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Alan Watts | Tao of Philosophy | Seeing Through the Net (1-2)

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well now what I want to do is have a

mutual brain picking session and I'm

gonna start the ball rolling by saying

why I as a philosopher I'm interested in

many things that you were all probably

interested in professionally basically

what we're going to talk about I suppose

is the problem of control as exemplified

in the ancient Latin question Chris

custodia custodiet Ipsos who guards the

guards now we we know that we're living

in an age when there's been an enormous

proliferation of techniques before

subjecting every kind of natural process

outside the human skin and now

increasingly inside the human skin to

some form of rational control and as we

succeed in doing this it also becomes

apparent that we've we're failing that

the process becomes of such a high

degree of complexity that we begin to

feel that we're standing in our own way

that everybody complains the state of

affairs in modern world in the

technological world is so complicated

that nobody can understand it and nobody

really knows what to do that for example

you want to run a small business and you

find you run into such enormous legal

hassles that you need so many

secretaries to do

paperwork that you can hardly do the

business that you're trying to run a

hospital but that you have to spend so

much time making records and writing

things down on paper that you don't have

much time to practice medicine that

you're trying to run a university and

the requirements the recording the in

endless red tape of the Registrar's

Office and the administration building

is such that the actual work of research

and teaching is seriously hampered and

so the individual increasingly feels

himself obstructed by his own cautiousness

cautiousness

this is basically what it is now ah to

explain myself first of all because most

of you are strangers to me I am a

philosopher who has for many years been

interested in the mutual fructification

of Eastern cultures and Western cultures

studying oriental ideas not in the

spirit of saying to the West you ought

to be converted to oriental ideas but in

the spirit of saying you don't

understand the basic assumptions of your

own culture if your own culture is the

only culture you know everybody operates

on certain basic assumptions but very

few people know what they are you can

say very often encounter the sort of

character who was an American

businessman and he says well I'm a

practical businessman I am I believe in

getting results and things done all is

thinking and highfalutin logic and non

senses of no concern to me now I know

that the practical basic assumptions the

metaphysics of that man can be defined

as pragmatism as a school of philosophy

but it's bad pragmatism because he's

never thought it through and so it's

very difficult to see to get down - what

are your basic assumptions what do you

mean by the good luck

what do you mean by consistency what do

you mean by rationality the only way of

finding out what you mean by these

things is by contrasting the way you

look at something by the way it's looked

at in another culture and therefore we

have to find cultures which are in some

ways as sophisticated as our own but as

different from our own as possible and

of course for this purpose I was thought

that the Chinese were optimal and the

Indians the East Indians and that by

studying the ideas of these people by

studying their life goals we could

become more aware of our own it's the

old principle of triangulation you don't

establish the situation of a particular

object unless you observe it from two

particularly different points of view

and thereby calculate its actual

distance from you so by looking at what

we are pleased to call reality the

physical world from this basic stand

points of different cultures I think

we're in a better position to know where

we are and if we only have one single

line of sight and therefore this has

been my interest in my background and

arising out of this there has come a

further question which I would call the

problems of human ecology how is man to

be best related to his environment

especially in circumstances where we are

in possession of an extremely powerful

technology and have therefore the

capacity to change our environment far

more than anyone else has ever been able

to do so are we going to end up not by

civilizing the world but by Los Angeles

in it in other words are we going to

foul our own nest as a result of

technology but all this gets down to the

basic question is really what are you

going to do if your god if in other

words you find yourself in charge

of the world through technological

powers and instead of leaving evolution

to what we used to call in the 19th

century the blind processes of nature

that was begging the question to call

them blind but in in it at any rate we

say we're not going to leave evolution

anymore to the blind forces of nature

but now we're going to direct it

ourselves because we are increasingly

developing safe control over genetic

systems control over the nervous system

control over all kinds of systems then

simply what do you want to do with it

but most people don't know what they

want and I've never even seriously

confronted the question of what they

want you ask a group of students to sit

down and write a solid paper of 20 pages

on what is your idea of heaven what

would you really like to happen if you

could make it happen and that's the

first thing that starts people really

thinking because you soon realize that a

lot of the things you think you would

want are not things he wanted all

supposing just for the sake of

illustration you have the power to dream

every night any dream you wanted to

dream and you could of course arranged

for one night of dreams to be 75 years

of subjective time or any number of

years of subjective time what would you

do well of course you'd start out by

fulfilling every wish you would have

routes and orgies and all the most

magnificent food and sexual partners and

everything you could possibly imagine in

that direction when you've got tired of

that after several nights you would

switch a bit and you'd soon find

yourself involved in an adventure

and contemplating great works of art

fantastic mathematical conceptions you

would soon be rescuing princesses from

dragons and all sorts of things like

that no one I could say now look tonight

what we're going to do is we're going to

forget this dream as a dream then we're

going to be really shocked and when you

woke up from that one you'd say whew

wasn't that an adventure then you would

think more and more far out ways to get

involved and let go of control

knowing that should always come back to

Center in the end but while you were

involved in the dream you wouldn't know

your company you were going to come back

to Center be in control and so

eventually you would be dreaming a dream

in which you found yourselves all

sitting around in this room listening to

me talking all involved with the

and maybe that's what you're doing but

here's the difficulty you see the

difficulty is control are you wise

enough to play at being God and to

understand what that question means

we've got to go back to metaphysical

assumptions underlying Western common

sense and whether you are a Jew or a

Christian or an agnostic or an atheist

you are not uninfluenced by the whole

tradition of Western culture the models

of the universe which it is employed

which influenced our very language the

structure of our thought the very

constitution of logic which are going

the Western model of the universe is

political and engineering or

architectural it is natural for a child

to ask its mother how as I made it would

be inconceivable for a Chinese child to

ask how was I made it might ask how was

I grown or how did I grow but not how

was I made as if I were an artifact

something put together something which

is a construct but all Western thought

is based on the idea that the universe

is a construct and even when we got rid

of the idea of the constructor the

personal God continued to think of the

world in terms of a machine in terms say

of Newtonian mechanics and later in

terms of what we call quantum mechanics

although I find it rather difficult to

understand how quantum theory is in any

sense mechanics it's it's much more like

organics which is to me a different

concept however that may be it has

percolated you see into the roots of our

common sense that the world is a

construct isn't artifact and therefore

as one understands the operations of a

machine by analysis of its parts by

separating them into their original bits

we have bitted the cosmos and see

everything going on in terms of bits

bits of information and I found that

this is extremely fruitful in enabling

us to control what's happening after all

the whole of Western technology is the

result of bidding let's suppose you know

you want to eat a chicken you can't eat

the whole chicken at once you have to

bite it you have to reduce it to bits

but you don't get a cut-up fryer out of

an egg

it doesn't come that way so what has

happened is this but we don't know the

origins of all this it's maybe go back

thousands of years the way we develop

the art of thinking which is essentially

calculus is this the universe as it

comes in nature the physical universe is

something like a Rorschach blood it's

all Wiggles we who live in cities I'm

not really used to this because we build

everything in straight lines and

rectangles and so on wherever you see

this sort of thing you know human beings

have been around because they're always

trying to straighten things out

but nature itself is clouds its water as

the outlines of continents as mountains

is biological existences and all of them

wiggle and wiggly things are to human

because we want to figure it out and it

is as if therefore some ancient

fisherman one day held up his net and

looked at the world through the net

he said my just think of that there I

can see the view and it's one and that

peak of that mountain is one two three

four five six holes across and the base

is one two three four five holes down

now I've got its number see and so the

lines of latitude had longitude the

lines of celestial and terrestrial

latitude and longitude the whole idea of

a matrix of a looking at things through

graph paper painted on printed on

cellophane is the basic idea of

measurement this is the way we calculate

we break down the wiggliness of the

world into comprehensible countable geometrical

geometrical

and thereby figurative and constructed

in those terms and this is so successful

up to a point that we can of course come

to imagine that this is the way the

physical world really is discrete

discontinuous full of points in in fact

a mechanism but I want to just put into

your mind the notion that this may be

the prejudice of a certain personality

type you see in in the history of

philosophy and poetry and art we always

find the interchange of two personality

types which I call prickles and goo the

prickly people advocates of intellectual

poppin ism they want a rigor they want

precise statistics and they have a

certain clipped attitude in their voices

and you know this very well in academic

circles where there are people who are

always edgy like that and they accuse

other people of being disgustingly vague

and miasmic and mystical but the vague

miasma can mystical people accused the

prickly people of being mere skeletons

with no flesh on their bones and they

say to you you just rattle you're not

really a human being you know the words

but you don't know the music and so

therefore if you belong to the prickly

type you hope that the ultimate

constituent of matter is particles if

you belong to the gooey type you hope

it's waves

if you prickly you're a classicist and

if you're gooey you're a romanticist and

they're going back into medieval

philosophy if you're prickly or a

nominalist if you're gooey you're a

realist and so it goes but we know very

well that this natural universe is

neither prickles nor goo exclusively

it's gooey prickles and prickly goo

and you see it all depends on your level

of magnification if you've got your

magnification on something so that the

focus is clear you've got a prickly

point of view you've got structure shape

clearly outline sharply defined a little

out of focus it's gonna go blue there

and you look goo but we're always

playing with the two because it's like

the question is is the world basically

stuff like matter or is it basically

structure well we find out of course

today that in science we don't consider

the idea of matter of just any of there

being some sort of stuff because

supposing you wanted to describe stuff

in what terms would you describe it

you always have to describe it in terms

of structure something comfortable

something that can be designated as a

pattern so we never get to any basic

stuff it seems to me that this way of

thinking is based on a form of

consciousness which we could best call

scanning the capacity to divide

experiences into bits is somehow related

to a physical facility which corresponds

to sweeping a radar beam or a spotlight

over the environment the advantage of

the spotlight as it gives you intensely

floodlight

by comparison has less intensity but if

you examine say this room were in total

darkness and you use the spotlight very

thin beam and you scan the room with it

you would have to retain in memory all

the areas over which it passed and then

by an additive process

would make out the contours of the room

and it seems to me that this is

something in which civilized man both in

the east and in the West has specialized

in a method of paying attention to

things which we call noticing and

therefore it's highly selective it picks

out its Punk t'v it picks out features

in the environment which we say are

noteworthy and which we therefore

notation of words the notation of

numbers or such a notation say as

algebra or music so that we notice those

things only those things for which we

have notation when a child very often

child will point at something and say to

its parents what's that and they're not

clear what the child is pointing to the

child has pointed to something which we

consider is not a thing

the child has pointed to an area say of

funny pattern on a dirty wall and as

noticed a figure on it but the child

doesn't have a word for it and says

what's that and the adult says oh that's

just a mess because that doesn't count

for us as a thing you've come through

this to the understanding what do you

mean by a thing it's very fascinating to

ask children what do you mean by a thing

and they don't know because it's one of

the unexamined suppositions of the

well everybody knows what an event is

because a thing is a think it's a unit

of thought like an inch is a unit of

measurement and so we thing the world

that is to say in order to measure a

curve you have to reduce it to point

instance and apply the calculus so in

exactly the same way in order to discuss

or talk about the universe you have to

reduce it to things but each thing or

think is as it were one grasp of that

spotlight thank Jen Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe

Joe Joe like this you see so we reduce

the infinite wiggliness of the world to

grasps or bits we're getting back to

biting you see the idea of the teeth to

grasps of thought and so we thereby

describe your world in terms of things

just as that fisherman could describe

his view by the number of net whole /

through which the view was showing and

this has been the immensely and

apparently successful enterprise of all

technological culture superbly

the Western model of the universe is

political and engineering or

architectural and therefore as one

understands the operations of a machine

by analysis of its parts by separating

them into their original bits we have

bitted the cosmos and see everything

going on in terms of bits bits of

information and I found that this is

extremely fruitful in enabling us to

control what's happening after all the

whole of Western technology is the

result of bidding and so we thing the

world that is to say in order to measure

a curve you have to reduce it to point

instance and apply the calculus so in

exactly the same way in order to discuss

or talk about the universe you have to

reduce it to things but each thing or

think is as it were one grasp of that

spotlight thank Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe Joe

Joe Joe like this is he so we reduce the

infinite wiggliness of the world to

grasps or bits we're getting back to

biting you see the idea of the teeth to

grasps of thought and so we thereby

describe your world in terms of things

just as that fisherman could describe

his view by the number of net whole /

through which the view was showing but

the problem that arises is is this first

of all very obviously everybody knows I

already need to mention it go to the

science of Medicine

you get a specialist who really

understands the function of the

gallbladder and he studied gall bladders

gall bladders gall bladders ad infinitum

and he really thinks he knows all about

it but whenever he looks at a human

being he sees him in terms of gall

bladder and so if he operates on the

gall bladder he may do so very

knowledgeably about that particular area

of the organism but he does not foresee

the unpredictable effects of this operation

operation

in other connected areas because the

human beings gall bladder is not a thing

in the same way as the a sparkplug in a

car can be extracted and a new one

replaced because the system isn't the

same there is a fundamental difference

between a mechanism and an organism

mechanism is assembled you add this bit

to that bit to that bit to that bit but

an organism grows that is to say when

you watch in a microscope a solution in

which crystals are formed you don't see

this thing of little bits coming in

coming and coming and joining each other

and finally making up a shape you see a

solution where well it's like when you

watch a photographic plate developing a

suddenly all the whole area which you're

watching seems to organize itself to

develop to make sense moving from the

relatively simple and gooey to the

relatively structured and prickly but

not by addition so then

if we are trying to control and

understand the world through conscious

attention which is a scanning system

which takes in everything bit bit bit

bit bit bit bit bit bit what we're going

to run into is that if that's the only

method we rely on everything is going to

appear increasingly too complicated to

manage so that you get for example let's

take the problem of the electronic

industry the catalogs of products that

are being produced over the world by the

electronic industry who has read all the

catalogs how do you know where you've

got a something you're working on

whether it's patented or not

who else has taken out a patent has

anybody had time to read all the catalogs

catalogs

nobody has they're just voluminous and

it's exactly the same in almost any

other field there's an information

explosion like a population explosion

how on earth are you going to scan all

that information yes of course you can

get computers to help you in this

direction but by Parkinson's Law the

soon sooner you become more efficient in

doing this the more the thing is going

to develop so that you will have to have

more efficient computers still to

assimilate all the information you'll be

ahead but only for a short time so you

see this is problem of the sort of

competition of consciousness of it's how

fast can you go duty duty duty duty duty

duty duty duty duty duty duty do and

keep track of it to see and say I'm a

got a good memory I can keep track of

that and you say to you I bet you you

can't I'll go more complicated than you

so you let musicians do this where

drummers you know and they get things

going and they start and they and so

long as they count and

some musicians do count it's crazy but

they do and they can't count count and

they out complicate each other to the

point where you can't retain it any

longer in memory so you say okay if I

can't retain it we've got this gadget

here that can and we've got these

marvelous mechanical memories than they

will retained and they will go much more

fancy they'll go this duty duty duty at

a colossal speed like that you see but

is the same old problem because you get

something that can outdo that so we end

up asking yeah yeah but supposing there

were some other way of understanding

things let's go back from the spotlight

to the floodlight to the extraordinary

capacity of the human nervous system to

comprehend situations instantaneously

without analysis I'll just say without

verbal or numerical symbolism of the

situation in order to understand it I

hope you understand what I mean we do do

that we have this curious ability of

pattern recognition which the mechanical

systems have only in a very primitive

way Xerox have put out a machine which

recognizes figures written in almost

anyone's handwriting provided their

handwriting is fairly grade-school and

normal but computer has a terrible time

trying to recognize the letter A when

it's printed in say sans-serif gothic

longhand or whatever kind of a you may

write the human recognizes instantly

this pattern but the computer is still

at a disadvantage here

it seems to lack a kind of capacity I

would call field organization because

it's all funked if it's digital it is

but that that that like a newspaper

photograph you know which when you look

at it under a microscope is all dots now

so the problem the problem is this in

developing technology are we leaving out

of consideration our strongest suit

see we are at a situation where the

brain is still not really worked out by

even the most competent neurologists it

puzzles me they can't give a model of

the brain in numerical or verbal

language now you are that you see you

are this thing you yourself are this

thing which you yourself can't figure

out in the same way that I cannot touch

the tip of this finger with the tip of

this finger I can't bite my own teeth

but I who is attempting to touch the tip

of this finger with this finger am by

the sheer complexity of my structure far

more evolved than any system which I can

imagine this is in a way slightly akin

to the girdle theorem that you can't

have a of say a logic which defines its

own axioms the axioms of any given

system must always be defined in terms

of a higher system all right so you are

the most complex thing that has yet been

encountered in the cosmos and you can't

now you is suppose we're going to try to

do that and become as it were completely

transparent to ourselves so that we

could entirely understand the

organization on the mechanics of our own

brains what happens when we do that well

you're in the wheel you're back in the

situation of God when you're God what

are you gonna do when you're God you

know what you're going to do you're

gonna say to yourself man get lost

because what you want is a surprise and

when you figured everything out there

won't be any surprises you'll be

but on the other hand a person I would

say who is really functioning completely

he is basically a person who trusts his

own brains and permits his brain to

operate at a more optimal level in other

words he knows how to think things out

but he makes his best discoveries

without thinking in other words you all

know very well the processes of creative

invention you've got a problem you think

it over and you can't find out any

answer to it because the digital system

of thinking is too simple too clumsy to

deal with it

it's more complex there are more

variables than can be kept in in mind at

one time so you say I'll sleep on or

you'll go to the Institute of Advanced

Studies at Princeton of behavioral

sciences at Stanford where they pay you

to goof off which is highly excellent

idea and you moon around and you've got

a blackboard and you look out the window

and pick your nose and so on and your

brain eventually hands you the solution

to the problem I knew immediately

because you have technical knowledge you

recognize that's a solution but then

naturally you'll go back and check it

and you work the bit-by-bit form of

thinking on it and see now does it come

out in those terms and if it does

everybody will agree with you

yes that's the answer but if it doesn't

come out in those terms they won't agree

with you because you haven't subjected

it to the socially acceptable

traditional form of animal and analyzing

knowledge but here's the problem it

takes an awful long time to check these

things out

it takes an awful long time to arrive at

the solution which you've got like that

by a purely calculative process most of

the situation's of life are such that

they don't wait for us to make up our

minds so that an enormous amount of

carefully worked out scientific

knowledge is trivial they all very well

very finely worked out but much too late

how's life presents you life comes at

you from all sides

all over everywhere at once and the only

thing you've got to deal with that is

I'm not saying this to put down all this

marvelous work of calculation brought to

immense sophistication electronically

and so on not at all because actually

you people are the first people to

understand the limitations of your own

kind of knowledge and you're going to

have to tell the politicians about this

they don't understand they may think

that this kind of knowledge is the

answer to everything and I think most of

you know it isn't which is not something

I repeat against technology it's only

saying that when you walk you put your

right foot forward and that's fine but

then you must put your left foot forward

so let's say that they did a great

technological Enterprise has been

putting the right foot forward but you

must bring up the left foot that is to

say bring up revaluation a new respect

for the organic type of organization

which is incomprehensible to

technological thinking but which always

that by itself doesn't work because

after you bring the left foot up you've

again got to bring up the right foot the

analytic after GU comes brickel's after

cripples comes do you have to keep this

thing up I think our danger present time

is that we are so heady so delighted

with the results of cripples that we've

got to let back a little bit of goo into

the system

well now what we've got to try and do is

I think to work out a way of making the

brain itself more efficient and this is

the thing that civilized education has

neglected Lyn white like to quote him

again used to say that the academic

world today only values three kinds of

intelligence verbal intelligence

mnemonic intelligence in other words

good remembering and computational

intelligence said it entirely neglects

kinesthetic intelligence social

intelligence and he had at least seven

kinds of intelligence I forget what they

all were but it is this extraordinary

to say to engage in pattern recognition

and in solving instantly certain complex

the trouble is when you do something you

don't know how to do you've got a non

repeatable experiment in a certain sense

in other words you can't explain to

someone else how to put it together but

you can do it like you can open and

close your hand without any knowledge of

physiology do it every time

whoops I don't know how I do it I just

do it you see so we have an enormous

potential of intelligence of knowing how

to do all sorts of things which to the

extent that we are academically minded

people we won't allow ourselves to do

because we can't explain you know there

for example is a way of cooling a

brazing furnace it's very simple but

Engineers say it's theoretically

impossible it can't happen it's like

bees can't fly by the laws of

aerodynamics but they do so the rather

on linear thinking is going to destroy

the environment it's going to become too

complicated to handle man is going to be

like the dinosaur which had to have a

brain in its head and a brain in its

rump because it was so big you know the

caveman kept up dinosaur and when he

went to bed at night he had hump it on

the tail with a club and it did scream

at 8 o'clock in the morning it seems to

be we're getting into that kind of

saurian situation with our technology

so the question is are we going to foul

things up by insisting on using linear

input information and controlling it as

the dominant tool of controlling the

world or can we master all that as we

have done and still use the linear input

and analysis but with a fundamental

trust in our power to assimilate

multiple input although we really don't

know how we do it and my point is that

you can't find an absolute which you can

pin down you see so there always remains

in any human operation the the basic

central thing which you can't pin down

because it's you just as the teeth can't

bite themselves now the assumption of

judeo-christian culture is that man in

his nature is sinful and therefore can't

be trusted the assumption of at least

ancient Chinese culture

is that man in his essential

is good and therefore has to be trusted

because they say to us if you can't

trust your own basic nature you can't

really rely on the idea that you're

untrustworthy therefore you are

hopelessly fouled up so this has amazing

political and other consequences this a

different assumption if we say no we

human beings are fallible and basically

selfish and really really fundamentally

evil and therefore we need law and order

we need a control system to put us in

order we thereby project these control

systems into the church or into the

police or into somebody who are really

ourselves disguised see it's like

daylight saving time everybody could

simply get up an hour earlier but

instead of doing that we alter the clock

because the clock is a kind of authority

and I would say well the clock says it's

time for you to get up and the the

Indian America more Indians laugh at the

pale faces because they say pale face he

doesn't know when he's hungry until he

looks at his watch

and so in this way we become clock

dominated and the abstract system takes

over from the physical organic situation

and and this is my big pitch if I'm

going to make a big pitch is that we've

run into a cultural situation well we've

confused the symbol with the physical

reality the money with the wealth and

the menu with the dinner and we're

starving on eating menus hopping on

eating menus having on eating menus

having on eating menus having on eating

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