On knowing who he was | Hacker News Reader

On knowing who he was

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97 pointsTowaway6977 comments

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.

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.

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.

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?

Proselytizing, which is to say converting, in Christianity is seen as a positive, and to be “militantly proselytizing” is not meant as a literal “militant” but as “vigorous and active”. Christianity believes very much in exposing (and thus saving) as many souls to God as possible in a (naturally) non-violent way.

And the main way to proselytize in modern churches is via helping the less fortunate in local communities and with mission trips to third-world countries, which is certainly compelling.

Ahh - that's a unique usage of 'militantly' - I've never seen it before.

Kind of a bad mix of priorities. Please keep away from the Sentinelese.

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.

It’s a symptom of an inflated ego. Nat geo has a recent documentary about a missionary that might help explain the reasoning behind this religious conquistador mindset. “The Mission” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/movies-and-specials/th...

> 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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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-...

> 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.

Or a leap forward in consciousness due to said beliefs turning out to be founded.

I would imagine consciousness shrinks in the presence of an all-powerful god.

>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.

If things are colder, it's not amorality, it's colder as a side effect of cultivated self pre-occupation. For the "market" depends upon narcissism to keep consumers keep consuming. It's getting more pronounced with each successive generation. Adam Curtis - The Century of the Self is the long history of how and why: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&pp=ygUTY2VudHVyeSBvZ...

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.

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.

As a Catholic convert (long journey from born in a Muslim country -> Atheism -> Nihilism -> Agnosticism -> Catholicism) I agree with what you said.

I am not interested in arguing with people here about why God exists and Christianity is the truth but I wanted to add that I think there is a lot more than just debating "liberals" which attracts people to Christianity: the Sacraments, community, sense of purpose, temperance, life of service and let's not forget beauty, arts and philosophy; all of which are intertwined with Christianity.

You can argue that the above is not exclusive to "religion" and you would probably be right however organized religion put those well within one's reach with ease and it just so happens that the dominant religion on the West is Christianity; thus we are seeing many people return to Church as a result.

Perhaps battling non-Christian and "woke" is a pathway in for some but that phase doesn't last very long and what truly converts people at the end is Love, Scripture, Community and the Works.

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.

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.

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.

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.’”

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

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.

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

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".

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.

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.

I see this book is the final book in a trilogy.

Would you recommend someone to read this book, or do the whole 3?

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.

Kant's thing in itself?

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.

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.

I do judge them but Watts is not the personification of Buddhism for example, just an effective messenger.

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.

You can say the same about a child rapist.

Ok there, slow down..

You're barely a step away from Godwin's Law here..

Well, why not. This moral relativism can be applied to anything. Who are we to judge anything?

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.

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.

It is fitting that Siddharta left his wife and infant for his own spiritual quest, though.

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.

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.

Golly assumptions, Batman!

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

I also love Terrence McKenna and though I don’t take everything he says seriously, he was a fascinating speaker.

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.

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.

Shamatha (Tranquility) and Vipassana (Insight) are effectively free practices (as in beer) (and as in Nibbana!).

For the most part all you need to be able to do is sit on the floor. Well, that and lead a moral (Sila) life.

People charging for 'mindfulness' apps and products really grind my gears!

Dharma Seed [0] is a website (and there are iOS/Android apps) containing hundreds of free to access Dhamma talks.

[0] https://dharmaseed.org/

Meh, if you want it for free you can email them and they’ll give it to you for free. I’m more than happy to pay for a very very high quality experience delivering very very high quality content to me.

“People charging for biology textbooks really grinds my gears, you can just walk outside and look at trees or read free content online!”

Indeed, you sure can!

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.

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.

Watts: A Google Drive link found on a Reddit post? https://old.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-k42F1nAh6...

(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).

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.

> 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.

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.

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!

I don't entirely understand. What truth are you suggesting that Watts and McKenna are hiding?

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.

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.

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.

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