An Unintelligent Universe [Alan Watts]
About | Information | History | Online | Facts | Discovery
Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies. Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He also explored human consciousness, in the essay "The New Alchemy" (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962). Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and many of his recorded talks and lectures are available on the Internet. According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity."
Comments
-
The whole Darwin thing about 'selection of the fittest' and evolution ignores that fact that nature works towards ecosystem balance and interspecies cooperation. Anything that upsets the balance is doomed to 'over success' and collapse. Humans will learn this lesson by having the experience of over proliferation and collapse thrust upon their kind while they ignore all the unmistakable signs of it. The balance will be restored by the natural forces of an intelligent ecosystem working for alternate periods of change and renewal. When is the next ice age or asteroid strike? It could happen any time. Hold on to your hats. This planet likes to rock out. Right now its peopling but next it may like reptiling.
-
11 likes 1 dislike. wow i see 111 at least 20x a day!!! love it
-
🌚🌟🌞
-
We have a problem (us humans) with our narrow definition of intelligence. We find it convenient (quite narrow mindedly) as coming from a central hub, a brain type organism, so have found it difficult to conceptualise intelligence arising out of anything but. . ('The old man in the sky' as the central source of truth fitted well with the traditional notion of universal truth and intelligence.)Despite us rejecting the old concept of the source of universal intelligence shouldn't mean we should reject that there is universal intelligence. If we watch cells multiply under a microscope we can witness this, obviously pre programmed in their DNA to flourish and adapt to their surroundings but at the same time a decision would have been made how it was going to adapt...Alan always gets us thinking :))
-
A brillant lecture of the amazing Alan Watts - thank you very much for posting!
8m 28sLenght
25Rating