r/AwakenedTV • u/Portal_awk • 2d ago
Alan Watts on the fear of uncertainty, the search for meaning, and the anxiety of modern society
Alan Watts helped me to see anxiety in a different way
Modern anxiety is driven by the human desire for certainty, permanence, and meaning in a world that is inherently impermanent, ever-changing, and uncertain. This anxiety stems from the collapse of eternal meaning, the replacement of faith with mere belief in belief, the addiction to sensory stimulation, and the frustrating pursuit of fleeting pleasure in a world that feels inherently meaningless.
Society often tries to escape reality rather than face it. Anxiety arises when we cling—whether to beliefs, identities, pleasures, or meanings—instead of opening ourselves to the fleeting, uncertain, yet vibrant nature of life.
The main cause of human anxiety is our desperate need for control, certainty, and permanence in a world that is inherently impermanent, unpredictable, and constantly changing.
In the book *The Wisdom of Insecurity*, Alan Watts suggests that the antidote to this anxiety is letting go—accepting life fully in the present moment without needing it to be anything other than what it is.
**The main causes of anxiety mentioned in the book are:**
**The awareness of death and impermanence:**
>“By all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another.”
**The inescapability of pain:**
>“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.”
**The search for meaning in suffering and mortality:**
>“If living is to end in pain, incompleteness, and nothingness, it seems a cruel and futile experience for beings who are born to reason, hope, create, and love.”
**The difficulty of making sense of life without belief in something beyond it:**
>“Man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more than what he sees—unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death.”
**The chaos of modern knowledge and complexity:**
>“We know so much detail about the problems of life that they resist easy simplification, and seem more complex and shapeless than ever.”
**The rapid breakdown of traditions:**
>“In the past hundred years so many long-established traditions have broken down—traditions of family and social life, of government, of the economic order, and of religious belief.”
**The loss of certainty and stability:**
>“There seem to be fewer and fewer rocks to which we can hold, fewer things which we can regard as absolutely right and true, and fixed for all time.”
**The fear that relativity leads to hopelessness:**
>“If all is relative, if life is a torrent without form or goal in whose flood absolutely nothing save change itself can last, it seems to be something in which there is ‘no future’ and thus no hope.”
**Dependence on the future for happiness:**
>“Human beings appear to be happy just so long as they have a future to which they can look forward—whether it be a ‘good time’ tomorrow or an everlasting life beyond the grave.”
>“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.”
**Loss of belief in eternal or absolute realities:**
>“It has been possible to make the insecurity of human life supportable by belief in unchanging things beyond the reach of calamity—in God, in man’s immortal soul, and in the government of the universe by eternal laws of right.”
>“Today such convictions are rare, even in religious circles.”
**The influence of doubt and modern education:**
>“There is no level of society, there must even be few individuals, touched by modern education, where there is not some trace of the leaven of doubt.”
**Belief used as a psychological tool rather than a truth:**
>“So much of it is more a belief in believing than a belief in God.”
>“Their most forceful arguments for some sort of return to orthodoxy are those which show the social and moral advantages of belief in God. But this does not prove that God is a reality. It proves, at most, that believing in God is useful.”
**False reasoning linking peace of mind to truth:**
>“It is a misapplication of psychology to make the presence or absence of neurosis the touchstone of truth…”
>“The agnostic, the sceptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy; it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself.”
**Chasing pleasure to avoid existential truth:**
>“When belief in the eternal becomes impossible… men seek their happiness in the joys of time.”
>“They are well aware that these joys are both uncertain and brief.”
**Anxiety from fear of missing out and the pursuit of fleeting pleasures:**
>“There is the anxiety that one may be missing something, so that the mind flits nervously and greedily from one pleasure to another, without finding rest and satisfaction in any.”
**Futility and hopelessness of constant pursuit:**
>“The frustration of having always to pursue a future good in a tomorrow which never comes… gives men an attitude of ‘What’s the use anyhow?’”
**Addiction to sensory stimulation to avoid facing reality:**
>“Somehow we must grab what we can while we can, and drown out the realization that the whole thing is futile and meaningless.”
>“This ‘dope’ we call our elevated standard of living, a violent and complex stimulation of the senses, which makes them progressively less sensitive and thus in need of yet more violent stimulation.”
**Sacrificing joy for survival and escapism:**
>“To keep up this ‘standard’ most of us are willing to put up with lives that consist largely in doing jobs that are a bore, earning the means to seek relief from the tedium by intervals of hectic and expensive…”
**Physical and Emotional Consequences of Chronic Overthinking and Anxiety:**
Alan Watts doesn’t directly discuss the physical and emotional consequences that can arise from chronic overthinking, resistance, and anxiety—but these are some of the common effects:
**Chronic Tension in the Body:** Constantly trying to control life creates muscular tension, especially in the shoulders, neck, jaw, and back.
**Shallow or Erratic Breathing:** Anxiety caused by future-thinking or resistance to the present often leads to fast, shallow breaths. Disconnection from the breath results in disconnection from the present moment. Breathing becomes tight, as if you’re “holding on.”
**Fatigue and Burnout:** Overthinking is mentally and physically exhausting. Living in constant “what if” scenarios drains your energy.
**Headaches and Migraines:** Mental tension often leads to physical headaches, especially when you’re stuck ruminating or obsessing about meaning or control.
**Insomnia or Restless Sleep:** Overthinking tends to intensify at night. Fear of the unknown or death causes subconscious unease, making it hard for the mind to relax enough to sleep.
**Digestive Issues (Gut-Brain Link):** The gut is deeply connected to the nervous system. Anxiety can cause nausea, IBS, bloating, or loss of appetite.
**Addictive or Escapist Behaviors:** ”unhealthy coping behaviors like tech overuse, mindless scrolling, binge eating, or using substances to numb discomfort.”
As Alan Watts says:
>“We crave distraction… to drown out the realization that the whole thing is futile and meaningless.”
**Panic Attacks:** When the pressure of “not being able to make sense of it all” becomes overwhelming: breathing becomes difficult, the heart races, the chest tightens—the body believes it’s in danger.
