely of a different stripe.
There are other objections to the automatic worldview, but what all this adds up to, is that it is probably safe to say that we really have no clue. And so this idea that the automatic worldview actually explains anything that matters is just false. “Maybe someday” just doesn’t cut it, especially when if you look at the history of science, the “hope” of determinism has been relentlessly shrinking from Laplace to Heisenberg, to forget about it. If anything, the more we know, the less we understand.
The automatic worldview is self-flattering for a certain kind of person, and not without political and economic implications. For example, replacing the monarchical associations used in traditional religious imagery and language with a more democratic or market-driven model. The church as throne room, the priest as intermediary between subject and ruler, become first court and jury, and then ultimately both are replaced by the lab as temple and scientist as priest, interpreting the universe for the uninitiated and those of lesser understanding. Or if you prefer, the community of scientists and the marketplace of ideas become the arbiters of truth. Of wisdom we seldom even speak anymore.
And at the socioeconomic plane, if we can get rid of this unnecessary concept of God, isn’t it liberating, in that since nothing really matters, I can do whatever the hell I want? There’s no absolute right or wrong, everything is relative, and subject to negotiation. And during the enlightenment, then up through the colonial and industrial eras, this turned out to be a very convenient way to approach the world. To the extent I am able, I am going to take what I want, and exploit everyone and everything I come across, and use it up for my own wealth and pleasure, and devil take the hindmost.
And for those of us who wake up in a world where unstoppable greed is an unquestioned virtue, where the wealthy and powerful don’t even pretend to have any sense of noblesse oblige, where we are all isolated and alienated from one another, and sometimes it feels like we’re all slaves to this big machine we’ve built, where the whales and the primeval forests are almost gone, and we are experiencing extinctions on a massive scale, in a constant state of anxiety that life as we know it could literally come to an end at any moment, thanks to our wonderful science. At times like this, the implicit cost of the automatic worldview ought to be apparent to anyone.
This idea that the world is nothing but “unintelligent force playing around, and not even enjoying itself,” that nothing exists unless we can measure it, that nothing has any value unless we can put a dollar sign on it, is itself a myth put forward by people who had some advantage to gain by promulgating this view. They may claim, and even really think they’re being tough, and hard-headed, and practical, but in the end it is no better than the “ceramic” worldview, and in some ways, it is definitely worse.
Deep down, we know that can’t be right either.
And the funny thing is that even people who claim to believe in the creator, really behave as if they believe in the automatic theory. It’s what Martin Luther King called a kind of “practical atheism.” Like my friend David once said, “I belong to the church of ‘Let’s Change the Subject'”. God bless him. At least he’s being genuine.
Much worse are those who’ll go to mosque on Friday or temple on Saturday or church on Sunday and recite the words and act all holy, and then turn around and use you and screw you or even blow you up the first chance they get. I mean if you really believed in that stuff, is that how you’d behave?
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But the point of all of this is that what we think of as basic common sense about the nature of the world that is influencing people despite what they say, what almost everyone believes without even really thinking about it, or even having a name for it — this idea of the “automatic” universe is simply a myth. If the literal interpretation of God as a physical manifestation is a myth, or a children’s story, so is this other one. Its just as false and has just as little to do with the actual state of reality, and is just as irrelevant and unsupported by rational inquiry as the myth of the creator.
The truth is that if there are such things as intelligence and love and beauty, then you found them in other people. They exist in human beings. And if such things are in us, then they are a function of the scheme of things. We are part of the universe, we are not separate from it. We are clearly made of stuff, even if we don’t understand how and why and of what kind. Everything about us, our consciousness, our identity and sense of self, our values, our imagination and our spirit, literally our breath itself — all this very complex experience, sensation and behavior — are all aspects of reality, and as such are as valid and as real and as inexorable as gravity. The universe itself is conscious. How do I know? Because we are.
This perception of ourselves as what is inside our skin, as finite in time and in space, as separate from what is outside of it, is a false separation.
We are all parts of the larger system. We are all leaves on a great tree. And so, for example, things that disturb us like questions of life and death can be understood in terms of a higher level of abstraction. Like all pairs of opposites, life and death are both parts of a larger whole. There is day and night, but the sun is always shining.
We interdepend. We and our environment and each other all lock together. This is not just some feel good wishful thinking, but is supported by our best current scientific understanding. Not only is this observation supported by studies in fields such as ecology, biology, psychology, politics, economics and sociology, but down to the most fundamental levels of quantum physics, the observer is always a component in any observation. That which you call the external world is as much a part of you as what you think of as yourself, and what is inside your skin, what is behind your eyeballs is just as much a part of it. Reality itself depends on you.
Like a whirlpool in water has a definite form, though no water stays put in it, we recognize ourselves and one another as definite forms. We identify ourselves as separate entities, that come into being from nowhere, and return from whence we came, but the universe is flowing right through us all the time.
Like whitecaps up on the waves, we are connected to it. It is us, we are it.
We see ourselves as aliens, alienated, separated from one another and the world, but the fact is that we are the eternal universe, each one of us, in constant flux, and constant motion, universal and timeless.
We need to see this, not because it will make us feel better — although it will — we need to become aware of this because it is the truth.