Wide-ranging talks on all things relating to spirituality, meditation, yoga, current affairs, politics and philosophy. contact me via info AT peteyates.uk.
This podcast deals with the role that the internet is likely to play in the outcome of the UK General Election to be held on December 12th, 2019. We note that the internet is bound to be a site of struggle, that it presents many deep challenges to democracy, but that it has great possibilities, particularly for citizen journalism and the exposure of lies and propaganda. [Free. 53 minutes.]
This podcast is the first of several we will be doing in the run up to the general election to be held in the UK on December 12th 2019. It makes the general case for Labour as being the only party addressing the stark fact that 'business as usual is not an option'. It ranges quite far and wide, but with some focus on 'The Green Industrial Revolution'. [Free. 58 minutes.]
In this podcast, we unpack the common rhetorical phrase employed by no-deal brexiteers, "leave means leave". We point out that, though the phrase tautological, an implication is indirectly intended by it, whilst simultaneously concealing counter implications. The implication is that there is only one outcome of invoking and implementing Article 50 which would withdraw the UK from all its treaty obligations with the EU. The fact is that the terms "brexit" and "leave" denote a wide range of possibilities which need to be considered as to their probable outcomes and evaluated more generally. [Free. 30 minutes.]
This podcast is the first part of an open-ended and ocassional series on issues in philosophical aesthetics. I examine problems in defining art in the strict sense and in applying Wittgenstein's account of family resemblances in language use. I then look at the consequences of Dada and the way in which artists can act by fiat to declare event or object X a work of art. I sketch attempts to give an account of art in terms of the psychology and/or phenomenology of the creative process, and approaches which contextualise artist and/or work of art in culture, the economy and social relations. There is a small detour into the way in which Wittgenstein's account of family resembalces upends Platonism. [Free. 29 minutes.]
In this podcast, I take it that free speech, as an instance of freedom per se, is a very great good. However, this stance is not unproblematic in that free speech and freedom can subvert themselves as well as eroding other goods, e.g. equality. The obvious and often proposed notion that this can be overcome by policing or regulation raises the problem that any claim to the right to do the policing is impossible to legitimate and will therefore ultimately be authoritarian in nature. There is some hope in the possibility of general eduction based on ecouraging questioning rather than on inculcating dogma but this project also encounters a legitimation problem in that curricula are likely to be determined by some authority. [Free. 33 minutes.]
This meander was stimulated by a recent repudiation by Zizek of the possible role of small communities in any future human flourishing. In this context, I revisit E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (1973). I discuss some of the core ideas from that seminal work. In particular, I focus on the treatement of raw materials as [inexhaustible] income and the treatement of the environment as a free dump by capitalism and the economic theories that act as its ideological justification. I touch upon intermediate technology, the role of 'spirituality' in the good life, the way in which economic theories and political practice often treat people as numbers on a spreadsheet, the 1984-5 UK Miners' Strike and the persistence of alienation in nationalised industries. I do this by discerning Zizek's 'inner Schumacher' and Schumacher's 'inner Zizek' and recounting instances of their expression. In both cases these inner others are mostly repressed, but vigorous enough to surface now and then in brilliant insight. [Free. 47 minutes.]
This podcast is stimulated by David Graeber's remarks on value and a possible revolutionary ethical paradigm shift that could place value creation not in production of commodities but production of people. I follow Graeber, though with artistic license, jumping off from the platform he provides to extol the virtues of 'naturally occurring communism', to praise idleness, to see hope in the revitalisation of the flame of humanness. I draw on Adam Smith, Marx, Engels, the TV series Silicon Valley and Bertrand Russell. [Free. 26 minutes.]
This wide-ranging podcast draws on the same sources as Part One and is similarly stimulated by current affairs. This time, the thesis that the current historical unfoldings of the mutually entangled economic, cultural and ecological systems are characterised by fragmentation is defended and a variety of possible material antecedents of this tendency are considered. We identify environmental degradation, technological developments, contradictions in capitalism in its current phase, cultural fragmentation, the enmeshment of state and corporate power, gross inequalities of wealth and power and movements of populations as mutually dependent factors giving rise to fragmentation, amongst others. [Free. 54 minutes.]
This podcast is a wide-ranging commentary on the Trump charm offensive on Nato, the UK Prime Minister and Vladimir Putin of last week [13/7/18 ff]. It draws on the relevant press conferences, the film The Vietnam War [Ken Burns and Lynn Novick], the film An Inconvenient Sequel [Al Gore] and broadcasts of the UK Parliament. I consider the thesis that the political class are largely scoundrels. [Free. 37 minutes.]
In this podcast, we consider Chapters 23 and 24 of The Tao Te Ching. We tease out Lao Tzu's advice that meditation is best approached with a light touch. [Free. 21 minutes.]
