The Wisdom of Insecurity

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We are anxious not only because we are not living in the eternal now but because we think there is a separate I. In other words, the past and future are not something we directly perceive, but merely infer, based on the traces we have in memory. If I am afraid, my efforts to feel and act bravely are moved by the fear, for I am afraid of fear, which is simply to say that my efforts to escape from what I am are moving in a circle. Watts’ objection, however, is that we mistake this essential abstraction for our fundamental nature. No matter how much security we try to gather we will always need more, which only perpetuates our anxious cycles.

So, it was with trepidation that I started writing this review, since by trying to intellectualize Watts’ philosophy, I’m ignoring his number one credo and going to find myself hopelessly stuck in a rut.In many regards a book ahead of its time, and for that reason I can understand its long-standing adoration.

In other words: I can't throw a pebble so long as I am holding on to it- so as to maintain perfect control of its movement. You see, he had raised his own personal bar to that level of anxiety - for four was his own Happy Hour.Yet, if you look at a large amount of human activity, it does seem to fall into Watts’ diagnosis that we’re in a state of anxiety and hunger, for no discernible net benefit to happiness. His reasoning, citing the Zen approach of koans, is that the right approach is entirely unintellectual—that thinking and philosophizing about Zen ideas is entirely backwards. I used to be a Christian; I used to be an atheist; I used to be an agnostic; and then I couldn't even commit to not committing to anything.

In addition to the "simple" animals, there's something to be said for the simpler *us* that was us during our childhood.Focusing attention on current experience, rather than being subsumed in the world of thoughts, memories and future projections.

On the subject of achieving desired results in life, he says, "When each moment becomes an expectation, life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded, for it seems that here expectation must come to an end.There's a New Age-y aspect of this (which is mostly likely what put it in my hands back in the 70s; the handbook in those days was another Watts book, The Joyous Cosmology).