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

Using St. Augustine as a point of reference, Watts indicates that many of the most fundamental metaphysical questions cannot be answered with clearcut definitions spoken in propositional form. One may know what reality is, but be totally unable to communicate that knowledge in a satisfactory manner. In some cases, thinking can get in the way of direct experience: “We know God all the time—but when we begin to think about it we don’t” (55).

“The Wisdom of the Body” is about recognizing and getting in touch with knowledge that is not stored in conscious awareness, but is, rather, instinctual and organic. Watts believes this kind innate and subconscious wisdom is unfairly maligned. We let this understanding waste away while we pursue, instead, a “brainy economy” (61). Watts believes that the “special disease of civilized man” (57) consists in the unnatural schism between brain and body; he condemns the concept of the will, which he associates with the brainy disease that separates us from instinctual wisdom.

Watts then discusses the restless insatiability of human desire and its connection to the frustration we feel when constantly in pursuit of some future good.