[HN Gopher] On knowing who he was
___________________________________________________________________
On knowing who he was
Author : Towaway69
Score : 86 points
Date : 2024-01-27 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aeon.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| Towaway69 wrote:
| > Under the cover of lusty and curvaceous chicks (of whom I
| approve), and of silly bunnies (of whom I disapprove), you have
| turned Playboy into the most important philosophical periodical
| in this country ... by comparison, the Journal of the American
| Philosophical Society is pedantic, boring and irrelevant.
|
| There is something to be said for alternative viewpoints on
| issues that many take for granted.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Tangential, but I recently read The Transmigration of Timothy
| Archer by Philip K Dick. It was one of his last books (and one of
| his best) and has a character inspired by Alan Watts. There's an
| interesting sequence where that character suddenly grasps the
| conceptual nature of reality at a deep level. He goes home to
| write it down, but sees two children playing in the street. He
| tries to explain to their mother that they're in danger, but she
| doesn't speak English. So he spends the rest of the afternoon
| watching the kids, and then forgets the epiphany he had.
|
| > What I had acquired, there on that walk, out of my apartment
| where I had no access to pen and paper, was a comprehension of a
| world conceptually arranged, a world not arranged in time and
| space and by causation, but a world as idea conceived in a great
| mind, the way our own minds store memories. I had caught a
| glimpse of world not as my own arrangement--by time, space and
| causation--but as it is in itself arranged; Kant's 'thing-in-
| itself.'"
| bigmadshoe wrote:
| Was this after he stopped doing drugs? I've always been curious
| to read some of his more coherent work, though I love some of
| the more rambling stuff I've read
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yes, he wrote it near the end of his life. It's one of his
| few non sci-fi books. It actually hits on a lot of the same
| themes as VALIS (PKD's most bizarre, personal, and "rambling"
| book), but in a somewhat more "grounded" way? I highly
| recommend it.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Same thing with poem "Kubla Khan".
|
| Coleridge was interrupted and couldn't finish the poem.
|
| Mention here since it is often referred to as an enlightened
| moment that was lost.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_from_Porlock
| fsckboy wrote:
| from the link:
|
| _Elisabeth Schneider suggested that this prologue, as well
| as the person from Porlock, was fictional and intended as a
| credible explanation of the poem 's seemingly fragmentary
| state as published. The poet Stevie Smith also suggested this
| view in one of her own poems, saying "the truth is I think,
| he was already stuck"._
| passion__desire wrote:
| There are two analogies of Alan Watts which I love.
|
| Whirpool analogy : You see, each one of us is like a whirlpool.
| The water changes but the shape remains.
|
| Sense of Self as a "beacon signal" : In olden days, when the
| telephone conversation was recorded, it beeped at fixed
| intervals to remind both parties that this conversation is
| being recorded. Deep down in our subconscious we have the
| similar signal to indicate that all these experiences are
| happening to the same entity across space and time.
| rock8y wrote:
| Not an analogy but he said in one of his speeches that
| "Preaching is moral violence", he said that in respect to
| religion but that that kind of helped me change my attitude
| whenever I talk to younger kids or cousins.
| ratg13 wrote:
| I see this book is the final book in a trilogy.
|
| Would you recommend someone to read this book, or do the whole
| 3?
| Trasmatta wrote:
| The only connection between the three is thematic. The have
| no narrative connection. It's odd that they call it a trilogy
| to be honest. You can read Timothy Archer without reading the
| others.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Kant's thing in itself?
| lacrimacida wrote:
| I also love Terrence McKenna and though I don't take everything
| he says seriously, he was a fascinating speaker.
| criddell wrote:
| What are the best sources for recordings of Watts and McKenna?
| I've found some of Watts, but somebody mixed in new age music
| and did other edits that I thought made things worse.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Waking Up (Sam Harris's meditation app) has a huuuuge, high
| quality catalog of Watts. I am under the vague impression
| that the catalog was recently released/public domain'd so you
| may be able to find it elsewhere? But worst case, Waking Up
| is an excellent resource for this stuff anyway.
| naremu wrote:
| Unfortunately Terrence McKenna (or fortunately depending on
| how you look at things) doesn't seem to have retained the
| same popularity.
|
| He does still have some decent "pithy one liners" but if I
| remember right, he didn't stay in a philosophical lane and
| was known to indulge in pop culture conspiracies and his own
| pet theories (based on excruciatingly little but conjecture
| and didn't really respond to criticism of it)
|
| I've honestly started to consider it a little bit unbecoming
| to compare people to McKenna. He's a major contributor to a
| romantic and oversimplified/inaccurate understanding of
| things like shamanhood and the roles drugs played in ancient
| societies, so it's probably a good thing people don't talk
| about him like they used to.
|
| Almost kind of the antithesis to Watts in my mind, but
| seemingly from the same side of the fence: McKenna was all
| about what _he_ thought, and Watts never gave me the
| impression he even had an agenda for me to believe in, rather
| wanting to help people explore the world he 'd discovered, he
| labored to find the words to depict, not to convince.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Yeah, they don't compare in that sense. But I still find
| McKenna very charming to listen to, and am sometimes wowed
| to what cooky ideas he may have reached in his lectures.
| The man has a fascinating oratory skill. Despite his wild
| speculations he has a very interesting depiction of his own
| ideas and his overarching theme is one of union with the
| nature which no matter how reached at it's a positive thing
| IMO.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Watts: A Google Drive link found on a Reddit post? https://ol
| d.reddit.com/r/AlanWatts/comments/tb2k3s/where_to_...
|
| McKenna, possibly a YouTube downloader and a playlist like
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL83BE388A2A15A7E1 -
| some are short, but many are hour or two long full lectures.
| and https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyhHqyVEk0F-k42F1n
| Ah6...
|
| (I didn't realise how many lectures he did; many of those I
| haven't heard, and many of the ones I have heard aren't
| mentioned in those playlists).
|
| (For the unwary, "Alan Watt", Scottish conspiracy theorist
| https://archive.org/details/The_Alan_Watt_Collection is
| somebody else).
| hyperific wrote:
| Excerpts from his lectures can also be heard in the game
| _Everything_. Compared to some of the other sources from
| commenters here, _Everything 's_ collection is much smaller.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| _The result was a bleak contrast between Watts's high talk of
| compassion and love and a series of affairs that, combined with
| his low view of fatherhood - 'mow the lawn, play baseball with
| the children' - helped to destroy his family_
|
| If you create life you must be responsible for it. Checking out
| early isn't an option.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| It's pity that parenthood doesn't come with 30day cooling off
| period. Becoming a parent is a lot different than many imagine.
|
| I agree with your sentiment but I won't judge anyone for not
| being able to cope with parenthood.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I do judge them but Watts is not the personification of
| Buddhism for example, just an effective messenger.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| We are both looking from the outside in, we can't know what
| is going through someones minds, what is happening to them
| in their situation.
|
| To enforce social and moral norms on something we can't
| fully understand is questionable. Judging others is all
| about enforcing societal-defined morals onto others.
|
| You choose to enfore those morals, I choose to reserve
| judgement.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| You can say the same about a child rapist.
| sbarre wrote:
| Ok there, slow down..
|
| You're barely a step away from Godwin's Law here..
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Well, why not. This moral relativism can be applied to
| anything. Who are we to judge anything?
| rambojohnson wrote:
| While it's essential to acknowledge the impact of personal
| actions on family and responsibilities, it's also important
| to recognize the distinction between an individual's
| personal life and their professional or philosophical
| contributions.
|
| Watts indeed had personal shortcomings, as many do --
| judging his entire body of work based on his personal life
| can be limiting and narrow-minded.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I don't know to what extent he was a messenger for
| Buddhism. But in some sects you aren't allowed to teach the
| Buddhadharma without permission. So in that sense,
| "personifying" what you teach would be relevant.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| It is fitting that Siddharta left his wife and infant for
| his own spiritual quest, though.
| fatherzine wrote:
| sadly, publicly only ever told to men. edit: whoa, given the
| quick downvotes on your comment, HN doesn't like it publicly
| said to men either.
| calibas wrote:
| I know a lot more couples where the man has left, leaving the
| woman the raise the child, than the other way around.
|
| "If you create life you must be responsible for it"
|
| Maybe women are being told that, and you just haven't heard
| it said to you because you're not a woman. Or maybe women
| don't need to be told.
| khzw8yyy wrote:
| Golly assumptions, Batman!
| fatherzine wrote:
| the man has left, or the man was pushed away. the man has
| left, or the man is providing financial support, while
| being deprived of contact with his children.
|
| when 1 in 3 children are raised in a single parent
| household, compared to the traditional norm of 1 in 20,
| everybody could use a reminder to act responsible when it
| comes to the life they create.
|
| see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_parent#Children
| mightyham wrote:
| As someone who grew up in a mostly agnostic household, but
| ultimately converted to Christianity in my adult life, I find
| sentiments like "There is a caution, here, for strands of the
| renewed interest in Christianity that seem focused on battling
| non-Christian or 'woke' forms of thought and ways of living" to
| somewhat miss the mark in describing why people come to the
| religion. I don't think people come to Christ so that they can
| debate liberal atheists, but because they are disenfranchised by
| the current state of society: modern spirituality feels hollow,
| and we are plagued with social issues caused by general
| immorality.
|
| I also find statements like "Watts tried to suggest that a truly
| all-inclusive God would not be bound by Western logic, with its
| insistence on mutually exclusive propositions. In Asia, argued
| Watts, one found not just 'either-or' forms of logic but 'both-
| and' forms, too." to reflect a shallow view of Christianity. For
| instance, ancient Jews (not westerners) pioneered the idea of a
| "a truly all-inclusive" god, while also creating a literary
| tradition (the old testament) full of contradictions and "either-
| or" forms of logic. Another example would be that even though the
| catechism creates definitive "logical" doctrine for the Catholic
| church, the Eucharist which is practiced every Sunday fully
| embraces mysticism.
| ajju wrote:
| I have just recently discovered Watts, but I think he may have
| agreed.
|
| "Watts left formal Zen training in New York because the method
| of the teacher did not suit him. He was not ordained as a Zen
| monk, but he felt a need to find a vocational outlet for his
| philosophical inclinations. He entered Seabury-Western
| Theological Seminary, an Episcopal (Anglican) school in
| Evanston, Illinois, where he studied Christian scriptures,
| theology, and church history. He attempted to work out a blend
| of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and
| Asian philosophy. Watts was awarded a master's degree in
| theology in response to his thesis, which he published as a
| popular edition under the title Behold the Spirit: A Study in
| the Necessity of Mystical Religion.
|
| He later published Myth & Ritual in Christianity (1953), an
| eisegesis of traditional Roman Catholic doctrine and ritual in
| Buddhist terms. However, the pattern was set, in that Watts did
| not hide his dislike for religious outlooks that he decided
| were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing--no matter
| if they were found within Judaism, Christianity, Islam,
| Hinduism, or Buddhism."
|
| --- From the Wikipedia page.
| mightyham wrote:
| Thank you for the added context about his beliefs, as I am
| not too familiar with his works and was going off of what I
| read in the article.
|
| I do not share his disdain though for the "dour, guilt-
| ridden, or militantly proselytizing" aspects of Christianity.
| This isn't really as much of an argument as it is a personal
| outlook: those attributes are what makes Christianity
| compelling to me, and why some eastern or agnostic forms of
| spiritualism feel hollow.
| mech422 wrote:
| The "dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing" are
| what make Christianity compelling for you? The first 2 I
| could see as personal choice but isn't "militantly"
| anything sorta anti-christian? (I'm an agnostic, so what do
| I know...)
|
| Just seems to be an odd thing to find compelling?
| subpixel wrote:
| I would appreciate you expounding on how those traits
| generate interest on your part. I think many people might
| find those rather off-putting - whether in an institution,
| a group, or a person.
| losvedir wrote:
| > For instance, ancient Jews (not westerners) pioneered the
| idea of a "a truly all-inclusive" god
|
| I don't know about. I've read that in ancient Judaism, Yahweh
| began as one god among many and he was theirs ("I'm your God /
| have no gods before me"). He evolved into the monotheistic
| entity of today, but even today my perception is that Judaism
| doesn't focus on proselytization and considers him theirs more
| or less. I'd chalk the more universal, inclusive God up to
| early Christians, though I suppose you could call them Jews,
| and they weren't "western" anyway.
|
| Edit: and "universal" and "inclusive" could also mean at the
| point of a sword for most of the Church's history.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is pushed by some scholars but outright rejected by most
| and we do not have a good understanding of where YHWH worship
| came from. The scholars that do push this rely on
| etymological arguments that mix up some of the many, many
| names Canaanites/Hebrews/semites used for gods.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Indeed. For example the word Elohim used to convey the
| meaning of 'Gods' to Jews in antiquity but evolved to mean
| 'God', referring to YHWH alone.
|
| My understanding of the book of Isaiah is that it is about
| how the people of Israel came to abandon worship of lesser
| gods such as Ba'al and came to see YHWH as their God and
| saviour who delivered them from Babylonian captivity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism
| mightyham wrote:
| I'm not a biblical scholar, so I'm lacking the details and
| sources I should have, but there are parts of the torah with
| clear indications of universalist ideas about God and morals.
| What is important to remember is that the Hebrew bible and
| the religious ideas of ancient Judaism were not monolithic.
| Their beliefs and scriptures were the product of many people,
| sometimes in different geographic regions, developed, edited,
| and transcribed repeatedly over the course of more than a
| thousand years.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > For instance, ancient Jews (not westerners) pioneered the
| idea of a "a truly all-inclusive" god, while also creating a
| literary tradition (the old testament) full of contradictions
| and "either-or" forms of logic.
|
| Ehhhh, that's not quite how it happened. In the Bronze Age
| everyone was doing pantheons. This was a good idea because
| tribes who started gaining power in this period were exploring
| empire-building and pantheons allow for a high degree of
| syncretism - you absorb the conquered gods into your own
| structure, most of the peasants don't even notice a change.
|
| The ancient Israelites (Jews and Samaritans) acknowledged those
| pantheons, but chose to only worship the god who was viewed as
| being at the top of the Canaanite pantheon - El (Israel
| literally meaning "struggles with El"). Through the various
| captivities and exiles and the Bronze Age collapse, the lower
| gods on the pantheon faded to history and it became more of the
| modern idea of an all-encompassing god.
|
| There is definitely also some Christianizing of European Jews
| that happened for obvious reasons, so it's hard to separate out
| how much of modern Jewish thought is a reflection of this.
| Especially with the Ashkenazim who had a lot of "Great
| Awakening" style religious activity around the same time it was
| happening in colonial and post-Revolutionary America.
| prox wrote:
| Going for broad strokes here, but Western philosophy and
| religions are mostly searching for an "objective" God, as it
| were, as something that must be proven. And while the early
| Christian cult had gnosticism and other strands, those mostly
| got snuffed out as it became more of an established religion
| and part of the power balance.
|
| The current day image and majority of the history of
| Christianity has always been problematic to me, as in "believe
| or be guilty", with little grey or choice. When I went to a
| service a few years ago to a fairly mainstream easygoing church
| here, this guilt was still pretty much core of the teaching.
| That to me pretty much qualifies as "either-or" and all but
| inclusive.
|
| Instead in some Eastern philosophies (the yoga school and
| Daoism, probably others) focus on the subjective experience. In
| the yoga school for instance it allows us to connect to mind,
| our purusha (soul like quality) and find other teachings and
| qualities within ourselves. Something that Alan Watts also
| emphasized in his book "Wisdom of Insecurity"
|
| Current day spirituality is broad and commercialized and has
| its own problems due to poor teachers who start with barely
| 200h of study, which is not conducive or effective on the
| whole.
| roughly wrote:
| There's depth in the Christian community (as there's always
| been, of course). I think you're right that a fundamental
| driver of conversion is people looking for a home, but a
| running problem for the church today, and especially for many
| of the more evangelical varieties, is the tail wagging the dog,
| so to speak - the parishioners pushing the priests, as opposed
| to the priest guiding the parish. There are churches who
| provide welcome homes for people and who build their
| communities towards love and support of their fellow people,
| but there are also plenty churches who see themselves as the
| armies of the culture war, and whose members indeed joined
| because that appealed to them.
|
| Incidentally, re: "modern spirituality feels hollow" - there
| was a good article in the Atlantic* recently arguing that the
| fundamental problem for the modern church isn't that it asks
| too much of its members, but that it asks too little - that by
| not requiring its members to actually demonstrate their
| beliefs, it robs those beliefs of any tangibility and makes the
| whole exercise hollow.
|
| I'm not a Christian, but I do think there was something lost in
| the country when we discarded the church as a common moral
| frame - the only other shared philosophical framework we have
| is the market, and whatever the limits of the church, the
| morals of the market seem to be making for a much colder
| society.
|
| *
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/christian-...
| maroonblazer wrote:
| > I do think there was something lost in the country when we
| discarded the church as a common moral frame
|
| My hope, disguised as a hypothesis, is that we're gradually
| shedding the superstitions of our past, and in so doing, are
| descending, albeit temporarily, into a local minimum.
| Eventually, we'll find our way up to a higher peak where
| compassion and collaboration are the order of the day without
| attachment to unfounded beliefs.
| keiferski wrote:
| Inclusivity and universalism is largely a legacy of Greek
| thought, and it's relevance or non-relevance to the new
| movement of Christianity was an important topic in the first
| few centuries after Christ.
| arp242 wrote:
| That citation continues with "'Cultural Christianity' of this
| kind [..]", and it seems to me that in context, it's
| sufficiently qualified that I don't consider it to be
| problematic. It's pretty clear it's criticizing a very specific
| section of 'Cultural Christians', and not all 'Cultural
| Christians', much less all Christians.
|
| One of the reasons I hesitate to call myself a 'Cultural
| Christian' is exactly due to the association with these kind of
| people, whom I find to be rather unpleasant.
| hello_computer wrote:
| Just another front-man for the mystery schools. In this case, the
| Esalen branch. Same as Steiner or Blavatsky, but for a different
| generation. "Astral projection" through meditation and spiritual
| discipline did not fit the 20th century mindset, so we get people
| like Watts and McKenna and Leary selling hyperspace in a pill. Of
| course there was a contradiction between his private life and
| "his" teachings, because he was a deceiver, just like the rest of
| them.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| There was an interview between Ram Dass and Terence McKenna in
| Prague Gnosis.
|
| Ram Dass states that he intends his life to be his message.
|
| McKenna squirms a little and he says emphatically that he
| wishes for his message to be his message!
| hbchbc556556 wrote:
| I don't entirely understand. What truth are you suggesting that
| Watts and McKenna are hiding?
| hello_computer wrote:
| To hide a truth would imply having one to hide in the first
| place. Watts and McKenna were just hangers-on--people who saw
| an opportunity (spinning yarns for money and attention) and
| latched-on to it. L. Ron was of a similar sort, but was far
| better at it.
|
| The motive force, the spark, was Esalen. 60s counterculture
| gurus are all _one degree of separation_ from it. Esalen
| (Huxley) being one of the later institutions of the syncretic
| religion project--which has a clear genealogy through the
| Traditionalist School (Guenon), Anthroposophy (Steiner),
| Theosophy (Blavatsky), Masonry (founded shortly after Rome
| shut down the Templars), Knights Templar, early Church
| Gnosticism, Neoplatonism... probably going back to pre-
| history. There are many organizations I 'm leaving out here,
| but these are the ones that occupy the most real estate in
| Western minds.
|
| The Masons already had the Greco-Roman and Egyptian content.
| Theosophy (Blavatsky was just the front-woman, the handlers
| were Leadbeater and Olcott) was to retcon the newly
| discovered (to Westerners) Vedic and Buddhist content into
| the project. Steiner did much the same with the Zoroastrian
| and scientific content. Then Guenon, being a mathematician
| and a better thinker, chooses to operate in the opposite
| direction. That is, rather than try to justify the hypothesis
| (all religions as corrupted expressions of the same
| primordial truth) with a number of creative writing projects,
| Guenon suggested that "going deep" into one's own traditions
| --regardless of which--was a faster route to the destination.
|
| What was Esalen's contribution to the syncretic religion
| project? A syncretic religion isn't very syncretic if it's
| leaving material on the table. What was left on the table?
| Shamanism and entheogens. Where would a brilliant Englishman
| go to research this? The Americas, of course.
| hbchbc556556 wrote:
| To be clear, are you suggesting that these were successive
| generations of opportunistic grifters, working with the
| material left behind from the previous generation, or a
| deliberate project to develop a maximally syncretic
| religion?
|
| My confusion is that I detect a conspiratorial tone that
| I'm nonplussed by.
| hello_computer wrote:
| No. I'm saying that Watts and McKenna ( _specifically
| Watts and McKenna_ ) are bullshitters, floating along a
| much deeper and powerful current.
|
| As for the actual currents (as partially enumerated),
| some were true believers, some weren't. Until proven
| otherwise, I think Guenon was legit--that his ideas were
| his own, he took both the credit and the blame for them,
| and gave credit where it was due--as opposed to someone
| like Blavatsky who was a mascot, or someone like Huxley
| who was really more of an engineer, but delivering his
| blueprints in a wrapper of plausible deniability. Whereas
| the characters and schisms within Masonry are so broad
| that a hundred books could be written, and we still
| wouldn't have scratched the surface.
|
| Conspiracy or not, I have outlined a genealogy which is
| easy enough to verify--at the touch of your fingertips.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| A lot of criticism is leveled at Alan Watts, by people who point
| out how he conveyed many oversimplifications of religious
| teachings, or ideas that seem to be misunderstandings of
| teachings from an academic point of view.
|
| I think what those people are either missing or ignoring is that
| his main motivation was to be a spiritual entertainer, as he
| described it, and I believe he's best interpreted and understood
| that way as well.
|
| If people want to learn a rigorous deep understanding of certain
| philosophies and spiritual beliefs, there are innumerable other
| ways to dive into this, and better people to listen to. To me,
| his conveyance of ideas is better suited to impart interesting
| and different ways of looking at the world in a general manner
| and to pique one's imagination, not to learn spiritual concepts
| in a rigorous way.
|
| I always felt he succeeded in that way, simply by attracting more
| people towards an interest in a spirituality and philosophy, and
| giving a starting point from which they can pursue serious ideas
| if their interest is sustained.
| keiferski wrote:
| For anyone that is interested in Buddhism but otherwise put off
| by Watts, I recommend reading anything by D.T. Suzuki. Very
| accessible but much more academically rigorous and accurate.
| zafka wrote:
| I have already spent way too much time at my desk so I am going
| to read this article later. I must say though, that I really
| enjoyed "Tau, the watercourse way" when I read it many years ago,
| as I was working my way across various writings about eastern
| thought. Quite a while after reading some of Watt's writings I
| discovered that his behavior was not always so "spiritual" I
| found value in the message I read, I do not think I want to
| emulate the way he lived.
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