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.
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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