The Wisdom of Insecurity

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According to Watts there is no method to solve the problem of happiness, “The question ‘What shall we do about it?’ is only asked by those who do not understand the problem.” This suggests that not only is there no method for achieving resolution, but wanting to achieve a resolution is a symptom of the initial problem!

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 do not believe, as he contends, that most Christians view the stories in the Bible as being merely metaphors for the process of insight he describes in his book. Many practicing Christians genuinely do believe in an actual future heaven and hell, as opposed to being an analogy for enlightenment and the vicious circles we engage in on this earth. Here is a person who knows that in two weeks’ time he has to undergo a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to eat; he is surrounded by friends and human affection; he is doing work that is normally of great interest to him. But his power to enjoy these things is taken away by constant dread. He is insensitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied with something that is not yet here. It is not as if he were thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should have the operation or not, or making plans to take care of his family and his affairs if he should die. These decisions have already been made. Rather, he is thinking about the operation in an entirely futile way, which both ruins his present enjoyment of life and contributes nothing to the solution of any problem. But he cannot help himself.” [emphasis added] The problem, Watts says, is that "Our lives are one long effort to resist the unknown, the real present in which we live, which is the unknown in the midst of coming into being. Living thus, we never really learn to live with it." That idea is that each of us should strive to have "an undivided mind." This means remaining in the present moment instead of worrying about the past or the future.Directly perceived reality contains no “I”. If you look for a self in the contents of your experience, you cannot find it. Instead, you can only find experience. In many regards a book ahead of its time, and for that reason I can understand its long-standing adoration. However, from my point of view as a very pragmatic person (although willing to try and open my horizons and better myself in any which way), I struggled in making a connection between Alan's overly indulgent flourishes of metaphor and any practical application. To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening. If, instead, one stops trying to separate from these experiences, they tend to dissolve on their own quite readily. Again, reading other parts, I got the impression of listening to a patronizing elderly privileged white man from the 1950s who had been growing up in, and been influenced by the views of, the first half of the last century. To that point I had just started reading unbiased without having informed myself about the author or the book's publication date prior to reading but I was not surprised after finding out that my impression was just right.

Happiness, he argues, isn’t a matter of improving our experience, or even merely confronting it, but remaining present with it in the fullest possible sense: Knjižica mi je baš legla, jer se Vots ne bazira na isključivo logičkim argumentima (ima par falinki, nije da ih nema, ali koga briga), nego igra na foru intuicije. Pa ko ti je kriv kad ti je intuicija zbog života u kapitalizmu na nivou krave opaučene maljem koja ide u klanicu na pokretnoj traci. It's almost too simple to be acceptable as an answer. You know, that we're living *in* the answer. We just don't know it or know how to realign our priorities to appreciate it. It's not the way we're trained, really. We are too much wed to goals or to promises. It’s easier to fill one’s mind with mindless entertainment, worrying about what the latest celebrity is doing or wearing, than to be left alone to face troubling existential questions such as: Why am I here? Who am I? Speaking of the individual who craves distraction, Watts wrote: Because if you live in a recurring state of High Anxiety quite often (remember the HILARIOUS Mel Brooks movie?) you may not like it - but, on the other side of it, to more sophisticated readers of 2021, it may seem trite:

Is There a Solution to the Happiness Problem?

This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the 'ability' to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable.” But the beginning of Anxiety is REALLY in the Birth of the Intuition of Being. Our littleness in a big world. That’s where it all starts, when, as Watts says, we glimpse the ultimate peace of Being.