Existenz with Insecurity

So, having just finished William Barrett's "Irrational Man", I was parsing my local Barnes and Noble for other works on Existentialism. I just can't get terribly excited about plowing through the original works of Nietzsche or Heidegger. I'd plowed all the way to the end of the alphabet before I came across a thin trade paperback with an ugly green spine. But what really caught my eye was the title: "The Wisdom of Insecurity". Well, that certainly has an Existential ring to it; I picked it up for a closer look.

The back cover was even more promising. Here are excerpts from the two reviews printed on the back:

"The wisdom of insecurity is not a way of evasion, but of carrying on [...] It is a philosophy not of nihilism but of the reality of the present—always remembering that to be of the present is to be, and candidly know ourselves to be, on the crest of a breaking wave."

"How is man to live in a world in which he can never be secure, deprived, as many are, of the consolations of religious belief? The author shows that this problem contains its own solution—that the highest happiness, the supreme spiritual insight and certitude are found only in our own awareness that impermanence and insecurity are inescapable and inseparable from life."

Well, that corresponds rather stunningly with my own belief that although life has no inherent meaning, that lack of externally-mandated meaning is incredibly empowering, because it gives man the freedom to infuse his life with whatever meaning he chooses. So I picked the book up and blew through it.

One interesting fact is that the book was originally published in 1951, about the time of Existentialism's prominence in postwar Europe, and seven years before Barrett's book. It also was well before the study of eastern religions became fashionable in the US.

Eastern religions? What do they have to do with Existentialism? Well, Barrett's book actually documents that there are some very strong similarities between Existentialism and the eastern philosophies, particularly Zen Buddhism, which accept the finality of death and assert that life is without inherent meaning, while providing us with examples for accepting those facts without lapsing into nihilism.

Beyond that, the author of "The Wisdom of Insecurity", Alan Watts, is widely-known as a master in comparative religions, and as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular. In fact, "The Wisdom of Insecurity" doesn't talk about Existentialism at all. While it's certainly not a book about Buddhism, either, it does focus on a topic which is the foundation of both Existentialism and Zen: how to deal positively and productively with the belief that life is finie and has no inherent meaning.

I have to say, of all the philosophical books that I've read in the past year, this one is by far the most impressive, because it concerns itself less with stating the problem, and more with how to respond to it.

The first chapter does review the conundrum of modern western man.

"Man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more than what he sees—unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death. [...] But what are we to do? The alternatives seem to be two. The first is, somehow or other, to discover a new myth, or convincingly resuscitate an old one. [...] The second is to try grimly to face the fact that life is 'a tale told by an idiot', and make of it what we can. [...] From this point of departure there is yet another way of life that requires neither myth nor despair."

The second chapter describes how man's knowledge of the past and future often overpowers our ability to live fully and completely in the present. Worse yet,

"if I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week's meals become 'now.' [...] To plan for a future which is not going to become present is hardly more absured than to plan for a future which, when it comes to me, will find me 'absent'."

Chapter three introduces the great Platonic schism, the division of man into the theoretically "eternal" conscious seat of thought versus the earthly, temporal seat of passions and infirmity. It also describes the confusion that results from mistaking thought and theory with chaotic, unpredictable reality.

"Part of man's frustration is that he has become accustomed to expect language and thought to offer explanations which they cannot give. To want life to be 'intelligible' in this sense is to want it to be something other than life. [...] To feel that life is meaningless unless 'I' can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch."

The logical conclusion of the Platonic separation of mind and body is revealled in chapter four.

"The brain, in its immaterial way, looks into the future and conceives it a good to go on and on and on forever [...] We are perpetually frustrated because the verbal and abstract thinking of the brain gives the false impression of being able to cut loose from all finite limitations. It forgets that an infinity of anything is not a reality but an abstract concept, and persuades us that we desire this fantasy as a real goal of living. [...] The interests and goals of rationality are not those of man as a whole organism."

Chapter five refutes the traditional western preoccupation with security and permanence.

"There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature momentariness and fluidity. [...] If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. [...] What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking it is painful [...] The principal thing is to understand that there is no safety or security. [...] The notion of security is based on the feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity, and safety of this enduring core, this center and soul of our being which we call 'I.' [...] Any separate 'I' who thinks thoughts and experiences experience is an illusion."

Chapter six reveals that a positive experience of life depends on fully experiencing the moment that is 'now'.

"It means being aware, alert, and sensitive to the present moment always [...] Once this is understood, it is really absurd to say that there is a choice or an alternative between these two ways of life, between resisting the stream in fruitless panic, and having one's eyes opened to a new world, transformed, and ever new with wonder. [...] There is no rule but 'Look!' [...] By trying to understand everything in terms of memory, the past, and words, we have, as it were, had our noses in the guidebook for most of our lives, and have never looked at the view."

In chapter seven, Watts continues on this theme, but adds to it the Zen concept of the unity of creation.

"When, on the other hand, you realize that you live in, that indeed you are this moment now, and no other, that apart from this there is no past and no future, you must relax and taste to the full [...] The whole problem of justifying nature, of trying to make life mean something in terms of its future, disappears utterly. [...] When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. While there is life there is hope—and if one lives on hope, death is indeed the end."

Chapter eight continues the theme of living 'now' fully.

"If I feel separate from my experience, and from the world, 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 around. [...] The more my actions are directed towards future pleasures, the more I am incapable of enjoying any pleasures at all. For all pleasures are present, and nothing save complete awareness of the present can even begin to guarantee future happiness."

The final chapter returns to a review of religion and a prospect for a genuine spirituality based on Existential principles, and the futility of basing fulfilllment on some future post-death state.

"It is one thing to have as much time as you want, but quite another to have time without end. [...] We desire it only because the present is empty. [...] To those still feverishly intent upon explaining all things, [...] this confession says nothing and means nothing but defeat. To others, the fact that thought has completed a circle is a revelation of what man has been doing, not only in philosophy, religion, and speculative science, but also in psychology and morals, in everyday feeling and living. His mind has been in a whirl to be away from itself and to catch itself. [...] Discovering this the mind becomes whole [...] In such feeling, seeing, and thinking life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself."

Unfortunately, that hardly does justice to the insights described more fully in the book. Still, it will give you a flavor of Watt's thought, some of the commonalities between Zen Buddhism and Existentialism, and how accepting both death and the essential meaninglessness of life need not lead into nihilism nor despair. It certainly hasn't done so in my experience!