The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“By all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another. Nor is the interval between these two nights an unclouded day, for the more we are able to feel pleasure, the more we are vulnerable to pain—and, whether in background or foreground, the pain is always with us.”

Watts takes a cold look at the reality of human life as presented from the modern scientific perspective. Gone are the days when people could easily believe in the myths of ancient religions, replaced instead by anxiety about death and meaninglessness. As dark as it sounds, the resultant insecurity from this existential position is not merely a curse. It is a blessing. For Watts, it is the opportunity to assess anew how we should think about this “spark of light.”

“If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.”

Watts consistently critiques modern society’s fast-paced obsession with forward progress. Satisfaction is endlessly delayed for greater material comfort, career success, etc. Instead, Watts promotes the power of the present moment, of which the future is only a part. Endlessly striving for the future entails an absence from the full reality of the present, which is where our happiness lies.

“Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them—for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.”

Just as he consistently criticizes traditional systems of religious beliefs, Watts identifies the same patterns in political ideologies like communism and fascism. Just like religious dogmatists, ideologues use their belief systems as cowardly tools to avoid confrontation with the anxiety of existential reality.