The Wes Cecil Podcast

If you reject laws, codes, rituals, and words as guides to organizing life and society, what is left? Nature! To understand the Taoist emphasis on Nature it is important to understand that it is offering a concrete, experiential response to what they saw as abstract, metaphysical and ultimately self-defeating approaches to living. Key to this was Taoism’s co-evolution with the I Ching as a central text and guide to 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.
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Image credit: Thanato, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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If we want to be happy, we can go to the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ for the low cost of $5,000 to $15,000 for a family of four. Food, water, love, friends, joy, beauty, and more are continuously being re-packaged and sold back to us AS IF they are scarce and not available to us without some intermediary. However, as with competition, this notion of scarcity simply alienates from the most human elements of our own existence which, in any case, can’t be sold. Freeing ourselves from this notion from this scarcity mindset is a key element of recapturing our humanity.

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

Two key insights from a key section of the Tao Te Ching ask us to question 1) Our propensity for committing ourselves to pre-established narratives and 2) Our love of language games. By throwing these fundamental tendencies into doubt, Taoism provides a radical critique of pretty much every conceivable system, not just the prominent schools of Chinese philosophy. While the passages seem a bit gnomic and mystical, they are rather a very clear articulation of a key source of human confusion and unhappiness.

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.

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.

Perhaps one of the most pernicious concepts in modern society is the concept that we are all in competition for scarce resources. In this zero sum conception of the world, each human must, by necessity, compete with others for survival and self-expression. By reflecting on the writings of Primo Levi - particularly his “If This is a Man” - I try to underline how this deeply flawed and dangerous vision of the human condition actually destroys the possibility of simply being a human being at all.

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

Taoism has been generally received in the West as a mystical, quasi-metaphysical philosophy. However, understanding its historical context and development helps place Taoism within its political and folk tradition. This series explores the complex and powerful vision of Taoism that may be more relevant today than ever before in its more than 2400 year tradition.

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.

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.