Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is philosophized this crazy couple weeks out there. Patreon changes their fee structure, masses of people drop off.

And a few days later, they change it back to the way it was. Thank you, Patreon. Your top two and the shows that I consider to be not supporting the show in any way.

I'm just kidding. Number one, of course, is Amazon. People have been kind of confused about this. Let me explain it again.

So a few months ago, Amazon cracked down on podcasts, they're saying that this Amazon banner was supporting their program. You can understand why they don't want people, you know, like your grandpa who goes on hateful tirades to the pharmaceutical companies to start a podcast and say Amazon directly supports the show.

Then they're aligning their brand with anybody that can start a podcast, which is anybody. So when I say that Amazon does not support the show, what I mean is when you go through the Amazon banner, a portion of your sale goes through into an account that has the name of the show on it.

It is one of the only two or three ways that helps keep the show going, but Amazon, they don't support what's going on the show at all. In fact, for all I know they denounce everything that I've ever said through this microphone.

So that's the situation. Today's episode is a long one. I lost my voice while recording it. Now, you know, I record this after I record the episode. It's on the great refusal. And I hope you love the show today.

So I was talking to my ex wife's grandmother the other day, my ex grandmother in law, I guess that makes her.

Basically a blood relative of mine. She was a depression baby, lived through World War Two, came of age in the world post World War Two when most of the early Frankfurt schools do in their work.

She didn't particularly follow politics that much, which she says was common among people of her generation. And during the 1960s, she was a stay at home mother of four witnessing on television, a much more politically involved generation.

The student protests against the Vietnam War, the excesses of capitalism, the leader of which who she'd often see on TV was one Herbert Marcos.

So when I was talking to where I asked her, what was it like back then? Like was the feeling in the country one of revolution? Did it feel like the foundations of capitalism were being shook and questioned in the countries on the verge of heading in a different direction?

And she looked at me kind of confused and said, no, not at all. I mean, she saw the protest on TV all the time. But the way she was educated to think of it, the consensus among all the people she knew as well.

Is that these were just a bunch of spoiled kids that went off to university and were ungrateful for what their country was doing for them, going into Vietnam and keeping them safe.

Now I get that it's just one person's opinion, but it's interesting to consider the vast difference between her subjectivity average American, what she thought was going on around her.

A subjectivity she had reinforced every day when she turned on the news. And the subjectivity of one of the student protesters or the subjectivity of Herbert Marcos. How did they view what was going on differently?

How does living the great refusal eventually getting contact with the subjectivity of my ex-grandmother-in-law?

You know, if you came to this episode on the great refusal with expectations of a handbook or you know, seven actionable tips you can apply right now and start living the great refusal.

Living the great refusal just didn't end up being that straightforward implement for Marcos.

People called him the guru of the new left, the leader of the student protests that were going on. He always rejected these titles. And it wasn't because he was being humble.

It's because he didn't see himself as a leader with a plan that he was implementing called the great refusal.

No, he quickly realized how much of a student to the process of liberation he was. He quickly realized how much he had to learn about how these movements that emerged movements that seek to be catalysts for revolutionary change in liberation.

...