The Wes Cecil Podcast

In 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.

We 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.

Well, 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.

YOU 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.

Two 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 the influence of the already overwhelming power of Platonic thought. In sum, Plato reigns supreme.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.

Just 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 more information.

THE 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 Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

CONCLUSION: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 . . .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.

SCARCITY 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 $2 / month.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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