Alan Watts – The Myth Of The Automatic Universe Lyrics

Well now, in the course of time, in the evolution of Western thought.
The ceramic image of the world ran into trouble.
And changed into what I call the fully automatic image of the world.
In other words, Western science was based on the idea that there are laws of nature, and it got that idea from Judaism and Christianity and Islam.
That in other words, the potter, the maker of the world in the beginning of things laid down the laws, and the law of God, which is also the law of nature, is called the logos. And in Christianity, the logos is the second person of the Trinity, incarnate as Jesus Christ, who thereby is the perfect exemplar of the divine law.
So we have tended to think of all natural phenomena as responding to laws, as if, in other words, the laws of the world were like the rails on which a streetcar or a tram or a train runs, and these things exist in a certain way, and all events respond to these laws.
You know that limerick,
There was a young man who said
Damn, For it certainly seems that I am A creature that moves In determinate grooves.
Im not even a bus, Im a tram.
So heres this idea that theres kind of a plan, and everything responds and obeys that plan.
Well, in the 18th century, Western intellectuals began to suspect this idea.
And what they suspected is whether there is a lawmaker, whether there is an architect of the universe, and they found out, or they reasoned, that you dont have to suppose that there is.
Why?
Because the hypothesis of God does not help us to make any predictions.
In other words, lets put it this way if the business of science is to make predictions about whats going to happen, science is essentially prophecy.
Whats going to happen?
By studying the behavior of the past and describing it carefully, we can make predictions about whats going to happen in the future.
Thats really the whole of science.
And to do this, and to make successful predictions, you do not need God as a hypothesis.
Because it makes no difference to anything.
If you say
Everything is controlled by God, everything is governed by God, that doesnt make any difference to your prediction of whats going to happen.
And so what they did was simply drop that hypothesis.
But they kept the hypothesis of law.
Because if you can predict, if you can study the past and describe how things have behaved, and youve got some regularities in the behavior of the universe, you call that law.
Although it may not be law in the ordinary sense of the word, its simply regularity.
And so what they did was got rid of the lawmaker and kept the law.
And so the conceived the universe in terms of a mechanism.
Something, in other words, that is functioning according to regular, clocklike mechanical principles.
Newtons whole image of the world is based on billiards.
The atoms are billiard balls, and they bang each other around.
And so your behavior, every individual, is defined as a very, very complex arrangement of billiard balls being banged around by everything else.
And so behind the fully automatic model of the universe is the notion that reality itself is, to use the favorite term of 19th century scientists, blind energy.
In say the metaphysics of Ernst Hegel, and T.
H.
Huxley, the world is basically nothing but energy–blind, unintelligent force.
And likewise and parallel to this, in the philosophy of Freud, the basic psychological energy is libido, which is blind lust.
And it is only a fluke, it is only as a result of pure chances that resulting from the exuberance of this energy there are people.
With values, with reason, with languages, with cultures, and with love.
Just a fluke.
Like, you know, 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually type the Encyclopedia Britannica.
And of course the moment they stop typing the Encyclopedia Britannica, they will relapse into nonsense.
And so in order that that shall not happen, for you and I are flukes in this cosmos, and we like our way of life–we like being human–if we want to keep it, say these people, weve got to fight nature, because it will turn us back into nonsense the moment we let it.
So weve got to impose our will upon this world as if we were something completely alien to it, from outside.
And so we get a culture based on the idea of the war between man and nature.
And we talk about the conquest of space.
The conquest of Everest.
And the great symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer.
The rocket–you know, compensation for the sexually inadequate male.
So were going to conquer space.
You know were in space already, way out.
If anybody cared to be sensitive and let whats outside space come to you, you can, if your eyes are clear enough.
Aided by telescopes, aided by radio astronomy, aided by all the kinds of sensitive instruments we can devise.
Were as far out in space as were ever going to get.
But, yknow, sensitivity isnt the pitch.
Especially in the WASP culture of the United States.
We define manliness in terms of aggression, you see, because were a little bit frightened as to whether or not were really men.
And so we put on this great show of being a tough guy.
Its completely unnecessary.
If you have what it takes, you dont need to put on that show.
You dont need to beat nature into submission.
Why be hostile to nature?
Because after all, you ARE a symptom of nature.
You, as a human being, you grow out of this physical universe in just exactly the same way that an apple grows off an apple tree.
So lets say the tree which grows apples is a tree which apples, using apple as a verb.
And a world in which human beings arrive is a world that peoples.
And so the existence of people is symptomatic of the kind of universe we live in.
Just as spots on somebodys skin is symptomatic of chicken pox.
Just as hair on a head is symptomatic of whats going on in the organism.
But we have been brought up by reason of our two great myths–the ceramic and the fully automatic–not to feel that we belong in the world.
So our popular speech reflects it.
We say
I came into this world. You didnt.
You came out of it.
We say
Face facts. We talk about encounters with reality, as if it was a head-on meeting of completely alien agencies.
And the average person has the sensation that he is a somewhat that exists inside a bag of skin.
The center of consciousness which looks out at this thing, and what the hells it going to do to me?
You see?
I recognize you, you kind of look like me, and Ive seen myself in a mirror, and you look like you might be people. So maybe youre intelligent and maybe you can love, too.
Perhaps youre all right, some of you are, anyway.
Youve got the right color of skin, or you have the right religion, or whatever it is, youre OK.
But there are all those people over in Asia, and Africa, and they may not really be people.
When you want to destroy someone, you always define them as unpeople. Not really human.
Monkeys, maybe.
Idiots, maybe.
Machines, maybe, but not people.
But we have this hostility to the external world because of the superstition, the myth, the absolutely unfounded theory that you, yourself, exist only inside your skin.
Now I want to propose another idea altogether.