Sunday With Books: The Wisdom of Insecurity
When it comes to interpreting Alan Watts, most readers fall into one of two distinct camps.
The first includes the habitual mushroom-eater, the psychedelic “truth seeker”, and, amongst others, the archetypal “acid-bro” (i.e. that one friend of yours who won’t shut up about the wonders of microdosing, whose eyes light up when you ask them how their weekend in Joshua Tree went).
The second camp has never dabbled in psychedelia. They probably never will. And with this being the case, they don’t really care for that side of Watts. They see his work for what it really is: a merging of Eastern and Western philosophical teachings that merges on - dare I say - self-help literature.
But the truth is, the term “self-help” implies a certain selfishness. It implies that - somewhere deep inside the reader - there’s an ego on the line, the same ego that Watts claims is responsible for almost all forms of suffering in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity.
While what I’ve just described might sound like a broad summarization of an idea you’ve likely heard repeated ad nauseam, the real truths at the center of The Wisdom of Insecurity are much specific; Watts manages to weave in some big thoughts on money, government, language, time, and religion, all in sparse, non-proverbial language that actually makes sense, with metaphors based in reality rather than mythology.
* * *
At the end of the day, I’m not huge on philosophical literature. The whole thinking about thinking about thinking thing has always felt tiresome and boring to me, like someone assigned additional schoolwork to life. I think enough as it is.
But The Wisdom of Insecurity is an exception. It isn’t schoolwork; I’d liken it more to the dismissal bell. —Jackson Todd
