when you try to sink you float when you hold your breath you lose it and when i tell you not to think of this purple elephant with a mohawk you do what's calls this the backwards law in this video we will explore the backwoods law in relation to man's quest for psychological security and his efforts to find spiritual and intellectual certainty in religion and philosophy but i warn you what i'm about to share may have you end up more confused than if you didn't watch this video at all but i encourage you to rewatch the
parts you don't understand so that you can come closer to peace with the absurd this is a book summary of the wisdom of insecurity by alan watts it's time to watch the next part of this video [Music] chapter one the age of anxiety prevalent traditions like having a family life social life economic order trust in government and religion have all dwindled the decay of belief in these traditions spawned from the intellect of the great scientific and philosophical thinkers of our time consequently modern life has become an existential quagsire i mean i mean quagmire an awkward
complex or hazardous situation or as watts puts it our age is one of frustration anxiety agitation and addiction to dope somehow we must grab what we can while we can and drown out the realization that the whole thing is futile and meaningless belief in anything is an attempt to hang on to life but to understand life you can't hang on to it trying to hang on to it is like trying to go to sleep the more you try the less success you have watts says faith on the other hand is an unreserved opening of the
mind to the truth whatever it may turn out to be belief clings but faith lets go chapter 2 pain and time let me ask you a question if you could start life all over again would you rather be a human or a cat you chose a cat didn't you because a cat seems devoid of problems operating on instinct it appears to live in the present moment enjoying the free snacks that its fellow human feeds it the key message in this chapter is that what separates us from a cat's experience of the world is our ability
to conceive the past and the future it causes us tremendous pain watts calls this dread it's what fuels our desire for meaning chapter 3 the great stream god or the universe can't be explained in words words are symbols not reality words are like coins for real things words represent x but are not x just like money represents y but is not y the more we try to live in the world of words the more we feel isolated and alone the more all the joy and the liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security
religion and science are also symbols there is a joe rogan episode with fear sahabi in which they are debating science fieris tries to get through to joe that science can't make sense of the universe the conversation went something like this fear says let's say i'm about to flip a coin joe goes now you're gonna tell me it's probably gonna land on heads or tails do you know that logically or is it based on your history with flipping coins well both i'm going to argue that you don't know it logically you only know it based on
your past history this is going to get weird so pay attention erase everything you've ever known about coins you've never seen a coin before now say that i flip a coin and it turns into a butterfly and you go oh that's cool and then say i flip that coin 100 times and it turns into a butterfly on the 101st time you'll be like i bet it turns into a butterfly that's how we express science so science is the faith that the future will behave like the past it's only a name for a pattern we've observed
in nature so it's not that a causes b it's just that we see a and then we see b so the only way to make sense of cosmic absurdity is not words religion or science but to plunge into it move with it and join the dance chapter 4 the wisdom of the body look at this anagram the idea is to rearrange the letters to form the word so you can summon your brain power for hours trying to rearrange and unscramble it or just try looking at it right now with a relaxed mind and the answer
will likely come to you with little effort [Music] let us know in the comments if you got it so the yogis seem to be in tune with the wisdom of their bodies whereas the west is obsessed with thinking this bias for brain over body is demonstrable by man slavery to clocks think about it isn't it absolutely crazy that you rely on a man-made clock to tell you when to eat sleep work and relax the real clock is the sun the moon and your bodily intuition watts also asks why do we sit on toilets what the
hell are we doing why are we disrupting our digestive systems this is crazy and why do we interfere with childbirth finally what says the brain is clever enough to see the vicious circle which it has made for itself but it can do nothing about it seeing that it is unreasonable to worry does not stop worrying rather you worry the more it being unreasonable the brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for not riffing and whirling and squirming to get out of present experience but being effortlessly aware of
it chapter 5 on being aware modern man is on a deluded quest for security work your way up that corporate ladder and then one day everything will be fine you'll have enough money you'll have social status among your peers and you'll finally be able to live a comfortable life desiring security is the same as desiring things to never change desiring things to never change is to resist what is and to resist what is is to suffer why are we still here just suffer to suffer is to be watching this youtube video in hopes that your
life will become more secure and the more you try to become secure the more security you'll want and the less secure you'll become just like the more you try to impress a woman the less likely you are to do so security doesn't exist the eye doesn't exist the act of trying to be more secure implies that there is a separate eye from a future eye so now you've made a race for yourself where the finish line is a mirage what says if i want to be secure that is protected from the flux of life i
am wanting to be separate from life yet it is this very sense of separateness which makes me feel insecure so what do we do do we abandon our pursuit of our dream relationship saving for a house and securing our dream job do we browse more existentialcomics.com and scroll through our slash nihilism not necessarily in his book out of your mind what says you can have this sensation of total unity with the cosmos without forgetting society's game rules with regard to you in other words it doesn't mean that you forget your address phone number and given
name you remember all that and you play the game when necessary but you always know that it's a game when hindu and buddhist philosophers speak of detachment it just means going with this whole thing and not resisting change and if you do that you can afford to go with it you can afford to get mixed up in life and fall in love and get involved with all sorts of things you can afford it if you know it's an illusion moving on to chapter six the oh so marvelous moment consider that you are watching this video
right now and now i ask you at this moment who are you this question is impossible to answer because you must stop and think about it and when you started thinking about it you are now thinking about who you were in the past based on your memory but i asked who you are now what says we try to adapt ourselves to the mysterious present by comparing it with the remembered past by naming and identifying it saying i'm lonely is an attempt to separate yourself from the experience of fear it's your attempt to make fear objective
and separate it from the eye this is fear trying to separate itself from fear what says this is like fighting fire with fire so by being open to an experience without resisting or naming it you can eliminate the conflict between the i and current reality chapter 7 the transformation of life modern man is obsessed with trying to define reality trying to do so makes as much sense as this square it's impossible here's why to describe reality entails thinking and reality includes an experience where you are thinking about thinking so to describe reality accurately you'd have
to describe thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking at infinitum which is an act of thinking itself and acts that is part of the endless chain of thinking about thinking the chain is endless so you can't possibly describe everything in a chain because it never ends you can only say that it never ends which is to affirm that you can't truly describe reality now even if you disagree with this and this makes no sense your disagreement originates from thought to have thought you must think and so to successfully describe reality or make a
point that contributes to an accurate definition of reality you'd have to separate yourself as the thinker from reality but because you're part of reality you can't step outside of it to describe it therefore claiming to describe reality accurately is as wise as making this claim to put it another way defining reality is like trying to escape from quicksand the more you struggle the more you sink but if you simply be with a quicksand you prevent yourself from sinking that's why what says that in order to understand reality you have to be reality all that means
is acceptance of what is not making judgments and being aware in the present moment a practical way to be aware is to listen to music but understand the moment you think i am listening to music you are not listening chapter 8 creative morality creative morality is the working of love in human relations moralists according to watts assume that man is basically selfish with an intrinsic bias towards evil the moralist tries to enforce rules for change by praising those for whom he believes is doing right and scolds those for whom he believes is doing wrong but
if mr morales wants oscar to change his life then he must assume that oscar is free because if he's not free then he has no freedom to change if oscar acts from the fear of a moralist threats then he is not making a free act therefore change is impossible a moralist may get oscar to modify his behavior but watt says it won't change in any essential respect a moralist will cause one to run away from himself or run after himself and behind all his acts motive remains so as long as there is motive there is
separation of the i from what is and therefore no freedom the most noble leaders mentors and gurus in history have never forced their teachings but allowed their students the freedom to think about this purple elephant with a mohawk or not think about it in this video you learn the backwards law that belief claims and faith let's go that our ability to conceive the past and future causes us tremendous pain symbols like words science and religion can't explain the universe only joining the dance can listen to your body and allow your brain to be aware of
present experience instead of resisting it security doesn't exist but that doesn't mean you should abandon your life plans simply be aware that it's a cosmic game stop labeling and identifying things to eliminate the conflict between the i and your current reality defining reality is impossible be reality and invoking morality isn't effective by forcing it upon others but by accepting their freedom
