Here's another installment in my sharing of notes I'm taking as I listen to audio recordings of Alan Watts that Sam Harris has put on his Waking Up app.
This talk is titled "Man and Nature." It presents the traditional Chinese view as being most in line with modern science, a view I agree with. There's a reason the classic book was called The Tao of Physics, rather than, say the Jesus of Physics or the Brahman of Physics.
Chinese philosophy is thoroughly naturalistic, leaving aside offshoots that are religious/supernatural. This helps explain why I'm enjoying the talks by Watts so much, since I find Taoism (or Daoism) to be my favorite spiritual approach, along with non-religious Buddhism, especially Zen.
Enjoy.
Man and Nature
Experience leads us to feel that we're isolated centers of will and action placed in a world that is not us. Science tells us something different. An ecologist would say that what you do is what the whole universe is doing here and now, like a wave being the result of the ocean.
The real you isn't a puppet that gets pushed around. We've been hoodwinked into believing that you only exist in your own skin. Our real body is that, plus the whole external environment.
Don't view things that way, and we despoil the environment. We try to vanquish the world. We need a new consciousness that the real self is more than the conscious ego.
This unknown self is more Us than I, connected to everything that is. Knowing that, you see that you never die, instead appearing in various forms.
What is nature? Not something artificial. There's an idea that nature is outside us. There is human nature, but you can't trust it.
(1) The Western theory is that nature is a machine, an artifact. It is made by God, like a table made out of wood. A construct, and someone knows how it was put together -- the architect, God. Later, the view changed to no God, but nature was still seen as a mechanism. Most of us look at our bodies as a chauffeur looks at a car.
(2) The East Indian theory is that nature is a drama. Maya/illusion, art, play. In Hinduism ultimate reality is an eternal boundless self. The universe doesn't tell you that self is vibrations of the universe. Brahman plays hide and seek eternally. Self pretends it is lost. Kali Yuga is an age of darkness we're supposedly living in now.
(3) The Chinese theory is that nature is of itself, so, marked by spontaneity. Automatic, but not machinery -- rather, biology. The heart beats by itself. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, grass grows by itself. Tao is the course of nature. Words can't describe it.
There's a great difference between Tao as nature with no boss, and the Judeo-Christian view of God as Lord of Nature. With original sin, you can't trust human nature. The Chinese would say, if you can't trust yourself, you can't trust anything. Can you mistrust yourself if you don't trust yourself?
If you can't trust yourself, you're totally mixed up. You have no leg to stand on. In this respect Taoist and Confucian philosophy are in agreement.
Confucius taught that the highest virtue is human-heartedness. Virtue doesn't mean morality. Above all, trust human nature in full realization that it is both good and bad. A "good" war is based on human greed for treasure, women, whatever. A "bad" war is based on ideologies.
If you're going to do something evil, do it for a plain simple selfish motive. Don't do it in the name of God. Because if you do, it turns you into a monster who is no longer human, but self-righteous.
Humans are complex. We don't know ourselves at all, really. You're much more than your conscious thoughts.
Western mechanical theory. Indian drama theory. Chinese organic theory. Nature, including human nature, is a system of organic anarchy. So the Chinese come closest to getting it right.
When you look at clouds, you know at once they aren't a mess. Patterns of foam on water never make an artistic mistake. We humans are all wiggly. Is there something wrong with how the stars are arranged? Should they be organized in a regular pattern? Do you praise peaks in a mountain range for being high, or the valleys for being low?
When people visit a place called Inspiration Point, they say, ah, just like a picture. Someone goes to see Picasso and says, your paintings don't look like anything. Picasso asks, do you have a photo of your girlfriend? He takes one out of his wallet. Picasso says, is she really so small as that?
Natural order is like order in trees and mountains. They are orderly, but we can't put our finger on the order. Order of nature is thus in a way indefinable. Nature is a self-ordering principle that doesn't know how it does it.
Government always is a mess. Government always is opposed to people. Taoists say the state should be as unobtrusive as possible. Simply help the people and don't claim any merit for yourself.
So here is a conception of nature as something we must trust. But nature isn't completely trustworthy. Sometimes it lets you down with a wallop.
It's a great thing if you can learn what the Chinese call purposelessness. Like waves washing against the shore with no meaning. Haven't you gone on a walk with no purpose in mind? All music is purposeless. Same with dancing. Do you dance to arrive at a particular spot on the floor?
Same with us. There's no "God's purpose."
Here's the choice. Are you going to trust it, or not? That "it" is you and nature and everything around you. Now, there will be mistakes. But if you don't trust it at all, you're going to strangle yourself. You'll surround yourself with laws and rules and police and guards.
Who will look after the guards? No go. To live, I must entrust myself to the totally unknown. I must trust nature that doesn't have a boss.
" ... A "good" war is based on human greed for treasure, women, whatever. A "bad" war is based on ideologies. ... If you're going to do something evil, do it for a plain simple selfish motive. ..."
What?!!
I hate to be 'that guy', the one who of late is seemingly opening his mouth only in order to disagree and to present an opposing viewpoint, but to support this kind of thinking is ...very questionable.
Sure, to indulge in violence and oppression, whether at a personal level, or at a larger level (a war for instance), for abstract non-immediate ideological reasons, that is not a good thing, and it's good to keep that mind. But the opposite of that is not to suggest that violence perpetrated for organic immediate reasons is a good thing, or that it is somehow good to commit evil for some "plain simple selfish motive". That's turning every decent impulse in us on its head.
Pardon me for suggesting this, but perhaps you're getting carried away with your admiration for all things Daoist? It's good to eschew violence in the name of ideology, sure; but it is ridiculous to suggest that violence perpetrated for direct immediate selfish reasons is somehow good. Both are terrible, and both make us less than human. (And yes, it is indeed possible to be "human", as opposed to a brute, in a positive sense ---- just as it is possible to be human in a very negative sense as well. In our quest to eliminate the latter, it would be shortsighted to throw away our capacity for the former.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 19, 2022 at 05:41 AM
The order of nature?
Every creature in nature survives by eating something else in nature, including other creatures. The law of tooth and claw reigns supreme. This has been known for 5000 years, hence the rise of religion as necessary for civilization to survive beyond mere thuggery.
But if one really trusts a concept of a beneficent order of the universe, and that government "is always opposed to people" (wow), prove it by moving to a high crime neighborhood and leaving your door unlocked. If you live in a toney all-white neighborhood that employs law enforcement (ie, government workers who pledged to take a bullet for you), where is your faith in a friendly universe shorn of troublesome laws?
Posted by: TENDZIN | January 19, 2022 at 10:03 AM
Appreciative Reader, Tendzin, and others commenting on my Watts posts, here's some things to keep in mind:
-- I don't agree with everything Watts says. Heck, I don't agree with everything I say. What I do agree with is what I say in my introductions to my Watts posts, his general view of reality and human nature.
-- Watts doesn't claim to be a sage. He's just an informed commentator on a range of philosophical subjects, with a special interest in Chinese philosophy, Taoism, Zen.
-- Watts speaks spontaneously. He isn't talking from a prepared speech. He doesn't use notes. He says what's on his mind. He rambles. He jokes. He doesn't want to be taken all that seriously.
-- So, sure, it is possible to take a sentence or two from my notes of what Watts says and criticize it to death. That's possible to do with just about anyone, including yourselves. What's more important, in my view, is to understand his overall viewpoint, in Watts's words the wide floodlight of his message, rather than the narrow spotlight on a particular something he said.
-- You seem to view Watts as if he's a guru, assuming that if someone like me likes Watts, we have to agree with everything he says. This shows you don't understand Watts or his message. He's playful, like the Chinese Chuang Tzu and the possibly nonexistent Lao Tzu. Watts wants everybody to think for themselves. He says "trust yourself" not him.
-- So picking apart his words is fine, if that's what someone wants to do. But this simply reflects a central message of Watts. That a bit by bit linear approach to understanding something often is less productive than grasping that thing as a whole. Or at least the reductive approach needs to be balanced by a broad intuitive approach.
If you don't understand the broad viewpoint of Watts, his seemingly ridiculous utterances aren't going to be understood either, because you aren't able to see the mental forest within which the thought trees exist and grow.
Posted by: Brian Hines | January 19, 2022 at 10:40 AM
"... I don't agree with everything Watts says....
...Watts doesn't claim to be a sage. He's just an informed commentator ...
...You seem to view Watts as if he's a guru, assuming that if someone like me likes Watts, we have to agree with everything he says...."
.
Sure, OK, I take your point. You're presenting to us Watts's message, without necessarily endorsing everything he thinks and says, and even agreeing with some of the criticism we're leveling here; even as his larger message resonates with you. That's fair enough, and thanks for relaying his message to us, warts and all. Some of us --- me certainly ---- haven't read him directly, and may never had had the occasion to hear his POV had you not taken the effort here, so that's cool, and thanks.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | January 19, 2022 at 10:50 AM
Right, well, maybe I'm just a philistine and don't understand the wonder that is Alan Watts' playful message to the world. But whether or not Watts called himself a guru, he certainly posed as one -- as a person who was effectively a Zen Master, in control of himself, and competent to guide other people by word and example.
He failed as a husband, marrying three times, and driving his third wife to the bottle with his philandering – he would pick up a different college girl after most talks (‘I don’t like to sleep alone’). He failed as a father to his seven children: ‘By all the standards of this society, I have been a terrible father’, although some of his children still remember him fondly as a kind man, a weaver of magic, who initiated each of his children into LSD on their 18th birthday. He was vain and boastful, ‘immoderately infatuated with the sound of my own voice."
By the end of his life, he was having to do several talks a week to make enough money to pay his alimony and child support. And he was drinking a bottle of vodka a day to be able to do that. Watts drinking led to the DTs, which takes some doing. He died, exhausted and toxic from alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, at 58.
I point this out not to moralize, as I'm familiar with Watt's demons. I'm also familiar with the pitfalls of cultic religious belief, and I can understand the value of a Taoist approach. The only Taoist I knew was a guy from Canada who'd been sober for 62 years (longest I've ever heard of) and subscribed to a Taoist approach to life. He was an impressive person, and resembled Yoda in both body and personality. But he was different from Watts in that, though Taoist, he was able to integrate his Taoist outlook into his actual life. Gurus who talk with certainty about mastering life but live starkly otherwise are simply hedonists, and their hedonism is proof that their philosophy was, at best, unbalanced and unsound.
Posted by: TENDZIN | January 19, 2022 at 07:24 PM
@ Tendzin [ Gurus who talk with certainty about mastering life but live starkly otherwise are simply hedonists, and their hedonism is proof that their philosophy was, at best, unbalanced and unsound. ]
Kids nod in agreement on hearing adults say "Do as I say! [not as I do]".
Posted by: Dungeness | January 19, 2022 at 08:14 PM
In this controversial quote, Watts was giving an example of the inflexibly of a righteous person as not being human (natural), The full part of his talk (below) on Man and Nature was an example of such self righteousness: -
"Now, Confucius once said that goody-goodies are the thieves of virtue. Virtue, in Chinese, is de. We romanize it as De. And it means ‘virtue’ not in the sense of moral propriety, but ‘virtue’ in the sense of magic, as when we speak of the healing virtues of a certain plant. A man of true virtue is, therefore, a human-hearted man. And the meaning of this is that one should, above all, trust human nature in the full recognition that it’s both good and bad. That it’s both loving and selfish.
Now, let me give an illustration of the wisdom of this. When people fight wars, I trust them if the reason for which they fight a war is to expropriate somebody else’s possessions and women, because they will fight a merciful war. They will not destroy the possessions and the women that they want to capture. They want to enjoy them, and that’s a war based on simple, ordinary, everyday human greed. The most awful wars that are waged are the wars waged for moral principles. “You are a lousy Communist. You have a philosophy that is destructive to religion and to everything that we love, and value, and reverence. And therefore, we will exterminate you to the last man unless you surrender unconditionally.” Such wars are ruthless beyond belief. We can blow up whole cities, wipe people out, because we are “not greedy, we are righteous.” That is why the goody-goodies are the thieves of virtue. If you are going to do something evil, do it for a plain, honest, selfish motive. Don’t do it in the name of God—because if you do, it turns you into a monster who is no longer human; a sadist, a pure destroyer."
Posted by: Ron E. | January 19, 2022 at 09:00 PM
I reckon that many of us might be a Taoist. Look up "You Might Be a Taoist". I quote a few lines below: -
If you see yourself as just another part of the natural world, like a bird, or a rock, or a stream... you might be a Taoist.
If you're content with the fact that you're not a supernatural being, that when you die the chemical reaction sustaining your life ends and your atoms return to the universe. In fact, if you believe that you never really were separate from the universe so there is no returning to do... you might be a Taoist.
If you don't believe that there's an all-powerful, all-knowing god who listens to everyone's prayers and responds to only those he deems worthy... you might be a Taoist.
And so on.
Posted by: Ron E. | January 19, 2022 at 09:15 PM
@ Tendzin [ If you don't believe that there's an all-powerful, all-knowing god who listens to everyone's prayers and responds to only those he deems worthy... you might be a Taoist. ]
Why don a straitjacket for either belief... why not pursue
an inward path to see if truth can be revealed within. Or,
just remain agnostic while awaiting further evidence.
The alternative is to pay Taoist Club dues and always live
with a slight sliver of doubt. Lolling about in their clubs,
members wind up searching for ways to demonize any
competing notions... painting "God" as the capricious
Old Testament figure of myth for instance. Or conversely,
Taoists as alien, "godless", nature worshippers doomed
for eternity. Strawmen are so much fun to burn.
"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."
--Grocho Marx
Posted by: Dungeness | January 19, 2022 at 11:02 PM
This from Watts’s quotes above rings true.
"This unknown self is more Us than I, connected to everything that is. Knowing that, you see that you never die, instead appearing in various forms."
And this from You Might be a Taoist: -
"If you think that people should spend less time worrying about the meaning of life and more time living it... you might be a Taoist."
And from Dungeness: - “ Why don a straitjacket for either belief... why not pursue an inward path to see if truth can be revealed within.”
A valid point, but how does one know who has and who has not.
Posted by: Ron E. | January 20, 2022 at 03:18 AM
@ Ron E. [ "Why don a straitjacket for either belief... why not pursue an inward path to see if truth can be revealed within.”
A valid point, but how does one know who has and who has not. ]
Call it woo, but in my opinion, if you ache for truth deeply enough,
intuition helps suss it out and you know.
Posted by: Dungeness | January 20, 2022 at 12:39 PM