“The world is a marvelous system of wiggles,” says Alan Watts in a series of lectures I keep on my iPod at all times. He means that the world, as it really exists, does not comprise all the lines, angles, and hard edges that our various systems of words, symbols, and numbers do. Were I to distill a single overarching argument from all I’ve read and heard of the body of work Watts produced on Zen Buddhist thought, I would do so as follows: humanity has made astounding progress by creating and reading “maps” of reality out of language, numbers, and images, but we run an ever more dangerous risk of mistaking these maps for the land. In this 1971 National Educational Television program, A Conversation With Myself (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4), Watts claims that our comparatively simple minds and the simple technologies they’ve produced have proven desperately inadequate to handle reality’s actual complexity. But what to do about it?
Using an aesthetic now rarely seen on television, A Conversation With Myself captures, in only two unbroken shots, an informal “lecture” delivered by Watts straight to the viewer. Speaking first amid the abundant greenery surrounding his Mount Tamalpais cabin and then over a cup of ceremonial Japanese green tea (“good on a cold day”), he explains why he thinks we have thus far failed to comprehend the world and our interference with it. In part, we’ve failed because our “one-track” minds operating in this “multi-track” world insist on calling it interference at all, not realizing that the boundaries between us, one another, our technology, and nature don’t actually exist. They’re only artifacts of the methods we’ve used to look at the world, just like the distortions you get when digitizing a piece of analog sight or sound. Like early digitization systems, the crude tools we’ve been thinking with have, in Watts’ view, forced all of reality’s “wiggles” into unhelpful “lines and rows.” He sums up the problem with a memorable dash of Buddha-by-way-of-Britain wit: “You’re trying to straighten out a wiggly world, and now you’re really in trouble.”
(If you’d like a side of irony, ponder for a moment the implications of absorbing all this not only through human language, but through technology like iPods and Google Video!)
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Alan Watts Introduces America to Meditation & Eastern Philosophy (1960)
Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Well, sure, but mysticism doesn’t offer any better grasp of reality, only a different kind of delusion.
We cannot do more than being wary about our opinions and keep in mind the Box and Draper quote:
“All models are wrong, but some are useful”.
If he really wants to return to nature, he should go into the woods with david attenborough and not just remain in this artificially cleared fields.
It’s fascinating that Watts’ message from 40+ years ago has powerful implications for what’s happening today. His use of the term “biosphere” and observation that by grasping for “progress” we are making a worse mess of things.
It’s worrisome that Watts believes there is little we can do about it, as long as we remain driven by ego [and associated belief].
I am reminded of what an architect from a sustainable community in India said to me: “The only solution is a change in human consciousness.”
The grief, suffering and tragedy that is increasing [and seems more than likely to accelerate] may bring about a massive major perturbation in human consciousness, with the evolutionary possibilities….
Thanks to OPENCULTURE for making this video available!
I have begun to dwell increasingly in the comfortable space behind my thoughts.
Profoundly Simple.
Some models are useful… We can assimilate half truths trough language, and technology but to digest and grow with these ideas requires just an open, and aware mind.
You might want to find a copy of “Alan Watts The Future of Communications” and read/listen to what he has to say about the open society.
I have always found his talks wise and fascinating. Recently I read that he died an unhappy alcoholic, and now I don’t know what to make of the whole situation.
Watts is being polite when saying “we’re simple-minded”. Humans are greedy, vicious and reckless. Not all, but 1% is leading the way for the rest of dimwits. Misanthropic comment? – yes indeed. People are a disease and they don’t even care.
I find this man really shallow with everything that comes out of his simple brain. He rejects human abstraction and prefers the aesthetic form of nature yet the simpleton doesn’t realise that the very forest he was standing and wiggling about in was recreated by man. His choice of words and linked sentences are concocted for him to express a point of view which is counter to the human experience at this moment in time. The very dense language that he uses to express his opinions would not have existed had we still been part of the forest/nature, not that we are not part of it now anyway. Innately we are stuck with our conciousness and our ego. Nothing we can do will change that. As a specie we are both extremely creative and destructive. We are both the God and the Devil of this planet. In our schizophrenia we have managed so far to create some sort of a ‘balance’in our competition with our environment. All living things compete on this planet. Where all that will leads us we have yet to experience. We live only in today. Tomorrow? That’s the future.