Catching Up With Alan Watts

Alan Watts said we all have a vein of rascality in us- and he mistrusted anyone who didn't let it show. Those who repress their rascality are lying- lying to you, lying to themselves. Rascals you can trust about 80% of the time, but people who are pretending to be straight as a die are the ones who will really fuck you over. They can't help it because they're broken inside.

I missed out on Watts when he was still around. I'm catching up with him now. His words are all over YouTube, generally accompanied by trippy visuals. He is highly entertaining. But that's Zen for you. Some philosophy students took him to task for not being dry enough and he told them he wasn't a philosopher but a "philosopher-entertainer". Some disciples of T.J. Suzuki, the Zen master, tried to butter Suzuki up by telling him, "We used to admire Watts but now that we've discovered the true source..." And Suzuki cut them short. "Don't you dare," he exploded. "Alan Watts is a very great boddhisatva."

Another thing Watts said is, "Never forget that it's all a show." By which he meant life, the world, politics, sex- whatever you've got.

Philosopher-Entertainers (Following On From The Previous Post)

I wonder whether Nietzsche would have accepted the label "philosopher-entertainer." He might have done. He's just about the only one of those old time post-enlightenment philosophers that it's actually fun to read...

At least...at least... that's what I used to think, but I picked up one of his books the other day and started reading at random and the frisson was no longer there. The death of God, moral relativity... these things no longer come as lightning strikes. They're old news; I've processed them, adjusted to them, moved on down the bus.

Another thing that soon loses its zing is porn. Or so says Alain de Botton (also a philosopher-entertainer though not playing in the same division as Watts and Nietzsche) who has an enjoyable little You Tube video called The Poignancy of Old Pornography in which he shows us dagurreotypes of hairy 19th century people interacting with one another's more sensitive parts while telling us how untitillating they are and how looking at bodies we know to be long-dead provokes thoughts more proper to the graveyard than the boudoir. But is any of this really true? Is old pornography as unexciting as old philosophy? Actually, I'm not sure it is. Nietzsche has gone back on the shelf and will probably stay there but my delight in his frolicksome contemporaries remains undimmed and unassuaged.

Besides, as Watts could have told you, Alain, all times exist in an eternal present and the pornstars d'antan are no more dead- or come to think of it, alive- than you are.

Cut the threnody, shows us the pix....