The Wes Cecil Podcast

Taoism offers a surprisingly powerful critique of the modern world - a world of which it had no conception. Fundamental principles that inform our societies - Rationality, Power, Wealth, Individuality, Rationality - play little or no role in the key ideals of Taoism. Hence, it offers an amazingly refreshing critique of our lives and our world.

Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.

Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil

Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AMERICAN CALVINISM

In this lecture I explore the deep and abiding influence of Calvinism on the American cultural outlook. Whether Christian or not, Americans believe in purity, the centrality of moral judgements, visible signs of success and more. These attitudes are rarely traced back to their true origin - the specific beliefs and social forms developed by John Calvin. America is a Calvinist country par excellence.

Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!

Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What of violent resistance? This is one of the most vexed questions surrounding the ethics and viability of resistance. What constitutes violence? When, if ever, is it justified? Does it actually work? It is clear that it often takes the application of some kind of force to get states to change, yet states claim only the state can deploy force. This fundamental disequilibrium between citizens and states creates a difficult and confusing challenge.

"A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."— Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (1919)

"Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man."— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

"Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all."— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651

"Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws..." — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689)

"The state is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class."— Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

"Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy."— Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1969)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Re’, Li, Wei, and Qi are types of power explored in Taoism. However, the types of power Taoism emphasizes is very different from, perhaps antithetical to the types of power generally promoted in Western civilization. Rather than control and authority, Taoism seeks harmony, effortlessness, ease and vitality.

The Chapters cited are Re’ 38, Li 33, Wei 72 and Qi 10.

Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.

Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil

Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Q & A - NIHILISTIC MATERIALISM

Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture IV: Nihilistic Materialism

Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!

Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are many critiques of the power of ideology to shape our perception of the world and freeze us in a sense of powerlessness. However, less discussed is that while we may feel nothing really changes, in many ways the world has changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time. When we reject our cultural presumptions about the world, we can liberate our past, presents and future.

A few selected texts:

Althusser Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus

Jameson Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Zizeck Ideology Today

Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.

Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Chapter two of Chuang Tzu, we read a clear questioning of the value of ‘Truth’ and the inability of the language to reliable capture the reality we experience. If we move from a concept of truth to one of engagement, discussion, reflection and conversation we are much closer to the Taoist approach to knowing than when we argue about ‘Truth’ or ‘Right’ or ‘Goodness’.

Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.

Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil

Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

NIHILISTIC MATERIALISM

That American culture is materialistic is an accurate but often unhelpful distinction as it is our particular kind of materialism that America manifests that is important to understand. In this lecture, I explore the peculiar Nihilistic elements that shape American materialism. Significantly, all the standard critiques of materialism - that material goods will not give your life meaning, that shopping is just coping mechanism for deeper ills, that the press of consumerism is driven largely by corporate greed - have little to no grip on the American psyche because everyone knows them and consumes anyway! America combines both a disbelief in consumerism with aggressive consumerism into a curious and counterintuitive set of outlooks and behaviors that shape important elements of American society.

Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!

Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As if just to illustrate the ideas we’ve been exploring, the students of France are out on the streets to protest the latest French government budget. Not only is this a repeat of some of the key elements that led to the revolt in May 1968, it also underlines the degree to which the government will go to not have to admit they have utterly failed to deliver on its many promises over the last 20 years. The joy of resistance is getting very real indeed.

Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.

Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The popular American conception of balance associated with Taoism is almost entirely misleading and very probably anti-thetical to the core principles of Taoism. While the ancient Chinese had a word for balance as in a balance beam or equal scales, this word never appears in the Tao Te Ching. Rather it uses the words for Harmony, Middle, Stillness and Equilibrium. Our concept of placing two things opposed to each other until they cancel out and become static is simply wrong within the conceptual space of Taoist thought.

Join Wes on Patreon for a deeper dive into the ideas we explore on the podcast. It’s a space for lifelong learners — with bonus lectures, course materials, peer discussion, and audio diaries from France. Wes is active in the community and often engages directly with listener questions.

Starting at $2/month: https://www.patreon.com/wescecil

Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.