Disappointing.
Having read and loved several other books by Alan Watts, I pushed through this one hoping that it would improve, that the humor or grace or joy which so imbue his other works would appear, to say nothing of the golden words. How could it be that the man who penned "by all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another" (Wisdom of Insecurity) or mused that one might swim to experience the water rippling past and for the shifting net of sunlight underneath (Still the Mind) managed essay after essay of long-winded sentences such as "the apparent multiplication of psychological disorders in our technological culture is perhaps due to the fact that more and more individuals find themselves caught in these snarls - in situations which the psychiatric anthropologist Gregory Bateson has called the "double-bind" type, where the individual is required to make a decision which at the same time he cannot or must not make." Sweet mercy. (The great irony is that Watts details his experiences with LSD in this book, so one would think if anything this little volume would be as given to fun as any others: no dice.)
Oh sure, there are still bits and pieces of sage advice and insights, my favorite of which centers on the Japanese and the "compulsion which turns every craft and skill into a marathon of self-discipline." Truer words... More poignantly, Watts notes that in gazing at the night sky "we make no comparison between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations" and that "there would be no bright stars without dim stars, and, without the surrounding darkness, no stars at all." Likewise, in the final pages, Watts leaves readers with the observation, proven so true to me in this interminable year that has been 2020 that "life organized so as to be completely foolproof and secure is simply not worth living." Still, these paltry lines feel like minor compensation for the slog through This Is It.
One star.
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