Don't know what's so spot on about the "agents of everything". Maybe the name itself. I know the ideas you're sharing, having followed you for a long time, but it seems fresher, evolving, connecting in new ways, which i adore 🙏🏼🙏🏼
Thank you for a wonderful lead. Truly wonderful and helpful.
I'm set on my journey to help people connect with their power and choice and this is a tremendous help and guidance and example.
Cheers!
Would love to hear more about alchemy and how to transform pain and fear and difficulties into gold of living a meaninful, serving and satisfying life.
I'm excited about the direction of travel your 'Agents of Everything' podcast appears to be heading in. To find such ideas as truth, meaning, choice, freewill, responsibility, uncertainty, phenomenology, potential, the self, control and post modernism discussed in the context of development of self and the way in which you are packing this stuff is unique and rare.
It is nice to hear acknowledgement of the lineage of these ideas through continental philosophy and the Existential tradition and, knowing you, I understand that you are merely skimming the surface of the depth and breadth of your knowledge in this field.
Acknowledging the various paradoxes and dilemmas people naturally face simply as function of being thrown into this already existing world, being open to a distinction between existence and essence, becoming aware of the various complex value and belief systems we might adopt unwittingly (and ultimately can end up feeling defined by should we not feel capable of challenging them) and generally exploring the difficulties in living faced by many people through philosophical (existential/phenomenological) as well as a psychological lenses is a wonderful approach and I look forward to hearing more of your ideas as this particular journey unfolds.
Thank you, Kevin – good to get this feedback as I was not entirely satisfied with particular episode, in terms of how effectively I had got into D, apparent dichotomy at its heart. I’ll no doubt visit the topic again at various times.
The freedom to choose vs fully conditioned argument interests me too; my understanding is that at the heart of existential philosophy is the assertion that human existence is fundamentally free and it is Sartre (out of all the existential crowd) who places the greatest emphasis on human freedom.
In saying existence precedes essence, he is suggesting we are first and foremost upsurges of nothingness and only after that do we form identities ‘Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself’, he says.
He suggests that our identity (who we think we are) is not the cause of our choices but rather 'we are' our choices and that our identity and characteristics are a consequence of the choices that we make.
Through this lense, there is nothing that has caused us to become who we are rather, we bacame who we are by virtue of the choices that we have made in our lives. Identity is an outcome of the decisions we have made.
Sartre suggests that human existence cannot be reduced to a set of determinative causes. He writes: ‘Man does not exist first in order to be free subsequently; there is no difference between the being of a man and his being-free’. I think he strongly believed in the creation of one's own values. I'd love to hear you bring Nietzsche into this too if you think it might be useful. He had a lot to say about values and also 'the will to power'.
My guess is you are better informed of Sartre's position than I am! A thought, however...
As Epictetus put it (paraphrase) "The only place we have power is with our conceptions and our choices." The question is; is it not our conceptions that shape of the choices that we see? Even 'create' those choices?
Does choice really come before conception? Of course, chicken and egg - the strange loops of emergence. I think Sartre dodged the role conception (schemas, maps, beliefs systems, epistemes, whatever) play in creating the choices available to us, and possibly the origins of all that stuff.
I could, however, be maligning JP - I am absolutely not a scholar of his (or anyone's) work so would not want to take a solid position.
More interesting to me is looking into the strange loop of conception and choice, rather that elevating the one or the other (maybe pitting Sartre agains Foucault as nominated representatives of the yang and the yin in this matter).
I always appreciate your considered and informative responses.
Yes, I agree on the conception/choice loop - I think we might have had that discussion previously somewhere. Although, I wonder if his essence/existence argument is addressing the same thing as choice/conception argument.
Where we might disagree is on the matter of who is better informed of Sartre's position :)
I look forward to hearing more episodes, especially around Power. I enjoy your critical commentary on Foucault !
Thank you for the clarification ☺ , English is my second language ... now I ll listen to the podcast again with a new meaning for the word , It will be interesting to notice any differences in the meaning that might emerge 😀
Thank you for this podcast, James. I've found your journey and ideas to be stimulating and very relevant to me right now. I'm particularly interested in your notion of Personal Alchemy and hope you spend more time discussing this idea. Is there a book on that in your future? While I'm interested in Hypnosis Without Trance, I'm not sure if it is meant primarily for helping others to change or if it also provides tools for self change.
The intersection of hypnosis, psychology, philosophy, and NLP, as well as your evolution through magic and mentalism, is fascinating, and I appreciate your ability to distill complex issues into language that is easy to comprehend. Many thanks for what you do.
Love it James.
Don't know what's so spot on about the "agents of everything". Maybe the name itself. I know the ideas you're sharing, having followed you for a long time, but it seems fresher, evolving, connecting in new ways, which i adore 🙏🏼🙏🏼
Thank you for a wonderful lead. Truly wonderful and helpful.
I'm set on my journey to help people connect with their power and choice and this is a tremendous help and guidance and example.
Cheers!
Would love to hear more about alchemy and how to transform pain and fear and difficulties into gold of living a meaninful, serving and satisfying life.
Thanks a million!
Elad
Thank you, Elad - I’ll be sure to do a session on personal alchemy.
Hi James
I'm excited about the direction of travel your 'Agents of Everything' podcast appears to be heading in. To find such ideas as truth, meaning, choice, freewill, responsibility, uncertainty, phenomenology, potential, the self, control and post modernism discussed in the context of development of self and the way in which you are packing this stuff is unique and rare.
It is nice to hear acknowledgement of the lineage of these ideas through continental philosophy and the Existential tradition and, knowing you, I understand that you are merely skimming the surface of the depth and breadth of your knowledge in this field.
Acknowledging the various paradoxes and dilemmas people naturally face simply as function of being thrown into this already existing world, being open to a distinction between existence and essence, becoming aware of the various complex value and belief systems we might adopt unwittingly (and ultimately can end up feeling defined by should we not feel capable of challenging them) and generally exploring the difficulties in living faced by many people through philosophical (existential/phenomenological) as well as a psychological lenses is a wonderful approach and I look forward to hearing more of your ideas as this particular journey unfolds.
Thank you, Kevin – good to get this feedback as I was not entirely satisfied with particular episode, in terms of how effectively I had got into D, apparent dichotomy at its heart. I’ll no doubt visit the topic again at various times.
The freedom to choose vs fully conditioned argument interests me too; my understanding is that at the heart of existential philosophy is the assertion that human existence is fundamentally free and it is Sartre (out of all the existential crowd) who places the greatest emphasis on human freedom.
In saying existence precedes essence, he is suggesting we are first and foremost upsurges of nothingness and only after that do we form identities ‘Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself’, he says.
He suggests that our identity (who we think we are) is not the cause of our choices but rather 'we are' our choices and that our identity and characteristics are a consequence of the choices that we make.
Through this lense, there is nothing that has caused us to become who we are rather, we bacame who we are by virtue of the choices that we have made in our lives. Identity is an outcome of the decisions we have made.
Sartre suggests that human existence cannot be reduced to a set of determinative causes. He writes: ‘Man does not exist first in order to be free subsequently; there is no difference between the being of a man and his being-free’. I think he strongly believed in the creation of one's own values. I'd love to hear you bring Nietzsche into this too if you think it might be useful. He had a lot to say about values and also 'the will to power'.
Hey Kevin
My guess is you are better informed of Sartre's position than I am! A thought, however...
As Epictetus put it (paraphrase) "The only place we have power is with our conceptions and our choices." The question is; is it not our conceptions that shape of the choices that we see? Even 'create' those choices?
Does choice really come before conception? Of course, chicken and egg - the strange loops of emergence. I think Sartre dodged the role conception (schemas, maps, beliefs systems, epistemes, whatever) play in creating the choices available to us, and possibly the origins of all that stuff.
I could, however, be maligning JP - I am absolutely not a scholar of his (or anyone's) work so would not want to take a solid position.
More interesting to me is looking into the strange loop of conception and choice, rather that elevating the one or the other (maybe pitting Sartre agains Foucault as nominated representatives of the yang and the yin in this matter).
JT
Thanks James
I always appreciate your considered and informative responses.
Yes, I agree on the conception/choice loop - I think we might have had that discussion previously somewhere. Although, I wonder if his essence/existence argument is addressing the same thing as choice/conception argument.
Where we might disagree is on the matter of who is better informed of Sartre's position :)
I look forward to hearing more episodes, especially around Power. I enjoy your critical commentary on Foucault !
🙏🏻
I wonder if you could at some point expand on ways one can develop / sharpen the "eye that choses " Thank you
Yes I can! I should make it clear though, I’m talking about the ‘I’ that chooses!
Thank you for the clarification ☺ , English is my second language ... now I ll listen to the podcast again with a new meaning for the word , It will be interesting to notice any differences in the meaning that might emerge 😀
Thank you for this podcast, James. I've found your journey and ideas to be stimulating and very relevant to me right now. I'm particularly interested in your notion of Personal Alchemy and hope you spend more time discussing this idea. Is there a book on that in your future? While I'm interested in Hypnosis Without Trance, I'm not sure if it is meant primarily for helping others to change or if it also provides tools for self change.
The intersection of hypnosis, psychology, philosophy, and NLP, as well as your evolution through magic and mentalism, is fascinating, and I appreciate your ability to distill complex issues into language that is easy to comprehend. Many thanks for what you do.