the weakness of my flesh

"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal." (knowyourmeme)

 

"What would Alan Watts have said about this Warhammer quote?"

Qwen3-Max:
"Alan Watts—philosopher, interpreter of Eastern thought, and critic of rigid dualisms—would likely have found this Warhammer quote a vivid illustration of what he often called the “illusion of separateness” and the Western obsession with transcending the body through control, domination, or mechanization.

He might have responded with gentle irony: “Ah, but who is it that craves the certainty of steel? Is it not the flesh itself, dreaming of becoming something else?”

Watts saw the body not as a weakness to be escaped, but as an expression of the universe experiencing itself. To him, the desire to replace organic impermanence with mechanical immortality would be a tragic misunderstanding—a refusal to participate in the flowing, impermanent dance of life. He often emphasized that trying to control or perfect existence through rigid structures (whether religious dogma, technological utopianism, or mechanical transcendence) only deepens suffering, because it denies the fundamental truth of anicca—impermanence.

He might have added: “The Machine is no more immortal than the river is solid. Both are patterns in flux—only one pretends it isn’t.”

From a Taoist or Zen perspective that Watts frequently drew upon, the quote reflects wu-wei’s opposite: a violent striving against nature, a rejection of softness, decay, and vulnerability as integral to wisdom. Watts valued the organic, the ambiguous, and the paradoxical. He’d likely see the speaker’s “salvation” as a form of spiritual exile—trading the living mystery for the dead certainty of gears.

And with a wry smile, he might quote his own words: “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
To seek refuge in steel is to miss the music altogether."