Sometimes during the five minute drive to the market--only because there's no traffic at 8am on Sunday--I turn on public radio to see what flavor baloney they're selling. Since my radio is normally set to auxiliary (for my ipod or my phone), I have to switch it to FM where it's normally set to NPR. Today, however, it was tuned to KPFK which used to be an anti-establishment radio station when I moved here 12 years ago but since 2016 has grown ever more woke, sadly.
If you listen early enough on Sunday mornings to KPFK you're treated to old recordings of Alan Watts. For those who don't know who Alan Watts is, he was a highly popular author, lecturer, and philosopher who introduced the west to the wisdom of eastern thought. Unlike other spiritual teachers, he never exhorted anyone to behave morally or ethically.
(He didn't TELL you what to do, but perhaps gently persuaded you in that direction by right thinking.) What he did engagingly was point out how human beings, because of having a one-track mind, fail to grasp how our concepts like the past, and looking linearly at anything prevents us from being truly free and legitimately comfortable in the universe. (Whenever I go down the Alan Watts rabbit hole I feel mildly woozy, as if relaxed on a chaise lounge, lulled by the tranquilizing strains of a concerto.)
This morning when I tuned in he was talking about trust--about how difficult it was for most people because it left one in a potentially vulnerable state. People don't trust, he said, because they're afraid of being taken advantage of, fearful of being betrayed or conned. But trust, he countered, is the glue that holds humanity together, it unites us so that we can accomplish together what we can't do on our own, it allows us to be at peace in the world. (And love, he said, is what allows us to forgive and to heal ourselves and others.) He likened it to gambling: you choose to trust, knowing you could lose, but also betting that what you could win would be worth the loss.