1. Paranoid thought: Alan Watts, who was once invited to address a US military academy, was part of a wider cultural movement to move Buddhism/Taoism/Zen away from militarism and martial culture.
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3. This interpretation of Eastern religions is highly tendentious to say the least. But there are plenty of translations of, say, the Tao Te Ching, floating about that take flagrant liberties in inserting pacifistic or feminist ideas into the text.
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4. The Tao Te Ching is notoriously difficult to translate, but by comparing the different versions you can clearly see there’s a “California Tao” or “California Zen” that just so happens to support all the tenants of our hegemonic ideology.
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5. And yet, looking to the East, I see Buddhist/Taoist/Zen Buddhist countries that are martial, enforce genders norms, and militaristic. I suppose the hollowing out of the Eastern religions partly reflects the way technocratic liberalism hollows out all religions.
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6. You look at the CofE, Reform Judaism, “liberal” Muslims, “California Zen”, and you find that these people sing from the same liberal technocratic songsheet. The religion is a just a different botttle for the same wine.
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7. Nonetheless, the Eastern religions seem to hold a particular attraction for technocratic liberalism—perhaps because ideas like the Tao are highly ambiguous and can be adopted for the hegemonic ideology.
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8. If you want to be really paranoid, you could ask yourself why Alan Watts videos are so prevelant on YouTube and why they seem curiously resistant to copyright violation measures...
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9. California, the military-industrial complex, Eastern religions, mass propaganda, technocratic liberalism, the Internet....well, now I’m into proper conspiracy territory. It’s more likely that these ideas are all simpatico and amenable to liberalism.
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10. Religious syncratism and things like utilitarianism were already well underway in the 19th century. Eastern influence on California through Chinese immigration would make it the natural place for a hybrid East-West religion to emerge.
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11. (*read Unitarianism for utilitarianism in the above tweet.) Nonetheless, I still think there’s a connection between “California Zen”, trends in the upper classes like ayahuasca, technocratic liberalism, technology industries, and the mil-industrial complex.
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12. If only in terms of cultural history. Still, it’s funny to think of Alan Watts as the spearhead of a psychological campaign to alter the consensus morality. Here ends my paranoid theorising.
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End of conversation
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