May 5, 2022
In this podcast, we reflect of Chapter 60 of The Tao Te Ching in which Lao Tzu recommends a light touch on the part of rulers if destructivity is to be minimised in society. A light touch is possible when rulers and / or their advisors are aligned with the Tao and the processes of existence and life as they act through human beings. We relate Lao Tzu's recommendations to our current political state and the ever present realisation that governments do bad things even whilst some collective focus is necessary for our species survival. We examine variations on this insight found in neoliberal economic thought, Marxism and the anarchism. [Free. 36 minutes.]
February 24, 2022
This podcast is a wide-ranging consideration of individual, psychological insecurity and material, collective insecurity and the relationship between them. We make our observations in the context of current events, especially the war in Ukraine, global warming, and financial meltdown, whilst drawing on inspiration from process philosophers like the Buddha, Heraclitus, Whitehead, Watts, Nietzsche, Marx and Lao Tzu. We draw on a brief discussion of the sublime and the beautiful to help us identify the emancipatory comportment to our intrinsic vulnerability and mortality. [Free. 50 minutes.]
February 14, 2022
In this podcast, we discuss Chapter 58 of The Tao Te Ching. In this chapter, Lao Tzu discusses the ideal character of the sage who would take up leadership or advise a leader and how it needs to be modest and low key. [Free. 20 minutes.]
February 1, 2022
In this podcast we discuss Chapter 57 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. In this chapter, Lao Tzu extols the virtues of wu wei, non-doing, when it is employed by sage leaders. The question of the tendency for all governments to do things which are inimical to the flourishing of the people haunts this discourse and we tease out the resonances this has with a wide variety political philosophies. [Free. 23 minutes.]
January 19, 2022
In this podcast, we discuss Chapter 56 of The Tao Te Ching in which Lao Tzu advises us of our orientation to life, advising quietly recognising our connectedness with others. [Free. 9 minutes.]
September 21, 2021
This podcast continues with our series of Freud's thought. It focusses on Freud's lecture Dissection of the Psychical Personality (1933), outlining it and critically appraising it's main features. [Free. 55 minutes.]
September 15, 2021
This podcast deals with Chapter 54 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. In this chapter, Lao Tzu once again outlines his meditative method and indicates how it might produce benefits not only to the individual but to several interlocking systems, namely the family, the village, the nation and the world. The benefits arise out of a clarity of seeing which in turn generates a understanding of the processes of psyche and social existence. [Free. 20 minutes.]
August 26, 2021
This podcast deals with Chapter 40 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. We concentrate on the amazing relevance this chapter has to our current political, economic and spiritual emergencies. In a few short lines, Lao Tzu diagnoses the condition of the working people of his time as subjection to violent and militarily oriented 'robber barons' whilst they themselves are the creators of value and the necessary goods to sustain life. This is exactly our condition too. Lao Tzu offers a meditation to counter the fragmental [non-holistic, non-systemic thinking] which is the ideological counterpart to a kleptocratic economy. [Free. 29 minutes.]
July 4, 2021
This podcast is a commentary on Eyes which is a verse from Songs of No and Yes explicating a meditation on the human face. [Free. 15 minutes.]
June 16, 2021
This short podcast offers some preliminary reflections on questioning and curiosity. [Free. 13 minutes.]
