Alan Watts on The 5 Most Important Lessons of The 21st Century
If he believed time existed, Watts was way ahead of his.
What does a dead Episcopal priest from a small village in South East England know about what’s going on in the world today?
As trends in internet searches are showing more people are seeking out his many books, articles, videos, and audio recordings, apparently quite a lot.
Watts stands out among other 20th-century philosophers for several reasons. Namely, as angel investor James Beshara points out an episode of his podcast Below The Line, because he managed to do three unique things:
- Have very differentiated points of view from contemporary Western viewpoints.
- Articulate them extremely well.
- Do it all in a time when you could record your own lectures—which he did, in abundance.
Watts wasn’t an academic. He botched an opportunity for a scholarship to Oxford due to his shamefully “presumptuous and capricious” writing style.
He also wasn’t an expert in what he taught. Despite writing extensively about Eastern philosophies like Buddhism, Hinduism, Toaism, and Zen, he wasn’t ordained as any kind of monk or didn’t strictly follow any one system.
