Hello and welcome to Effortless English. This is A.J. Hoag in San Francisco, California.

Today's podcast will be a little different. I'm going to try something new. This time I'm going to split the podcast into two

parts. Part one will have the basic article and part two will have the vocabulary

explanations that way if you don't need or don't want the explanations you can

skip them.

This is the article section.

This part is going to be only the article,

and the next part will be the vocabulary. Today's podcast is titled Alan Watts on Intelligence.

Previously I wrote about the three basic principles of Taoist philosophy, namely Tao itself, the course of nature,

Wu Wei, not forcing, the water course character of the course of nature,

and Day, the seemingly magical power that comes

of following the water course way and taking the line of least resistance.

Following the watercourse Way argues always for a high order of intelligence,

for it is more intelligent to sail a boat than to row it,

even though sailing is the lazier way of doing it.

Technologically, it is easier to use the wind than to work against it.

But in the West, we haven't really awakened to the fact that it would be much

more intelligent for us to use the sun, the wind, and the tides as sources of energy rather

than using fossil fuels. And so we live in a state of foolish

ignorance. Alan Watts. I love this metaphor from Alan Watts. It is applicable to a wide range of life experiences.

In fact, it is this Alan Watts quote that inspired the name Effortless English.

I originally wanted to use the name Effortless English. I originally wanted to use the name Effortless

...