The Myth of Clean Beginnings - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Myth of Clean Beginnings

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

We like to believe in clean slates. In fresh starts and unmarked beginnings. But what if the beginning was never clean? What if every attempt at origin is already layered—paint over plaster, gesture over habit, language over silence? This episode explores how beginnings are not ruptures, but rearrangements. It reveals how the past is never fully erased, but sedimented—shaping what follows, quietly and insistently.

Origin stories simplify. They conceal the friction beneath—what we thought we had painted over, outgrown, erased. But as Sara Ahmed reminds us, orientations stick not because we choose them, but because spaces are shaped to hold them. And Gloria Anzaldúa teaches us that contradiction is not an error in knowing—it’s a condition of it.

There is no pure beginning. There is only rearrangement. As Simone Weil insists, attention is an act of devotion. And to pay attention to what remains—to the unchosen, the unfinished, the inconvenient—is to acknowledge that newness is not clean. It is contingent. In this episode, we ask what it means to begin in a world already built. To inherit structure without pretending we invented it. And to find meaning in what cannot be fully removed.

Why Listen?

• The philosophy of beginning as rearrangement, not rupture
• How inheritance shapes perception, design, and memory
• Why origin stories often conceal more than they reveal
• The ethical and aesthetic stakes of what we try to erase

Further Reading

As an affiliate, we may earn from qualifying purchases through these links.

• Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed — How space, repetition, and institutional memory shape our bodies. Amazon link
• Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil — On the spiritual and structural implications of attention. Amazon link
• Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa — A foundational text on identity, hybridity, and epistemic rupture. Amazon link

Listen On:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Bibliography

• Ahmed, Sara. *Living a Feminist Life*. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
• Weil, Simone. *Gravity and Grace*. Translated by Emma Craufurd. London: Routledge, 2002.
• Anzaldúa, Gloria. *Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza*. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.