In counterpoint, the wisdom and knowledge that Watts delivers has massively helped me out of chronic mental health problems (being the middle class white target audience).
The thing I really enjoy about Watts, and what seems this article seem moot, is that lazy mysticism is half the point. He is offering a counterweight to social pressure and an 'age of anxiety' by suggesting new points of view in which desperate clawing and ladder climbing are absurd. He says very clearly not to take him too seriously, because he's not offering a new totalizing point where you should be anxious about nothing - just showing that there is an alternative, and you are poorer for not having considered it.
And if that doesn't work for you, no worries, he's a lazy mystic not a preacher.
The thing I really enjoy about Watts, and what seems this article seem moot, is that lazy mysticism is half the point. He is offering a counterweight to social pressure and an 'age of anxiety' by suggesting new points of view in which desperate clawing and ladder climbing are absurd. He says very clearly not to take him too seriously, because he's not offering a new totalizing point where you should be anxious about nothing - just showing that there is an alternative, and you are poorer for not having considered it.
And if that doesn't work for you, no worries, he's a lazy mystic not a preacher.
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