Shows
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: Weight, Weigher and Measure - Ep. 8When our social narratives fail us, we are thrown back onto the values we create and defend. We can, and should, be the final arbiter of our world.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.2025-07-1653 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato's Symposium: Agathon and Socrates - Ep. 7The final set-up for Socrates’ speech establishes both the importance of one who knows above generally accepted wisdom as well as the complete dismissal of the mythological concepts as presented so far. Plato has Socrates present a stunning refutation of the whole idea that what everyone has said so far can actually be true as a way of beginning his presentation of THE TRUTH.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...2025-07-1444 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastTechno FeudalismJean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, Baudrillard all discussed major aspects of what is today often called Techno-Feudalism. While some of the modern conceptions are certainly apt and insightful, they often overlook the fundamental trick being played on us of extracting value from us while pretending to provide value for us. Further, this is not post-industrial but rather industrialism gone wild in its consumption of capital, mining, manufacturing, building, energy and human capacity. When we think it is both necessary and somehow ‘information’ rather than forced on us and industrial, we miss a lot of what is happening in our worl...2025-07-1140 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: West Africa 2 - Ep. 7A further exploration of the ways in which a willingness to open ourselves to the cultural influence of West Africa could potentially really help transform our lives for the better.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.2025-07-0957 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato's Symposium: The Speech of Aristophanes - Ep. 6While these speeches seem very different - and they are on the surface - they actually articulate a similar outlook expressed in very different terms. The idea of love driving us towards a unity with a universal force is key to understanding Plato’s ideas of Love and why and how he has been so influential.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...2025-07-0740 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: Can West Africa Save Us? - Ep. 6If you feel your current values are failing then one needs to search for new values. One readily available set of values is provided by the influence of West Africa that still exists in the United States.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.2025-07-0249 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato's Symposium: The Speech of Pausanias - Ep. 5So much for Phaedrus. Plato quickly moves to present core elements of his world view while undercutting the simple love for the gods. Again, everything is political, philosophical and very critical of his society all at the same time. Notice all of the now common concepts that Plato is sneaking in under the guise of a simple set of hymns to praise the gods. What could be wrong with that??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’...2025-06-3046 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: Joy not Fear - Ep. 5Shockingly, people are immersed in a series of internal narratives that impose a sense of threat and fear as a core element of existence. Embracing Joy, like Play, fundamentally alters our experience of the world and more accurately reflects the world we find ourselves inhabiting.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.2025-06-2657 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato's Symposium: The Speech of Phaedrus - Ep. 4The first speech comes from Phaedrus. He is sincere and well intentioned but delivers a seemingly very limited take on the nature of Love. As ever, there is a level of philosophy, politics and religious argumentation going on that is not that obvious on the surface.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, peer discussions, bonus lectures, and Wes’s weekly diaries from France. Only $2 / month. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2025-06-2333 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: Play not Work - Ep. 4In a world of almost unimaginable opportunity to express ourselves, we still maintain a sense of ‘work’ as our defining characteristic. Embracing a sense of Play in our lives seems like we are abandoning our duties and subjecting ourselves to soul crushing poverty.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.2025-06-1858 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato's Symposium: Socrates & Apollodorus - Ep. 3We reach the text itself. Hopefully I clarify why there is this strange framing element to the Symposium and the degree to which many of the seemingly odd asides and quotes are actually core to Plato’s general assault on the mytho-poetic concepts of Hellenistic 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.2025-06-1644 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato's Symposium: Introduction - Ep. 2Well, forgot to mention that both the Reformation and the Enlightenment were heavily influenced by Platonic thought(!). As a test, if you’ve ever thought that SCIENCE is THE path to the TRUTH; congratulations, you’re a Neoplatonist.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.2025-06-1313 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: You are not a Slave- Ep. 3YOU ARE NOT A SLAVE:Despite being by almost any measure some of the freest people in history, we consistently use language and express patterns suggesting we are in fact still peasant, serfs or slaves.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.2025-06-111h 01
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato's Symposium: Introduction - Ep. 1Two main points in this introduction:First, Plato is in deadly earnest in these dialogues trying to work out how his society and his class were crushed in a war and subject to tyranny and what, if anything, could be done. Second, Plato has had an unbelievable impact on our conception of the world through his influence on Christianity. Further, as we will explore in later episodes, his thinking is also foundational to the Enlightenment and Humanism - two intellectual movements that undercut the power of Christianity in Western thought while, oddly, increasing t...2025-06-0938 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? - Real Estate Special - Ep. 13Just a follow up to discuss the forces that shape the global real estate market and how our standard response - supply and demand - reveals the degree to which our minds are captured by a wild oversimplification of economic forces and the benighted nature of our collective imaginations faced with economic challenges.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 mor...2025-06-0735 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: The Individual and The Community - Ep. 2THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY:Another aspect of confusion comes from a loss of our immediate community that throws us onto an ever increasing sense of individualism and, hence, isolation. We struggle mightily to address the very rapid transition from life patterns established in small scale communities to individualism and national or even global patterns of thought.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 Acas...2025-06-0459 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 12CONCLUSION:The conclusion to the capitalism series wherein I ramble a bit about the major concepts we have explored and why I think it is so important at this juncture in history to think about the influence capitalism has had on our conception of ourselves and our world.Also, I checked the Euro Disney prices for a family of four, not counting transportation or hotel—the cost will be between 800 and 1700 euros. The price of coffee in Paris—roughly 3 or 4 euros depending on where you are. Feel free to make your own choices . . .2025-06-0233 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPlato: The Symposium — Summer Seminar AnnouncementIf you would like to participate in a Summer Symposium Seminar here’s your chance. Get a copy of the Symposium and get ready as I will launch June 9 when the Capitalism series is wrapped up. I will include short quizzes as a spur to questions and debates to hopefully help us really come to grips with this foundational text.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...2025-06-0204 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastThe Transvaluation of All Values: Scarcity and Abundance - Ep. 1SCARCITY AND ABUNDANCE:We have inherited a set of values that are a misfit for the world we now inhabit. The tension between our past and our present is creating a strong sense of confusion and dislocation. This series explores some of the elements of this problem beginning with why, in a world of overwhelming abundance, we still feel beset by scarcity.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 $...2025-05-2859 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 11The past tells us that our future with Capitalism is unlikely to suddenly change. Rather, we are likely to experience a slow evolution of values that undermines and constrains the power of capitalism and frees us to pursue other sets of values and create new worldviews that combine elements of the past but create new ideals for a new world.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...2025-05-2637 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Confucius in The Analects—Relative Wisdom - Ep. 13In this short parable from the Analects we see the idea that wisdom is relative both to situations and individuals. This approach to wisdom is markedly different from the notion of universal laws and absolute ontology that informs much of the Western philosophical tradition.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.2025-05-2311 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHow to get rich with philosophy. No, really.I know this sounds like a joke, but the joke was on me. This moment in the coffee shop highlighted how deeply I have internalized our cultural definition of wealth and riches despite, in theory, spending much of my life critiquing these kinds of cultural mindsets.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.2025-05-2241 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 10We reach today and discover, like 16th century Catholics, we know all the critiques of our condition but have difficulty imagining any possible alternative. This leads supposedly quite determinedly different arguments about both politics and economics to, upon reflection, represent very similar or perhaps even identical positions. Herein lies our struggle.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 informa...2025-05-1940 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Searching for what you already have (Sufism) - Ep. 12Searching for what we already have is one of the keys, if not the key, messages of Sufism. If you are a god, what are you looking for out in the world that is not already inside of you? This and related Sufi parables remind us that what we already have is what we are looking for.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 aca...2025-05-1610 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastWhy is Hinduism so difficult for the West?An introduction into why we find it hard to understand Hinduism. It is not a faith based religion, there is no book, there are not many actual rules or commandments, it embraces the world in all its complexities and confusions and has no impulse towards evangelism. All in all, it is very difficult for people raised in the Judeo-Christian ethos to understand what, exactly, is going on with Hinduism.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 week...2025-05-1444 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 9CAPITALISM: EP. 9I argue that one of the problems we face today is simply confusion. We understand the ills of global capitalism, we are cynical about it, and we are perhaps even trying to be exploitative in response. However, none of this is really an answer to or alternative that addresses the core problems introduced by capitalism. Without new standards, whether borrowed from the past or created afresh, it is impossible to adequately respond to the many challenges we face in the world today.*My comment on the cost of housing in the US...2025-05-1244 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: (Zen Koan)The Sound of One Hand Clapping - Ep. 11The "sound of one hand clapping" is a famous, now seemingly trite and often ridiculed, Zen Koan that is quite profound. The Koan asks to pause and reflect on how much of our world is filled by ghosts of our own creation that have little or no actual relation to the world. A simple, powerful and difficult Koan.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...2025-05-0912 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastYour are not a digital nomad.The concept of Digital Nomadism misrepresents both the concept of digital and of nomad. By confusing these concepts a narrative is created that argues for a mode of life that is exploitative of others and generally injurious for those who attempt to pursue this path. I argue that the whole concept reveals our deep confusion about how technology shapes our lives and often damages the quality of our lives.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 week...2025-05-0723 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 8CAPITALISM: EP. 8We reach the end of the narrative arc for the Neo-Liberal global order only to discover we have no idea what comes next. The nearly alien nature of the modern corporation combined with global events of the last 15 years have unmoored our old assumptions but provided little or no guidance for what comes next.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...2025-05-0552 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Dharma (Guruspear) in the Mahabharata - Ep. 10A selection from the Mahabharata that presents a completely different relationship between man and the gods than is generally present in the western world. It also expresses the deep Hindu belief in the endless cycle of living and learning that encompasses even the gods.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.2025-05-0213 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastNo, we're not becoming dumber.No, we’re not becoming dumber. However, because of the incentives of the few major companies that have a disproportionate impact on how content is exposed to us, what we encounter IS remarkably awful. This is driven, unsurprisingly, by a drive to maximize profit by exploiting the young and uneducated. Hence, we are exposed to what is likely to appeal not to the dumb, but to the inexperienced, uneducated and indeed simplistically juvenile. Combined with the incentive to provide cheapest possible content, this perverse scenario produces a media world that seems apocalyptically barren. Sign-up for Wes’s PATR...2025-04-3030 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 7CAPITALISM: EP. 7The new entity created with the rise of the corporation was created under an old set of values and philosophies that had no precedent for thinking about what was coming with the rise of the multinational corporation. The old, intuitive models of human relations took generations to fade leaving us in uncharted territory as we tried to understand and respond to the power that had been unleashed.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and...2025-04-2840 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵 : Two Monks and a Woman - Ep. 9This classic Zen tale asks us to consider the nature or our attachments and how what we carry in our minds is as important - perhaps even more important - than the experiences we have.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.2025-04-2509 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastNo Left Wing! (The utter absence of a Liberal party in the USA)No Left Wing!In many of my conversations with folks here in France I realize that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the political spectrum in the US and this lecture is a brief reflection on the utter absence of a Liberal or Left wing party as it would be understood in much of Europe and many other Democracies as well. Indeed, I think many Americans are confused by this as well.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading list...2025-04-2335 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 6CAPITALISM: EP. 6We have met Capitalism and it is US. The co-evolution of modern conceptions of the individual and capitalism makes it difficult for us to recognize or act on values outside the Capitalist mindset. We tend to evaluate almost everything in terms of financial returns, investments, costs, rewards etc. and imagine our buying and participation in the economy is the fundamental mode of defining ourselves.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...2025-04-2148 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵 : Heidegger's Hammer - Ep. 8From Being and Time, this example highlights the very different ways we relate to objects in the physical world. We rarely reflect on how we interact with physical objects and how they impact our experience of the world but, indeed, there are radically different modes of being that come into play in our interactions with objects like hammers.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...2025-04-1810 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Kant's "Prolegomena" - ConclusionREAD ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA"So why would a governor of a Russian enclave denounce Kant 200+ years later? Kant’s undercutting of metaphysics fundamentally questions all of the assumptions necessary for a tyrant like Putin to justify his brutal war in Ukraine. Notions like ‘Greater Russia’ a ‘Common People’ a ‘Shared Vision of Civilization’ ‘A Divine Mission’ are all so much metaphysical nonsense according to Kant. In its place, he appeals to the power of the individual to construct a moral order from their own reason and experience - the foundations of many of his ethical arguments. Difficu...2025-04-1623 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 5CAPITALISM: EP. 5When this new concept of man and new structure of political relations is let loose on the North American continent history starts to be rewritten. While the history and social norms of ancient societies resisted the transformations pressed for by these new forms, having eliminated the ancient societies in the Americas, the forces of Capitalism were given an opportunity for unrestrained expression. And the rest, as they say, is history.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading list...2025-04-1435 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵 : The Ox in the Alley from Chuang Tzu - Ep. 7In this tale, originally from the work of Chuang Tzu, a simple problem illustrates two different kind of thinking errors we make in day to day life and how Taoism seeks to help us avoid them.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.2025-04-1213 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Kant's "Prolegomena" - Ep. 7READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA"Having moved on from Empiricism and Idealism, Kant now undercut the foundations of Metaphysics by putting strict limits on the power of its insights while simultaneously establishing that metaphysics is, nonetheless, the best we can do in the way of thinking. He completes his run through the foundations of philosophical history much like Napoleon smashing through Europe - he destroys a lot but it is hard to see just what he built to go in its place. Roughly speaking, phenomenology, epistemology, ontology, existentialism and language philosophers have been struggling to recover...2025-04-0938 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 4CAPITALISM: EP. 4The birth of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 is a watershed moment in the history of capitalism. A new power is brought into the world that the Dutch political powers used to create wealth and compete with their neighbors. However, this company also had many unintended consequences that we are still living with today.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 Acas...2025-04-0732 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: The Yaksha Prashna in the Mahabharata - Ep. 6In a very simplified version of the famous Yaksha parable from the Mahabharata, we encounter the strangely rich and human nature of Hindu stories. In the original, there are something like 30 different questions so I have just mentioned a few of them here.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.2025-04-0515 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Kant's "Prolegomena" - Ep. 6READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA"So we now get to the point Kant has been angling towards the whole time. What do we gain from all of this thinking for metaphysics? Answer, we gain insight into the entire possible range of human understanding - only granting that the range is quite limited. He begins his argument by refuting the two major approaches to science and thinking generally prevalent in his time; idealism and empiricism. I find Kan’t powerful critique of these two outlooks helpful to keep in mind when encountering arguments that just assume the re...2025-04-0243 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 3CAPITALISM: EP. 3The need for revenue and the fracturing of the European social order that accompanied the Reformation led to the slow development of a new vision of the individual and of trade and markets that launched the capitalist world as we know it today.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.2025-03-3144 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Achilles in The Illiad - Ep. 5One of the great moments of human compassion and expressions of the utter waste of war. While Achilles is often raised as the symbol of the ultimate warrior, here he weeps and acknowledges the pointlessness and painfulness of war.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.2025-03-2813 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 2CAPITALISM: EP. 2As a Political Philosophy Capitalism contains a theory of the individual that includes the idea of natural rights - most importantly the right to private property. However, in practice, what this amounts to is the inalienable right to sell yourself into the marketplace, an opportunity resisted by people for centuries. It is the double step of creating a private space, and then creating an idea of people and citizenship that forces people to fill that space that shapes the Capitalist world today.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by We...2025-03-2437 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Kant's "Prolegomena" - Ep. 4READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA" As we dive into the foundations of natural science, I pause for a moment to consider the power of Kant’s argument relative to the foundations of mathematics. His arguments have proven pretty much correct relative to the foundations of mathematics as accepted today and so I think we should pay special attention to how he understands the foundations of the natural sciences.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and We...2025-03-1931 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastCapitalism: How did we get here? And where are we going? Ep. 1CAPITALISM: EP. 1 We are surrounded by the idea of capitalism but shockingly little thought is commonly given to what it is, where it has come from and where we are likely going. An attempt to rectify this in a new series. The standard definition of Capitalism:Private ownership of the means of production and distribution.Market-based exchange, where goods and services are produced for profit.Competition, which drives efficiency and innovation.Minimal government intervention, though the degree varies (e.g., laissez-faire vs. regulated capitalism).Marx...2025-03-1743 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Plutarch's Life of Theseus - Ep. 4It seems so simple, and yet this story from Ancient Greece captures many of the problems with time, identity, and meaning - a kind of one paragraph version of Heidegger’s Being and Time. It also brings into focus, at least for me, how thinking slowly about simple things can really reveal how tenuous our grasp on the world really is.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. Hoste...2025-03-1522 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastMajor Thinkers - Ludwig Wittgenstein- Ep. 7Perhaps the most influential philosopher of the 20th century, he defeated Russel’s attempt to provide a perfect foundation for mathematics and elaborated a linguistic approach to philosophy that dominated English language philosophy for decades. His gnomic writing style and the existence of most of his work as lecture notes compiled from his students make his published legacy quite problematic. Nonetheless, a crucial thinker in the history of philosophy.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...2025-03-141h 20
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Kant's "Prolegomena" - Ep. 3READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA" In these sections Kant lists out the requirements that must be met, according to him, to make any meaningful metaphysical claims. In doing so, he limits our access to the world by removing the opportunity to know things as they are and giving us only the possibility of understanding our world through our perceptual limitations. This fundamental insight, which seems quite obvious when clearly articulated, is a major limitation in the human capacity to understand the world. Yet Kant also sees it as providing a foundation for certain kinds of absolute...2025-03-1243 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect (Conclusion) - Ep. 11THE ISOLATED GENIUS:In the concluding chapter I explore the poisonous idea of the isolated genius. By emphasizing the individual and the product rather than the community and the process, our society consistently tells us that it is wrong and limiting for us to cooperate with others in spaces or projects that don’t reward directly as individuals. The historical record is clear, however, that much more great work has grown from communities than from isolated individuals and that sustainable, life enriching processes are more important and likely more productive than the oft presented examples of self-destructive in...2025-03-1037 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Parable of the Talents - Ep. 3"PARABLE OF THE TALENTS" FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT - EP. 3 I like this parable from the New Testament because it highlights one of the great tricks of philosophical ‘reasoning’ - the assumed frame. Allow me to frame an argument and I will win it. This common homily is so completely misread and the assumptions so horrifying it makes a fun example.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. 2025-03-0714 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Kant's "Prolegomena" - Ep. 2READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA" Kant’s introduction seems so humble and straightforward but this masks a project of breathtaking scope. Whether or not Kant ultimately achieves his aims is mostly beside the point. Here, he really does make a radical break with the past and tries to reorient not just our thinking about metaphysical questions but how we understand thinking in its entirety. Rarely has a thinker attempted such a sweeping revaluation and re-grounding of knowledge. Kant’s influence grows from the inability of later thinkers to ignore this challenge and, hence, he reshaped almost all...2025-03-0548 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Socrates and Diotima - Ep. 2SOCRATES AND DIOTIMA IN THE SYMPOSIUM - EP. 2The Symposium is oft quoted and seemingly rarely read. This crazy scene explaining - well something - based on this completely fabricated myth captures much of the power of Plato’s capacity for storytelling and how he leads the reader along the most preposterous paths to often quite amazing conclusions. Aristophanes ridicules Socrates in the Symposium for using these kinds of arguments.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectur...2025-03-0421 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 10VALUES ARBITRAGE:I argue that we have developed a deep seated sense of cynicism from continuous exposure to an environment where our values are systematically used against. Consciously or unconsciously aware of being exploited, we become cynical about the very ideals we need to cultivate in order to inhabit the house of the intellect. I review these core values and how we can defend them despite our environment. 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...2025-03-0346 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastPhilosophical Fireside Chats 🔥 🪵: Zarathustra and the Snake - Ep. 1PHILOSOPHICAL FIRESIDE CHATS 🔥 🪵 - EP. 1This scene from Book II of Thus Spake Zarathustra - the Riddle and the Vision - is one of my favorites and captures some of Nietzsche’s ability to create a visceral sense of the challenge of addressing our most deeply held habits and beliefs.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 informatio2025-02-2813 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Kant's "Prolegomena" - Ep. 1 READ ALONG SERIES - KANT'S "PROLEGOMENA" Kant’s influence on philosophy and thinking in general has been immense but also difficult to pin down because he is so challenging to read. His influence has come almost entirely second and third hand as we encounter versions of his thoughts and approaches through other thinkers who are using, attacking, or expanding on Kant’s insights. Here we launch a read-a-long series featuring one of his shortest and most accessible works - the Prolegomena to Any Future Meta-Physics. A clearer and much shortened version of his Critique of Pure Reason, this...2025-02-2631 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastQ & A 2: House of the Intellect - Ep. 9Q & A #2 - HOUSE OF THE INTELLECT Wes and Jeremy take questions from Patreon Members on House of the Intellect.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.2025-02-251h 17
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 8BUREAUCRACY:As our societies have grown larger, more complex and more digitally integrated we have become enmeshed in ever larger and more centralized bureaucracies. These systems are, perhaps, inherently, the enemy of intellectual community. It is possible they could be organized differently, but for now they have a strong tendency to strip us of our individuality and personal integrity in the name of ‘efficiency’. Widely experienced but little commented upon, this powerful cultural force has undermined many of the institutions that had previously been havens of intellectual and artistic community. I would be curious to hear...2025-02-2443 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastMajor Thinkers - Simone Weil- Ep. 6Largely forgotten today, she was an influential thinker and, perhaps, mystic who lived a life of ethical commitment in an extraordinarily difficult period in history. She provided an inspirational example to many of her contemporaries and the tone of her works as much as the power of her arguments brought her wide acclaim.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 mor...2025-02-211h 25
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Jung's Redbook - Ep. 7 (Conclusion)CONCLUSION:I conclude the series with the end of the first book of the Red Book. In the last section we see Jung sliding back and forth between various ideas of the role he is supposed to fulfill - kill god, be god, ignore god - and how we should respond to this. I also reflect on the difference between inspiration and discovery, what Jung is trying to do, and Philosophy, which generally requires a much more rigorous implementation of vocabulary, logic and consistency. Nonetheless I think Jung provides a great example of someone trying to explore...2025-02-1928 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 7TECHNOLOGY AND DATA:Neither Barzun nor myself are opposed to technology or data per se - it is the way our culture tries to isolate technology from the cultural environment and, hence, de-value most everything the house of the intellect values. The notion that the quality of the people who control technology and the experiences of people who interact with it simply do not matter is one of the recurrent and obviously deeply flawed cultural concepts that has attached itself to our modern conception. The chart I mention is below and demonstrates that, at least as traditionally...2025-02-1748 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastMajor Thinkers - Jacques Derrida- Ep. 5One of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the late 20th century, Derrida specialized in trying to unmoor our sense of certainty and truth. Working across 50 books, he was an intellectual gad-fly in the tradition of Socrates who always wanted us to be suspicious of clarity. He almost single-handedly brought continental philosophy back to the English speaking world. You can find the original Lecture Notes HereSign-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...2025-02-141h 20
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 20Q & A #9 - CONCLUSIONWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lectures IX and X: Conclusion Parts 1 and 2Sign-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.2025-02-131h 19
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Jung's The Red Book - Ep. 6BEYOND RIGHT AND WRONGHere Jung moves beyond simply rejecting the Right and Wrong and tries to create an ethos of ambiguity. Focusing on a dream involving Elijah and Salome, he experiences the intertwined relationship of lust and purity, truth and lies, seduction and holiness. Here is a great entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on De Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity Simone de Beauvoir (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading...2025-02-1241 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 6ROB US OF WHAT WE LOVE:In this episode I discuss the ways in which our culture and mental habits combine to rob us of the experiences we would love to be having by both limiting our capacity to participate and limiting the communities in which we might participate. I use contemporary American film culture as an example of a simultaneously booming art form that nonetheless seems to be culturally barren.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonu...2025-02-1036 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastMajor Thinkers - Bertrand Russell - Ep. 4Bertrand Russell was a famous and influential thinker. He became a popular philosopher after his groundbreaking attempt to found mathematics on a prefect, logically complete footing failed. This is an improved audio version of my original lecture delivered at Peninsula College.Here is a link to is very readable and enlightening History of Western PhilosophySign-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...2025-02-071h 23
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 19LECTURE 10 - CONCLUSION 2 of 2 (HOW DOES THE WORLD SEE THE USA?)Given Americans' central position in global trade, politics and culture, I explore how the unique American outlook is shaping, for good or ill, the global environment. From notions of extreme individualism to championing the idea of heroic consumerism, the economic power and example of America presents a serious challenge and even threat to many widely practiced social norms.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes! Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus lectures, and W...2025-02-061h 00
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Jung's The Red Book - Ep. 5INTO THE DESERTThe power of Jung’s approach becomes a little more clear as we move into these later chapters. Jung is quite explicitly at war with his inherited cultural values. While it is one thing to recognize this, it is very much more difficult to try and reimagine one’s values - and hence one’s understanding of the self. Jung tries to murder the image of the hero - casting himself as an honorless assassin. He also articulates the powerful insight that the message Jesus teaches us is that we can torture and kill the go...2025-02-0529 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 18LECTURE 9 - CONCLUSION 1 of 2 (THE INDIVIDUAL IN AMERICA)Do you feel alone? In the 1st of 2 concluding lectures I explore how all the forces I have been discussing throughout this series shape the lived experiences of Americans today. The combination of materialism and libertarianism with our deep calvinist roots creates a peculiar and often toxic environment that leads to a sense of isolation and nihilism.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 diarie...2025-02-0354 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 5COMMUNITY MATTERS:As much as it is important to emphasize personal patterns of thought and behavior, we are hugely influenced by forces that come to us from society. Thinking about the patterns that have shaped culture in the past and our immersion in a new paradigm is necessary, and perhaps helpful, in thinking about why we feel the way we do and how we respond to broader cultural trends.Think of moments from the past that appeal to you as having exemplified intellectual or artistic community and try and work out what the necessary...2025-02-0344 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastMajor Thinkers - Martin Heidegger - Ep. 3An Improved Audio version of a lecture on Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the 20th century. This lecture explores his life and work and attempts to frame his philosophical ideas within the context of his many ethical failings. A link to the lecture notesSign-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/priv...2025-01-311h 17
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 17Q & A #8 - NEOLIBERALISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture VIII: Neoliberalism (the rise and fall-ish)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.2025-01-3155 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastQ & A: Reading Jung's The Red Book - Ep. 4Q & A #1 - READING JUNG'S THE RED BOOKWes and Jeremy take questions from Patreon Members on Episodes 1 & 2Sign-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.2025-01-3034 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastQ & A: House of the Intellect - Ep. 4Q & A #1 - HOUSE OF THE INTELLECT Wes and Jeremy take questions from Patreon Members on Episodes 1 & 2Sign-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.2025-01-301h 03
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Jung's The Red Book - Ep. 3HOW TO KILL THE HERO:The power of Jung’s approach becomes a little more clear as we move into these later chapters. Jung is quite explicitly at war with his inherited cultural values. While it is one thing to recognize this, it is very much more difficult to try and reimagine one’s values - and hence one’s understanding of the self. Jung tries to murder the image of the hero - casting himself as an honorless assassin. He also articulates the powerful insight that the message Jesus teaches us is that we can torture and ki...2025-01-2932 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 3FREE YOUR MIND:Our culture's bias towards technology, specialization, and bureaucracy all mitigate against having a mind that is free to pursue one’s own ideas and to allow the time and predilection to participate in the House of the Intellect. Here I use the example of medical doctors who, over the course of the last 80 years, have been transformed from key participants in the House of the Intellect to narrow specialists who now lack the education, inclination, and cultural environment to be valuable participants. Having our minds free and avoiding self-contempt and cynicism are fundamental to cr...2025-01-2745 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 16LECTURE 8 - NEOLIBERALISM: THE RISE AND FALL(ISH)Is this at the end of the Reagan, Clinton, Obama, Bush era? This lecture explores the content, rise and decline of the political and economic philosophy of Neoliberalism. Premised on the idea that free markets that reduce trade barriers between nations creates a wealthier world that encourages personal liberty, reduces poverty, and aids in the rise of democracy. While the world has certainly become wealthier over the last few decades, other aspects of the neoliberal concept have turned out to be deeply disturbing.Sign-up for Wes’s P...2025-01-2651 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastMajor Thinkers - Karl Marx - Ep. 2Karl Marx is one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the world. This lecture reviews his background and some of the events that formed his thinking as a means of putting his core ideas into a historical frame. A hopefully much more listenable version of this early recording. Karl Marx 1847 A link to the Economic and Philosophical manuscripts of 1847 which is perhaps the best place to get an introductory perspective on Marx’s thinking.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain acc...2025-01-241h 22
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 15Q & A #7 - LIBERTARIANISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture VII: LibertarianismSign-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.2025-01-2456 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Jung's The Red Book - Ep. 2Wow, so I did mention this is a crazy, difficult text didn’t I? So Jung’s conscious attempt to break from the thought processes and values of his society created an intellectual and emotional crisis that shaped the creation of the Red Book. The most significant note for contemporary readers is that he is trying to return in some way to the approaches to knowledge and wisdom that shaped the first 4,000 years of civilization. This makes the book difficult to read on a number of levels including his rejection of the assumptions that allow us to understand arguments in g...2025-01-2236 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 2DIGNITY AND INTEGRITY: It may seem a bit abstract, which I imagine it is, however I feel the disappearance of the concepts of Dignity and Integrity from the world of education, art, philosophy and culture generally is one of the greatest challenges to a sense of intellectual community today. Recognizing our own dignity allows us to appreciate the value of our contributions to the world of ideas and well as appreciate those of others. This dignity arises from and is reinforced by personal integrity towards ourselves and work. Unfortunately, these concepts have almost completely disappeared. Simply put...2025-01-2047 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 14LECTURE 7 - LIBERTARIANISMIs it healthy to pretend that you're doing it on your own? The notion that the best world is one in which each individual is maximally free and operates independently of all other individuals has been a powerful force in American cultural and political history. The expressions of libertarianism we see today are founded on a deep ethos that rejects all forms of government, law, taxation or any limitation on the person as being opposed to a truly great society. I explore the many contradictions and limitations of this outlook and why, given these...2025-01-2048 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastMajor Thinkers - Friedrich Nietzsche - Ep. 1MAJOR THINKERS - NIETZSCHE - EP. 1 An intellectual biography of Nietzsche kicks off this series discussing the life and philosophy of a series of major thinkers. I explore some of the key ideas and influences that shaped Nietzsche’s thinking including his loathing of Christianity and the influence of classical literature in shaping his ethical outlook. This is an improved audio version of a lecture I delivered over a decade ago. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes!Plus, gain access to course materials, reading lists, bonus l...2025-01-171h 11
The Wes Cecil PodcastReading Jung's The Red Book - Ep. 1A work that I think embodies, quite consciously on the part of Jung, many of the contradictions, challenges, and paradoxes of the modern mind trying to come to grips with a world that simply does not cohere with our general materialist, rationalist worldview. I hope to use this as both a great text to explore and an example of how one can read in a very different manner. It was working with great teachers who helped me learn to read in this particular way and in doing this exercise together I hope to model and share what I have b...2025-01-1528 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 13ADDENDUM - CALVINISTIC MATERIALISM VS. NIHILISTIC MATERIALISMDoes America practice a particular type of Nihilism? A follow up to clarify the notion of why Nihilism - the belief that there is no order or meaning in the world - is fundamental to the type of materialism practiced in America. Perhaps the clearest example is the rise of off-site storage where people pay to store material goods that, by definition, they cannot readily access - the materiality has become almost completely meaningless.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON to get your questions answered by Wes! 2025-01-1515 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 12Q & A #6 - THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION: 1935 - 1949Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture VI: THE GREAT TRANSFORMATIONSign-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.2025-01-131h 02
The Wes Cecil PodcastHouse of the Intellect - Ep. 1INTELLECTUAL HOMELESSNESS:This series will explore the contemporary state of the world of arts and ideas and how we can begin to build lives centered around culture and philosophy. We are often misled as to the nature and purpose of intellectual pursuits. I hope to clarify the history and cultural forces that shape our understanding of and participation in the house of the intellect. Unfortunately, Barzun’s book The House of the Intellect is currently out of print. The Internet Archive has a copy available online at The house of intellect : Barzun, Jacques, 1907- : Free Download, Borrow, an...2025-01-1343 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 11LECTURE 6 - THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION - 1935 - 1949Can a country grow too fast in a short span of time? The twin catastrophes of the Great Depression and World War II utterly transformed America. In just 20 years, the structure of government, focus of the economy, tax policy, and America’s global position fundamentally altered. A country with a tiny tax base, miniscule military, isolationist politics and nascent federal government became a global super power with the largest economy in the world and a massive and growing federal government. Much of what we take as ‘America’ today is actually a refl...2025-01-1154 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 10Q & A #5 - AMERICAN CALVINISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture V: American CalvinismSign-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.2025-01-0952 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 9LECTURE 5 - AMERICAN CALVINISMDoes "slacking-off" make you a bad person? Could it even make you be perceived as a witch? 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 answ...2025-01-0251 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 8Q & A #4 - NIHILISTIC MATERIALISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture IV: Nihilistic MaterialismSign-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.2024-12-2356 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 7LECTURE 4 - NIHILISTIC MATERIALISMIs there such a thing as too many unused treadmills? 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 g...2024-12-171h 01
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 6Q & A #3 - AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISMWes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture III: American IndividualismSign-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.2024-12-1141 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 5LECTURE 3 - AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM:Is it really better to be suckled by wolves than to inherit a farm? This lecture explores the evolution of the American conception of the individual and why it has become so dominant within American culture. Devoid of a deep history and often in strange surroundings with strange people, many Americans have, for generations, felt thrust out on their own. What for most societies was considered a severe punishment - banishment - became, in America, a common and perhaps necessary mode of life. Over time, a virtue was created from this necessity and...2024-12-071h 02
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 4Q & A #2 - NO HISTORY FOR YOU! Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture II: No History for You!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.2024-11-2938 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 3LECTURE 2: NO HISTORY FOR YOU!Are Americans blatantly hypocritical or just actively forgetful? In my second lecture I explore the bizarre and necessary historical amnesia that besets American culture. For the first 200 years of American settlement, the Native American culture was forcibly erased, then actively ignored once the ‘Natives’ problem had been “solved”. Also, the invisibility of the African American presence in much of the US, which represented 40-50% of the population in some states, created a further barrier to American history. Finally, the internal patterns of settlement and mass migration cemented a near total disregard for framing...2024-11-2942 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 2Q & A #1 - WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?Wes and Jeremy take questions from listeners on Lecture I: "What is an American?" Apologies for the audio quality on this one—it improves as the series moves along.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.2024-11-2934 min
The Wes Cecil PodcastA Cultural History of The United States - Ep. 1LECTURE 1: WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?Did you ever wonder how Americans came to be like this? In my introductory lecture I explore the uniquely powerful role America plays in the contemporary world and the history that underlies its global dominance. 250 years ago, the United states had a tiny population, was loosely organized and beset by internal conflicts. A rapid and massive demographic and geographic expansion brought this relative backwater onto the world stage and then to global dominance. The cultural transformations that proceeded with this transformation created a society that is, for good or ill, extremely influential...2024-11-2953 min