Reads • The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts

Why our constant search for security makes us anxious, and how to break free.

”[this book] maintains that this [psychological] insecurity is the result of trying to be secure, and that, contrariwise, salvation and sanity consist in the most radical recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves.”

I don’t think it’s an even slight exaggeration to say that Alan Watts was a complete genius. In The Wisdom of Insecurity, he treats the topic of our society-wide anxiety in an incredibly lucid, light-hearted, yet profound way.

”What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul.”

Myths and symbols

Our current worldview renders most myths to be fairytales at best, but we don’t seem to be able to live without them. For, traditionally, it has been the role of myths (including religion) to supply us with futures brighter than the present betrays, and “human beings appear to be happy just so long as they have a future to which they can look forward.”

But even when I learn that, on average, religious people are happier than atheists, I can’t simply use this fact to my advantage and start to believe in order to be happy. Belief only works when there is not the slightest doubt.

“The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.”

Just like in The Way of Zen, symbols are a momentous topic. He explains that even in religion, salvation comes from the death of all attachments to symbols, from resisting the attempts to fit life into the rigid form of thoughts, concepts, and words. Death of Christ, the human form of god, is simply a symbol of this truth.

”… you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. … to ‘have’ running water you must let go of it and let it run.”

Again, he reminds us that we are much too often “confusing the intelligible with the fixed.” That is, we think that to understand something, we need to be able to put it in thoughts, or even words.

But these are the measurements of reality, not the reality itself. “To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to understand.” But it is the extreme movement and fluidity of life that make life, well, life. Since language is static, it cannot offer explanations of the deepest questions and, therefore, “to want life to be ‘intelligible’ in this sense is to want it to be something other than life.”

We confuse language with life, just like we sometimes confuse science and reality, or money and wealth. The first one is a mere symbol of the second, though, and confusing a symbol for what it denotes can become a serious burden. (Personally, I am mightily guilty of this.)

Mind against matter

”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 pleasure is offset by the ‘ability’ to dread pain and to fear the unknown.”

Maybe, then, we have reached a point where being conscious makes us less adaptable since we are too sensitive. Or, what if us being so self-conscious all the time is a sign of a malfunctioning brain, the same way that awareness of one’s heartbeat typically only comes when it’s extremely fast or irregular? We need to realise that brains are here for us, not us for them.

”A particularly significant example of brain against body, or measures against matter, is urban man’s total slavery to clocks. … A less brainy culture would learn to synchronise its body rhythms rather than its clocks.”

Security is isolation

He then goes on to explain that “the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing.” How so?

Security, in the sense that we have grown accustomed to view it, means stability, fixity. Since life is anything but static, we are trying to isolate ourselves from life, which makes us only more insecure; and the (vicious) cycle goes on.

“To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.”

The concept of a static “I” is yet another futile attempt to create a point in time and space that’s firmly anchored… anchored to where, exactly? Have I ever seen this static, unchanging observer?

To be in the now is an understatement, or maybe simply false. The only thing I can ever be is the now. I don’t have a sensation of touch. As long as it is around, as long as I am aware of it, I am the sensation of touch.

To be aware, then, is to be aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, and all other forms of experience. Never at any time are you aware of anything which is not experience, not a thought or a feeling, but instead an experiencer, thinker, or feeler. If this is so, what makes us think any such thing exists?

What follows this excerpt is a fabulous explanation of why the best way to handle negative emotions is to absorb them. When I push water, it doesn’t run away or resist; it gives at the point of tension and encloses my hand. In the same way, I can accept anything negative and enclose my awareness — myself—around it.

Moreover, since we know now there is no one experiencing the negative emotion (no static “I” exists, you are simply your present experience), even if the pain persists, it is of no consequence. “It hurts—period.”

Goals as an enemy

“The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music, also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord…”

In the last part of the book, Alan Watts talks about the toxicity of expectations, and how they deprive us of the ability to be (in) the now. When the now finally comes, we are only as good at living in it as we were while planning for this particular now, meaning far from excellent. And since I am nothing but the now, this is problematic.

Freedom, then, cannot be achieved whenever motives are at play. Trying to feel and act bravely while I’m afraid only means I am afraid of fear, and my efforts to escape this state of mind, this me, must be in vain since I am moving in circles. I cannot give myself away in order to be selfless, since that motive implies I am trying to amount to something, i.e. keep myself.

“[for the divided mind, ] freedom will seem to be the extent to which I can push the world around, and fate the extent to which the world pushes me. ... A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good … It acts, not according to the rules, but according to the circumstances of the moment, and the ‘well’ it wishes to others is not security, but liberty.”

Complete brilliance

No summary can ever do this book a justification, you need the entire thing. Also, I’m sure that, next time, I’ll consider different parts essential.

More than anything else, this is a subtle reminder from myself to myself to read this again, soon. A reminder that the notion of a supernatural world can be very dangerous, for if the mind is divided and tries to anchor the “I”, resisting an unwelcome change can be solved by clinging to “the ‘unchanging’ Absolute, forgetting that this Absolute is also ‘unfixed’.” A reminder that:

The more [man] analyses the universe into infinitesimals, the more things he finds to classify, and the more he perceives the relativity of all classification. What he does not know seems to increase in geometric progression to what he knows. Steadily he approaches the point where what is unknown is not a mere blank space in a web of words but a window in the mind whose name is not ignorance but wonder.