The Wes Cecil Podcast

Almost completely forgotten as a value today, it was THE central value of a series of different philosophical systems across several different civilizations over 1,000s of years. Without Wisdom as a value, we have less capacity to develop nobility, joy, or beauty as discussed in earlier episodes. Yet, we still seek to understand ourselves and our world and likely wisdom will never truly go away.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unlike the other values discussed, Heroism would seem to be a central value of contemporary society. However, upon closer inspection, it is clear that traditional notions of heroism - of which there are a range - are not all that represented. While the idea of suffering and sacrifice remain, the overall vision of transformation, agency and a transcendent goal seem to largely be ignored. While a prominent ideal, our current understanding would be met with derision by many thinkers of the past.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who could be opposed to Joy? Well, it turns out that despite being a central value in several different philosophical systems for 1,000s of years, contemporary society has little use for the cultivation of Joy. A diffuse concept, I focus on providing several literary examples and suggestions for further study and reflection. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Not just a value that is out of fashion, but one that is actively and consistently attacked by our society. The notion of cultivating a noble self governed by humility, self-control, wisdom and uprightness seems both wildly out of fashion and arrogant. However, for millennia, this was a central goal of major philosophical systems. Contemporary culture sees any sense of nobility as a cover for some kind of scam or corruption. We allow little space to see others, and hence ourselves, as possibly or even genuinely Noble in character.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A reflection on the power of biography to inspire and help guide us in our pursuit of beauty. These two examples are, at least for me, immensely helpful in shaking off the cultural assumptions and outlooks that try to shape our goals and, hence, decision making. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Not a rhetorical ploy, but an actual question. The strange form of American ‘Democracy’ today raises the very real idea that at some point a lack of competition in elections, the duopoly of the hold on power and the control exerted over the process of elections by un-elected officials produces a system that is functionally no longer really a democracy. Further, and I forgot to mention this in the lecture, the current structure ensures that the most senior and powerful members of both parties are not, functionally, forced to face an actual election. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A reflection on our capacity to overwhelm our actual experience of the world with abstract concepts that somehow is often more powerful than even our immediate physical surroundings. I was prompted to these thoughts by recent experiences mowing my lawn and spending time in some very different kitchens.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A brief argument in favor of reading biographies as a warmup for a new series that will be coming very soon!Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An invitation to explore the power of being wrong. In a culture that emphasizes the importance of rightness over a whole range of other possible values like harmony, beauty, health, fabulousness, inspiration, and so on, being wrong can be a liberating and enlightening experience. Once one begins being wrong, it lifts a burden of outlook and opens up a whole range of different experiences and orientations that are simply impossible within the RIght/Wrong dialectic.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month. https://www.patreon.com/WesCecilImage Attribution: “Guiding Light” by Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nietzsche is not just presenting a series of arguments, he is modelling a very different approach to thinking and understanding our world than we usually encounter. To conclude our read-along, I reflect on the structure of his arguments and how they are as, or even more, important than the actual content. In the end, like a poem, Nietzsche invites us to participate in the creation of our own understanding. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month. https://www.patreon.com/WesCecil Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The final section finds Nietzsche in usual form attacking the notion of ‘levelling’ and ‘universal good’ and ‘Equality’. HIs driving force, following on Will to Power, is the pursuit of individual ideas that suit individuals and hence refute the drive towards universality or assumptions of ‘good’ or ‘true’. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month. https://www.patreon.com/WesCecil Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As long as we keep the values of Late Capitalism we will be trapped within and reproduce the problems associated with our current system. To reorient ourselves within our world we need to articulate for ourselves a new set of values. Two key elements is to resist the notion of money as a necessary arbiter of all things and to reevaluate our desire for haste. It is in large part our addiction to speed, haste, busyness and the attempt to live this way that opens us up to many of the problems we experience. Slowing down, doing less, and doing what we like are pretty much revolutionary today.Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month. https://www.patreon.com/WesCecil Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following on from the Unaskable Question, is the notion of how our health is intimately linked with our physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing. However, the logic of Late Capitalism, which we have been examining largely from the direction of money and economics, functions in precisely the same way when we look at our health. Unfortunately, but predictably, isolating people in stressful environments does not produce wellbeing nor is it actually being sought. Sign-up for Wes’s PATREON community to get your questions answered by Wes! (Yes, Wes is very active on Patreon)Plus, gain access to bonus lectures, peer discussions, additional course materials, and audio diaries from France. Only $2 / month. https://www.patreon.com/WesCecil Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.