An Eclectic Humanist

Rodger Wilkie

Greetings, folks. In this podcast, I hope to explore the various facets of humanism from as many perspectives as I can manage. Some episodes will focus on the humanism as it has developed here in the West while others will look farther afield, sometimes to places that might surprise you. Always, though, the podcast will keep an eye toward how these ideas relate to contemporary life, and toward defending humanism against the anti-humanist discourses of fundamentalist religion and authoritarian politics that define so much of our public conversation. Resist theocracy. Always.

  1. 07/21/2022

    Early Modern Feminism 2: Li Zhi

    This episode concludes the two-part series on Early Modern Feminism by skipping across the Eurasian landmass to look at a precise contemporary of Jane Anger, the Elizabethan thinker and writer we looked at last week. Li Zhi was a cantankerous thinker and writer who suffered neither fools nor dogma gladly, and who was not afraid to take on some of the most deeply held prejudices of his society. He was deeply studied in the so-called “three schools” of Chinese culture—Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism—and used this knowledge to craft an argument for the equality of women and men that, though it contradicted the tradition of the very conservative society in which he lived, remained true to the logic of its guiding worldviews. He offers a critique of patriarchal institutions, explores the recognition of human equality in the Confucian historical cannon, and deconstructs gendered social distinctions through the lens of Chan/Zen Buddhism. For his trouble, he died in custody but served as an inspiration for subsequent generations. One of my greatest intellectual and ethical heroes: I hope you enjoy his story.

    41 min

  2. 07/14/2022

    Early Modern Feminism 1: Jane Anger

    This episode and the next one lean hard into the “eclectic” side of “Eclectic Humanist.” Following up on the series on Roe v. Wade, I'd like to turn the clock back a few hundred years and look at a couple of examples of Early Modern feminism. There is, after all, an ongoing and unabashed effort from the religious right to turn the clock pretty far back, so it may be useful in the context of women's rights to take a glimpse into the world before the advances made by four centuries of feminist writing and activism. This installment takes us to Elizabethan England. We start with a discussion of women's status in the society of the day, including justifications for the subjugation of women in the words of the men who made them, then look at some specific legal restrictions to which women were subject. The main focus, though, is the writing of the little-known Jane Anger, to my mind the first English feminist. While her work is short, it is rich in terms of both arguments and rhetoric, preempting in some ways the arguments made some 200 years later by Mary Wollstonecraft. What I look at in particular here is her critique of the ways in which theological arguments are used to support misogynist positions, and her rejection not just of the arguments, but of the types of argument, that separate medieval from modern thought. Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/no-time-to-die License code: NHAGIVYDFPYQFCS3

    47 min
  3. Roe v. Wade 3: My Daughter's Enemy

    07/07/2022

    Roe v. Wade 3: My Daughter's Enemy

    This episode wraps up, for now, the series I've been doing on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It discusses the marriage of White Evangelical Christianity with the anti-choice cause in the wake of that 1973 decision, and begins to address the influence of the Christian nationalist ideology known as Dominion Theology on American politics generally and the Republican Party and White Evangelical Christianity specifically. From here, we jump into some statistics, specifically statistics on the ongoing decline of religious affiliation in the US, and the pressure that the projected continuation of this decline puts on today's aspiring theocrats to establish their new Promised Land before the demographic window closes on them for good. I try, as well, to offer a few thoughts on the role the overturning of Roe v Wade might play in the establishing of the American theocracy that we are now watching unfold, and reversing the decades-long trend of emptying pews. The episode wraps with a brief discussion of my own reasons for the position I've taken on this issue—really, kind of a rant. I hope you find it interesting and useful. Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/no-time-to-die License code: NHAGIVYDFPYQFCS3

    20 min

  4. 07/02/2022

    Roe v. Wade 2: "Water of Bitterness"

    This episode is the second installment in a three-part sequence on the US Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the anti-choice position generally. We begin, this time around, with a discussion of the ethics of belief, and the question how how responsible we might be for the positions that we hold. Next, we dive into the status of the fetus relative to that of the mother in the contexts of personhood, and human and legal rights. From there, we plunge into the position that the Bible adopts relative to both babies and the unborn, and yes, abortion itself. Hope you find it useful. Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/no-time-to-die License code: NHAGIVYDFPYQFCS3

    25 min

  5. 06/30/2022

    Roe v. Wade 1: View from a Vacant Lot

    This episode is the first of three devoted to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. In this installment, I address questions of bodily sovereignty, and look into statistics relevant to abortion ranging from the 1930s to the present. The episode paints a picture of what the pre-Roe US looked like in terms of abortion access and maternal mortality, thus giving a clear indication of the world to which anti-choice activists and judges are trying to return their society. I also address the effectiveness, or rather the ineffectiveness, of abortion bans in reducing incidence, as opposed to more legitimate approaches such as education, contraception, and access to health care, and begin digging into the deep intellectual dishonesty of anti-choice rhetoric—a theme to be pursued in subsequent episodes.

    16 min

  6. 06/30/2022

    A Re-Introduction

    This episode re-introduces a project that I had effectively abandoned about a year ago. As such, I'm treating it as a new beginning and laying out my reasons for starting again, most importantly the threat to humanism, and human well-being, currently posed by the religious right. This decision is a direct response to the US Supreme Court's move to usurp the bodily sovereignty of anyone who happens to have a uterus—a legal theft of agency that will almost certainly continue on matters of same-sex marriage, trans rights, and even contraception, and that absolutely must be opposed. Accordingly, I also give some indication of how I might like to pursue things moving forward. In short, this brief episode is a way of getting to know each other, or in some cases maybe getting to know each other again. The actual content begins next episode, and I hope you will check it out.

    12 min

  7. 08/29/2021

    Crossed Trails: COVID-19 and What Hobbes Got Wrong

    This episode, continuing last week's theme of COVID-19, human nature, and social responsibility, begins with a random encounter in the woods. It then wanders through some speculation on Hobbesian and Confucian state-of-nature arguments, a brief digression into primatology, and some thoughts on North America's ongoing epidemic of selfishness and sociopathy that our fractured responses to the coronavirus, particularly among the “muh freedum” crowd in their active undermining of adequate public health measures, has brought to the surface. Of course, as merely pointing out a shortcoming is not particularly useful, I also suggest a possible remedy to this selfishness epidemic, arising from a more nuanced understanding of human nature than is common among both anti-maskers and the far political right. It would appear that, this time around, I felt like highlighting the “eclectic” facet of the “Eclectic Humanist.” Hope you enjoy it, or at least that you don't get whiplash.

    36 min

  8. 08/20/2021

    What Would Mencius Do: A Confucian Response to COVID-19

    This episode, my first in about six months, was prompted by the ongoing flood of disinformation, dishonesty, and shear infantile selfishness among anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers. In short, I take on a topic that I proposed to a class back in the spring of 2020, just after lockdown began: to offer a Confucian response to the pandemic, Using the classical thinker Mengzi/Mencius as a touchstone, this episode argues for a theory of human nature from which compassion, social responsibility, and intellectual humility naturally emerge. This discussion continues in the next episode as well, from a slightly different perspective, as these issues have been very much on my mind over the last many months, as I'm sure they've been on your minds as well, but don't worry: I have several other subjects on the agenda, which I look forward to exploring with you. For now, I hope you enjoy this little outing, and find something useful in it.

    31 min
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About

Greetings, folks. In this podcast, I hope to explore the various facets of humanism from as many perspectives as I can manage. Some episodes will focus on the humanism as it has developed here in the West while others will look farther afield, sometimes to places that might surprise you. Always, though, the podcast will keep an eye toward how these ideas relate to contemporary life, and toward defending humanism against the anti-humanist discourses of fundamentalist religion and authoritarian politics that define so much of our public conversation. Resist theocracy. Always.

Information

  • Creator
    Rodger Wilkie
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2022
  • Episodes
    32
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Rodger Wilkie
  • Show Website
    An Eclectic Humanist