IS IT SERIOUS?
It feels pretty serious. I write from the depths of Victorian lockdown hoping my housemate returns so I can legally squeeze in a walk before the 8pm curfew. If he isn’t back in half an hour my sole source of cardio will be news feed induced palpitations and the effort it takes to smile through zoom meetings. I’ve been working remotely for some big company I know exactly enough about to follow the sales script and log the responses correctly. It’s one of those peak alienation at the hand of capitalism, at my souls expense for minimum wage experiences that, in this climate I know I’m lucky to have. My days are filled with a malaise of guilty dissatisfaction spiked with doses of international panic, death, disease, natural disasters, looming economic crashes and the rise of professional tiktokers.
I know virtually everyone with a shred of ambition is thwarted right now, that the ‘project success’, ‘fake it till you make it’, hyperbolic Trumpian spectacle is collapsing in on itself and even the most committed illusionists can no longer convincingly pretend they are living an enviable life. If it’s a good time for anything it might be a good time to practice ‘non striving’ the stillness that Taoists value so highly, in which you don’t try to be or do anything.
I’m a big one for yearning and questing and refusing to accept situations as they are so I don’t say this lightly. I wanted to make some grand thesis about humour as the antidote to all this status anxiety and I still might since underneath my claim to want to strop striving I sort of can’t. I take comedy itself very seriously and rather than accepting the sweet release of laughter I insist on dissecting it’s source. So while watching videos of stand up comedians and philosophers, serendipity aka the algorithm led me to ‘stand up philosopher’ Alan Watts. This charming English theologian who became a Zen priest and finally a self styled ‘Spiritual Entertainer’ is a wonderful lecturer to listen to during ones mandated one hour outings. Watts became an icon of embodied Eastern philosophy for the progressive West during the late 60s. In his lecture recordings his rich Oxbridge accent delivers jokes and Zen koans in the same breath. You can hear at times the laughter of the listeners in attendance and a hushed awe. Watts seems in on the joke of being Watts and offers a wonderfully anti Guru and anti self improvement sentiment
"Now when you find, you see, that this predicament that I have been describing to you. That there's no way of transforming yourself. To become this fearless, joyous, divine being as distinct from the quaking mess. When I say no way, this is not a gloomy announcement, it is a very, very important communication. The message underlying this is "you can not transform yourself", is giving you the message that, the you, that you imagine to be capable of transforming yourself doesn't exist. In other words an ego, an I, separate from my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences, who's supposed to be in control of them cannot control them because it isn't there. And as soon as you understand that, things will be vastly improved." -Alan Watts
Even if it seems harsh to say a person cannot improve its still infinitely more crowd pleasing than Camus’ claim that the only really serious philosophical question is; why should someone continue to live? Alan Watts proposes five more philosophical questions…
Who started it?
Are we gonna make it?
Where are we gonna put it?
Who's gonna clean up?
Is it serious?
His basic metaphysical axiom is that the Universe is playful not purposeful and in many ways he seems like the wiser milder version of Bill Hick’s who similarly spoke of taking it all less seriously.