The Social Question, Reincarnation, and Labor as a Sacrifice for Mankind

The French Revolution (1789-1799) brought the slogan “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” and “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.”[1] These core concepts of individual liberty and democracy were insufficient to resolve the continuing social and economic inequalities in France, leading to the June Days uprising of June 23-26, 1848. The question of class inequality, which is at the core of the social question, “was brought to the attention of the public due to the intense participation of socialist workers and artisans in the social struggles in the spring of that year, and particularly in the ‘June Days’ in France.”[2] This uprising “would stand as the clearest example of class struggle in the modern European experience.”[3] “At that time [the 19th century in Europe] the social question was the central subject of volatile political conflicts between the ruling classes and working-class movements.”[4] In modern times, the social question continues and pertains not just to socioeconomic inequalities but also to the inequalities of race, sexual orientation, gender identification and religious beliefs, also including inequalities of workplace inequality and equality for persons with disabilities. These inequalities share a common theme:

[T]he social problem as Steiner identified it was that individuals are prevented from fully developing, but the focus here is not on the end-state of a ‘developed’ individual, but on the process of continual transformation.[5]

To understand the history of the revolutions that have occurred in Europe and America[6], we can bring to our awareness that the need for freedom and equality arose from our previous incarnation around the time of Christ and early Christianity.  From a lecture Steiner gave to the Theosophical Society on October 26th 1905 entitled “The Social Question and Theosophy” (GA 68d):

…all those souls who today cry for liberty and equality have learned it at another stage of their existence, in an earlier incarnation. The greatest needs of the human being of today were embodied in the early time of Christianity, in the first Christian centuries. All human beings have taken up this press for equality, before which the human being of today stands in spiritual life. Christianity brought the message of equality before God. In times prior to that, there had been no such equality.[7]

This leads our thinking to the question, if we stand equal before God, why do we not stand equal before our fellow man? Unfortunately, the concept of “equal before our fellow man” turned away from equality in justice, freedom and dignity and instead descended into seeking material equality: 

The soul that 1800 years ago was accustomed to claiming equality for the beyond now brings the impulse for equality with it, but in connection with what is important today: “equality before Mammon.”[8],[9]

This descent must be corrected:

If it [the soul] is to find an ascent again, it must find the spirit in the present, the inwardness, in the soul element itself. That is what the Theosophical world movement is striving for: to prepare the soul for the third stage [see John Root’s comments about this phrase “the third stage”], because it is filled with God, filled with divine wisdom, and will thereby again know how to place itself in the world, so that it will again find the harmony between itself and the surrounding world.[10]

As an aside, note the phrase “the spirit must find” (as it has been translated in English), and how fourteen years later in 1919, Steiner introduces the three aspects of the social question in GA 332a, Lecture 1, with this statement: “The spirit must give the answer to the following [three questions].”[11]

Furthermore, Steiner emphatically stated that the idea that we are victims of our environment, a product of our circumstances, is completely wrong:

Our national economists and our social theorists today so often say: the human being is only the product of outer circumstances. The human being has come to this because he has lived in these or those outer conditions. Thus speaks, for example, in earnest, social democracy, saying that the human being becomes what the environment makes of him, that because he has become a proletarian worker, due to the entire development of industry, he has also become one in his soul, the way he has evolved through just these conditions. The human being is a product of circumstances. We can often hear that. Let us study the conditions themselves, let us consider what is round about us, what we are most dependent on. Are we dependent merely on nature? No![12]

Rather:

The deepest humanity, the deepest soul-inwardness must first stream out of our own hearts into the world. Then the world will be an image of the soul, and in this soul there will be an image of the world. This will be able to satisfy people again…The first things that have to be worked over, what we have to take up first as the social question, are the souls of today, which produce the environment of tomorrow.[13]

This “deepest humanity” is concretely acquired through acquiring Theosophical knowledge and the development (at least a kernel) of universal brotherhood (brackets are John Root’s):

If human beings realize that the improvement of conditions depends on themselves, if they acquire Theosophical knowledge, and if they cognize the first fundamental principle to establish the kernel of a universal brotherhood [Refers to the first fundamental principle of the Theosophical Society: “To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color.”] and develop it in themselves as a social feeling for the surrounding world, then the actual social is possible, and one is prepared for what will happen in the near future.[14]

Let us remember that universal brotherhood is characteristic of the sixth epoch for which we are being prepared through the development of our consciousness soul:

In the sixth epoch … it is the spirit self that must be developed within the souls of men, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The nature of spirit self is that it must pre-suppose the existence in human souls of the three characteristics of which I have spoken: social life in which brotherliness prevails, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. These three characteristics are essential in a community of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the consciousness soul develops in the souls of the fifth epoch.[15]

Steiner then very elegantly (and quite unexpectedly in my opinion) connected the social question and universal brotherhood to the false premise of economic theory! The false premise of economic theory is that production of commodities is associated with the wage paid for the labor to produce those commodities. If instead one works from premise of universal brotherhood that “arise[s] out of the human being and from humanity”[16] one arrives at the realization that a “…commodity is the result of something other than directly compensated work. Thus its value also has nothing to do with what is to be paid in wages.”[17]

And now we get to the crux of the matter, the resolution of the social question:

Just as the Greek laborer did his work under the compulsion of his master and a present laborer works under the compulsion of wages, just so in the future only freedom will obtain.[sic] Labor and compensation will in future be completely separated.

That will constitute the health of social conditions in the future. You can see it already today. Work will be a voluntary performance out of the recognition of necessity, out of the realization that it must be done. People perform it because they look at the person and see that he needs work done for him. … Labor in the past was tribute, in the future it will be sacrifice. It has nothing to do with self-interest, nothing to do with compensation. If I base my labor on consumer demand, with regard to what humanity needs, I stand in a free relation to labor, and my work is a sacrifice for humanity. Then I will work with all my powers, because I love humanity and want to place my capacities at its disposal.

I often find it useful to rework Steiner’s logic in reverse. When, in the future, labor is a sacrifice for humanity because I see the need of humanity, then I do this work because I have a developed consciousness soul and spirit-self. I produce commodities completely independently of any wage for this labor and so “I stand in a free relation to labor.” From this ascent of my soul, I am no longer bound by the materialistic thinking Mammon. I stand equal not only before God, I stand equal before my fellow man. “Thus labor becomes anything but a burden. It becomes something into which we place what is most sacred for us, our compassion for humanity, and then we can say: Labor is sacred because it is a sacrifice for mankind.”[18] I am not a product of my circumstances, instead I am producing the environment of tomorrow. In this future of brotherhood, the issues of inequality no longer exist.

As a final word, one of the posters on Janusz Korczak that Mariola Strahlberg put up for her presentation “Children as Stars” is a quote by Korczak that I find succinctly reflects the topics discussed in this essay: “I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and act. It is not the duty of those around me to love me.  Rather, it is my duty to be concerned about the world, about man.”

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen

[2] F. Andreucci, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001, Chapter 3 titled “Marx and Engels”

[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0574

[4] Thomas Faist, The Transnationalized Social Question, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 33

[5] Brogan, A. Steiner Shorts 3: The Social Problem

[6] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/theminewars-labor-wars-us/

[7] Steiner, R. GA 68d: The Social Question and Theosophy, translated by John Root, Sr., Lecture given to the Theosophical Society on Oct 26 1905, online at https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA068d/

[8] Mammon in the New Testament of the Bible is commonly thought to mean money, material wealth, or any entity that promises wealth, and is associated with the greedy pursuit of gain.

[9] Steiner, R. GA 68d, Lecture 1

[10] Ibid.

[11] Steiner, R. The Social Future, Lecture 1, The Social Question as a Cultural Question, a Question of Equity, and a Question of Economics, October 24, 1919

[12] Steiner, R. GA 68d, Lecture 1

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Steiner, R. Preparing for the Sixth Epoch, Lecture given on June 15, 1915

[16] Steiner, R. GA 68d, Lecture 1

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

The Davos Manifesto 2020 compared to True Social Renewal

What is social renewal? In the social ferment of postwar Europe in 1919, Steiner presented his insights concerning the three autonomous domains of social life that are fundamental to the nature of human relationships in our time: the economic, political/rights and cultural domains. As he explained, all three of these essential dynamics must be recognized and consciously cooperated with if any real social renewal is to be achieved. In this essay I will be comparing the dynamics of social renewal that Steiner revealed with some of the ideas of Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Quotes from what Schwab has written are from his web article, The Davos Manifesto 2020: The Universal Purpose of a Company in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,[1] posted on Dec 2, 2019. See footnotes for references to the quotes from Steiner that I have used.

Schwab’s article introduces several topics which after closer examination can be contrasted with what Steiner wrote and said.

Value

Schwab defines the purpose of a company as matter of “value creation”:

The purpose of a company is to engage all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation. In creating such value, a company serves not only its shareholders, but all its stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers, local communities and society at large.

His further description:

A company serves its customers by providing a value proposition that best meets their needs. It accepts and supports fair competition and a level playing field.

The term, ‘value proposition’ (introduced by Lanning and Michaels in 1988), is “a clear, simple statement of the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that the company will provide, along with the approximate price it will charge each customer segment for those benefits.”[2] Schwab has a ‘value proposition’ where the price fluctuates based on need and competition and is therefore subjective, whereas for Steiner, a commodity has an objective value determined by people with expertise in the characteristics of the commodity[1] .

Steiner:

[A commodity] has an objective value, to the degree that it is durable or the reverse, lasting or perishable; to the degree that by its nature it is more or less serviceable, plentiful, or scarce. All these things condition an objective, actual economic value, the determination of which demands an objective expert knowledge.[3]

Dignity and Respect

Schwab:

A company treats its people with dignity and respect. It honours diversity and strives for continuous improvements in working conditions and employee well-being. In a world of rapid change, a company fosters continued employability through ongoing upskilling and reskilling…It integrates respect for human rights into the entire supply chain.

Schwab frames dignity and respect in the context of how an employee is treated and trained. Conversely, Steiner frames dignity in the context of the value of work for humanity as a whole.

Steiner:

[A large part of humanity] no longer wants to be led to work by economic compulsion. They want to work from motives more befitting human dignity…It [the three-membered organization] aims at establishing within an independent, self-sustaining cultural life a realm where one learns in a living way to understand this human society for which one is called upon to work; a realm where one learns to see what each single piece of work means for the combined fabric of the social order, to see it in such a light that one will learn to love it because of its value for the whole.[4]

Regulation and Transparency

Schwab:

[A company] has zero tolerance for corruption. It keeps the digital ecosystem in which it operates reliable and trustworthy. It makes customers fully aware of the functionality of its products and services, including adverse implications or negative externalities…It ensures the safe, ethical and efficient use of data.

The company is to be the guard against corruption and the assurance of transparency. This is not something that should be left within the purview of companies as a matter of self-regulation. Zero corruption and transparency can only be achieved through an autonomous rights domain holding sway over the economic domain to ensure human dignity and quality of life.

Steiner:

The political state must be based upon, and occupy itself with, those requirements which are common and equal to all.[5]

It is essential for knowledge about the members of the social organism to be able to differentiate between the legal rights system, which can only concern itself with relations between human beings that derive from human sources, and the economic system, which can only be concerned with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. It is necessary to sense this difference in life in order that, as a consequence of this sensibility, the economy be separate from the rights member.[6]

The Environment and Technology

Schwab:

[A company] acts as a steward of the environmental and material universe for future generations. It consciously protects our biosphere and champions a circular, shared and regenerative economy. It continuously expands the frontiers of knowledge, innovation and technology to improve people’s well-being.

Here, companies act as guardians of the environment and oversees technical advances on behalf of everyone. Though the environment and technology were not of the same level of concern in the early 20th century as they are today, it is not the purview of companies to be the stewards of these. As Andrew Brogan concisely summarized from Steiner’s insights on the rights domain: “… the role of politics is to ensure equality in interpersonal relationships through the establishment and promotion of human rights which contribute to a dignified life.”[7] Environment issues and the application of technology are directly impacting our ability to lead a “dignified life.” It is the responsibility of the rights domain to ensure quality of life – people’s well-being – which would of course include living conditions, the environment and the biosphere as a whole. It is out of the spiritual/cultural domain that innovations will emerge, which then are taken up by the economic cycle.           

The Social System

Schwab:

A company is more than an economic unit generating wealth. It fulfills human and societal aspirations as part of the broader social system.

Schwab believes that “generating wealth” (profit) at least partly fulfills the aspirations of human beings. Even in Steiner’s time, the reason for why we work was shifting away from a purely profit motive. In our times, this is even more relevant – people are more and more concerned about the environment and other people rather than their personal profit. When Schwab wrote “more than an economic unit” we see how he frames “upskilling and reskilling” (modern corporate words for education) as also being fulfilling to people and their “societal aspirations,” a nod to the expression attributed to Malcom Forbes: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Conversely, in the healthy social organism, education is in the purview of an autonomous cultural domain, not the economic domain.

Steiner:

An economic management that does not include this profit motive among the forces at work within the economy cannot of itself exert any effect whatever upon the human will to work. And precisely because it cannot do so, it meets a social demand that a large part of humanity has begun to raise in the present stage of development. This part of humanity no longer wants to be led to work by economic compulsion.[8]

In conclusion,  hopefully this short essay provides some counterpoint to Schwab’s model, which he calls ‘stakeholder capitalism,’ and its fundamental impulse that it “positions private corporations as trustees of society, and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges”[9] (my italics). It is important to be aware of Schwab’s thinking and to counter his views with the concrete reasoning that Steiner brings to our consciousness regarding social renewal.

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-2020-the-universal-purpose-of-a-company-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

[2] Lanning, Michael J., and Edward G. Michaels. “A business is a value delivery system.” McKinsey staff paper No. 41. July, 1988.

[3] Steiner, R. (2013) The Social Future. Revised by Henry B. Monges. SteinerBooks. Lecture 5, 29 October 1919, Zurich

[4] Steiner R. (1985) Renewal of the Social Organism. Translated by E. Bowen-Wedgewood and Ruth Mariott, revised by Frederick Amrine, Anthroposophic Press, GA 24, article 6

[5] Steiner, R. (1977, 2019) Toward a Threefold Society: Basic Issues of the Social Question. Translated by F.T. Smith. Rudolf Steiner Publications. GA 23, Ch. 3

[6] Steiner, R. (1977, 2019) Toward a Threefold Society: Basic Issues of the Social Question. Translated by F.T. Smith. Rudolf Steiner Publications. GA 23, Ch. 2

[7] Brogan, A. Steiner Shorts 3, The Social Problem https://www.academia.edu/67073076/Steiner_Shorts_3_The_Social_Problem

[8] Steiner R. (1985) Renewal of the Social Organism. Translated by E. Bowen-Wedgewood and Ruth Mariott, revised by Frederick Amrine, Anthroposophic Press, GA 24

[9] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stakeholder-capitalism-new-metrics-by-klaus-schwab-2019-11

Book on Social Renewal

In collaboration with Kate Reese Hurd, we have written a book entitled The Three-Membered Organization of the Social Organism In the Context of the 21st Century and America and its Individual and Group Realization.

Yes, it’s a long title!

It should be noted that the intended audience for this book are people familiar with Anthroposophy and particularly the writings/lecture Rudolf Steiner gave in the early 1900’s on social renewal.

This is a preview of the book, which includes the following sections:

  • Preface
  • Introductions
  • Chapters 1 and 2
  • About the Authors

If you are interested in a PDF of the complete November draft of this book, please leave a message on this post.

excerptDownload

The full table of contents (apologies for the underscores, getting WordPress to indent is not simple!):

Preface   1

Introduction by Marc Clifton   7

Introduction by Kate Reese Hurd   9

What is The Social Organism (The Social Order)?  12

__Social and Antisocial 12

Fundamental Concepts of the Social Organism    15

__Autonomy, Independence, and Interdependence  17

__The Premises of The Three-Membered Organization   20

__Developing a Healthy Social Life and its Organization   24

____From Unconscious to Conscious  24

____Healthy Thinking, Feeling and Willing in the Context of Mental Health   25

____Healthy Thinking, Feeling and Willing in the Context of Spiritual Science   27

____Free and Ethical Action   28

____Primal Thoughts  34

____What is a Healthy Social Organization?  36

__A Heightened Sensibility  37

__The Critical Role of Administration   38

Characteristics of The Spiritual/Cultural Domain   40

Education   40

Free Ethical Action   41

____Bias  42

__Self-Development  43

__Carrying out Justice, Adjudication   45

Characteristics of Rights Domain   46

__Quality of Nature   47

__Quality of Life   48

__Equality of the People   50

__Land Use Rights  52

__Taxation to Support the Rights Domain   53

__The Effectiveness of the Rights Domain   54

__Rights Within the Economic and Cultural Domains  55

Characteristics of The Economic Domain   56

__What is a Commodity?  56

__Core Concepts  58

____Land   58

____Labor  59

______The Service Sector  60

______Intangible Commodities  61

__Wage/Salary  62

__Taxes and Money  65

__The Entanglement of Labor and Wage/Salary  67

__The Decoupling of Commodity Price, Labor and Wage/Salary: A Thought Experiment  69

__Debt and its Effect on Wage/Salary and Product Price   72

__Unsecured and Secured Debt  74

__Stakeholders  76

__Credit and Debt  76

__Influences between the Economic Domain on the Other Two Domains  78

__Replacing Human Labor with Machine Labor  80

__The Division of Labor  82

The Primary Types of Capitalism    85

__Oligarchic Capitalism    85

__State-Guided Capitalism    86

__Corporate Capitalism    86

__Crony Capitalism    87

__Entrepreneurial Capitalism    87

__Laissez-Faire Capitalism    89

__Welfare State Capitalism    90

____Tuition   90

____Healthcare   92

__Shareholder Capitalism    93

__Stakeholder Capitalism    94

__Customer Capitalism    96

__What is Value?  97

__Toward True Social Renewal 99

Individual and Group Realization of the Three-Membered Organization   100

__Begin Small and With Conviction   101

__Begin With Ourselves  102

____Core Questions in Light of These Correspondences  103

__Ourselves and Others  104

____As a Consumer  104

____As an Entrepreneur  106

____As a Producer / Worker  107

__Group Realization   108

The Future of the Three-Membered Organization   110

__The Will to Work  110

__The Four Day Work Week  114

__Is Technology The Answer?  115

__Country and Local Realization of The Three-Membered Organization   117

__The Three-Membered Organization and the Environment  118

__The Gift Economy  119

__Imagining The Three-Membered Organization   121

__Working out of an Independent Life of Thought  122

__Associative Economics  125

Concluding Thoughts  133

Online Resources  134

__The Seminal Works of Rudolf Steiner  134

__Books and Lectures on the Social Organism and the Three-Membered Organization   135

____Works by Rudolf Steiner  135

__Works on the Social Question by Others  137

__Holding Conversation, Study Groups, and Workshops  137

__Gross National Happiness  137

__Other Sources  138

About the Authors  139

__Marc Clifton   139

__Kate Reese Hurd   139

Human Relationship is the Foundation of Social Renewal

Steiner’s book Basic Issues of the Social Question (GA 23), first published in 1919, introduced the necessity of a social organism in which the activities of the economic, political (rights) and cultural domains unfold autonomously and of necessity do so in such a way that each interpenetrates in their rightful place the other two through human-to-human relationships.  Only in this manner can human development and activity be healthy in our time.  In late October 1919, Steiner developed this concept further in a series of lectures entitled, The Social Future (GA 332a), giving much more grounding for an understanding of the three domains and laying out in particular detail the workings of what he had spoken of as ‘associative economics’ (Lecture 2). Between 1919 and 1920, Steiner wrote many articles, some of which were published as The Renewal of the Social Organism (GA 24), which further deepened the concepts that inform the three-membered interpenetrating structure of social life.  Although the terms ‘tripartite’ and ‘threefold’ do not suggest the interpenetrating nature of this truly social structure, for brevity I will use the term ‘tripartite,’ but amend it as ‘tripartite society.’

In the works just mentioned (and others) Steiner described the situation that led up to World War I, discussed the concerns of the proletariat after the war, and provided an intricate and detailed analysis of a tripartite society that would correct the inequalities experienced by the proletariat and ideally prevent the catastrophe of a world war from ever occurring again.  Steiner’s work is highly relevant today, with the issues he discussed exacerbated greatly by the circumstances we now face which involve the environment, technology, race and gender equality, class disparity, and ongoing conflicts across the world.

In my collaboration with Kate Reese Hurd on a book entitled, The Three-Membered Organization of the Social Organism (The Threefold Social Order) In the Context of the 21st Century and America and its Individual and Group Realization, I have become aware that when we are attempt to work with the ideas of social renewal, and in particular with the functioning of the three domains – economic, rights, and cultural – it is often the case that we are altogether missing the fundamental foundation upon which Steiner’s thinking is based.  The idea of a tripartite society composed of three autonomous domains is not actually the foundation of social renewal.  Instead, such a society and social renewal must be the outcome of fundamental changes in human relationships.  Steiner pointed out the need for these fundamental changes in human relationships repeatedly, not just in the context of social renewal, but in much of the entire arc of his life’s work.  In the case of social renewal, we can feel-sense-perceive and recognize that within the very nature of our relationships with each other we do in fact meet in three distinct ways, which require us to fashion a tripartite social organization and organism.

The foundation I will describe here is not a recipe of ‘do this first, then that next, then that third.’ The points I make here are dependent upon each other simultaneously.  While this foundation is described in a linear manner due to the limits of how one can write about these things, they should, if at all possible, be held in one’s being collectively, explored individually or in pairs, and then brought back into the ‘collective.’

The core of Steiner’s social renewal is relationship, and in particular, real human-to-human relationships.  The relationship between producers, distributors, and consumers; the relationship between those with capital and the entrepreneur in need of capital; the relationship between worker and entrepreneur, and so forth.  Our understanding of social renewal must first and foremost begin with a deep understanding of the significance of human relationships.  “People cannot be social if they do not see the human quality in one another, but live entirely within themselves. Human beings can only become social if they really meet one another in life, and something passes between them. This is the root of the social problem.”[i]

Once we really understand the need to start from human relationships, we can begin to apply two concrete and foundational activities: 1) taking a genuine interest in each other, and 2) acting out of interest in the dignity of our fellow human being.  These are deeply entwined.  One cannot act with dignity towards another without taking an interest in what that other person requires for the preservation of their human dignity.  Just as Gary Chapman pointed out, that people experience love in different ways (the five ‘love languages’), each of us has a different set of ‘relational activities’ that we find honors our dignity as a human being.  These can only be discovered by taking a genuine interest in the other person, which is in itself a path to the experience of human dignity.

This task of taking interest is developed in what Steiner said in his lecture, “The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body” (GA 182, 9 October 1918, Zürich): “we must confront every human being with the full realisation that in him something is revealing itself from the divine foundations of the world, revealing itself through flesh and blood.”  Holding the thought ‘here in this person is something revealed from the divine,’ not only eliminates racial, cultural, and ethnic biases, it actually spurs an interest in the other person to ask, “what is being revealed in this other?” and also to ask the question, ‘how can I help this other reveal what is living in them from the divine foundation of the world?’

We discover, however, that taking an interest in another human being regularly results in polarization because our thinking is almost always one-sided.  Steiner remarked that “the truth lies in the middle between the opposing assertions/claims, just as the real tree lies in the middle between two photographs that I take from one side or the other. In this regard, one must point out the dangers of one-sided thinking.”[ii] Also: “A middle course is appropriate when the opposing sides are also present and are recognised as forces.”[iii]  Rather than trying to solve/resolve the polarities, those polarities must be worked ‘in and through.’  The middle path is not a passive compromise but rather an active, evolving and creative space that constantly works with the polarities.  The middle path requires concrete, human work.  It is not sufficient to repeat abstract phrases about love and altruism in an attempt to ignore the conflict.  Does Christ ignore the polarities of Ahriman and Lucifer?  No!  Christ is ever active in working with the necessity of those polarities to ensure that human freedom is continually developed.  Similarly, when we as human beings are in conflict, we must willingly take on the active work in the middle space that recognizes the necessity of our polarities and that does so without creating a loss of freedom or impairment of dignity on the part of either person holding opposing views.

How do we work in the middle?  Besides the various forms of conflict resolution that our society has developed, a primary requirement is that we see each other as co-equal.  Steiner wrote: “Real relationships will grow up between people united in a social organism where each adult … is co-equal with every other adult.”   Being viewed as co-equal is a foundational requirement for human dignity.  It is also a fundamental requirement for the active work that the middle space requires.  While we obviously have differences in skill and knowledge, polarities are usually not primarily the result of those differences or of those alone, but rather the result of differences in individual life experiences that result in differing viewpoints, visions, goals and needs.  

Taking these foundational steps concretely into our thinking, feeling and willing can bring us to what Steiner refers to as an ‘ennobled egoism’ (from GA 332a, The Social Future, Lecture 6 – see the December 2022 Chanticleer Newsletter to read the whole passage):

For the point is, that he who meets his fellowmen with a purely human interest and understanding acts differently from one whose interests are narrow, and who gives no thought to all that fills the hearts and souls of his fellow creatures, and who is without interest for his surroundings. On this account, the former, who is truly interested in his fellowmen, need not be less egoistic in life than the other; for his egoism may be precisely his desire to serve human beings. It may call forth in him a feeling of inner well-being, of inner bliss, even of ecstasy, to devote himself to the service of his fellowmen. Then, as far as the outer life is concerned, deeds which are absolutely altruistic to all appearance may proceed from egoism; in the life of feeling they cannot be appraised otherwise than as egoism.

To think we are ever acting purely altruistically is self-delusional.  There are two points here: first, we can be active in these foundational steps while still having a feeling life in which we feel good when we devote ourselves to the service of others.  Second, an ennobled egoism is what is very much required to work with these foundational principles.  Instead of an ‘egotistic’ (with a ‘t’ – meaning habitually talking about oneself; indifferent to the well-being of others; selfish) it is our egoism[iv] (the endnote offers an interesting discussion on egoism) that must be ennobled so that it becomes an interest in others as the foundation of morality.

Out of these foundational ways of relating with each other, we have the tools and means to develop the concepts of a tripartite society.  As previously stated, these qualities of human relationship do not develop as a result of a tripartite society; rather, they are a requirement for the development of a tripartite society.  Ideally, these new forms of human relationship would be accomplished through the education of our children in an autonomous cultural domain: “The kind of education that makes human beings of people also enables them to recognize people as human beings.”[v]  This can no longer be the province and responsibility of our educators and our children to carry forward, but instead, as adults, we must take up our own re-education.  In 1912, Steiner said: “Our modern culture and—more importantly—the prospects for the approaching future will doubtless lend ever-increasing importance to what is called adult education.”[vi]  That ‘approaching future’ is upon us now. 

To summarize the foundational steps of social renewal (imagine these points to be living in an interconnected, dynamic space rather than as bullet points):

  • Keeping human relationships at the core.
  • Taking a genuine interest in another person.
  • Acting out of the interest in the dignity of the other person.
  • Eliminating racial, cultural, and ethic biases by consciously experiencing that in every person is revealed something from the divine foundations of the world.
  • Being active in ‘the middle’ as co-equals and working with polarities that leaves each person feeling heard and their dignity whole.
  • Ennobling egoism: shifting from the focus on and role of self with regards to motivation to the focus on and role of the other with regards to our own motivation.

The realization of a tripartite society does not require us to be perfectly practicing the above steps, but rather that we at a minimum begin practicing these foundational steps.  How can we start this practice?  I propose that perhaps the simplest starting point of all is: instead of asking ‘how are you?’, ask instead, ‘what lives in you today?’, and accompany this with intentional listening.  Another practice is to actively meet ‘the other’ with the conscious thought, ‘here is a person that is revealing something from the divine,’ and discover how this changes our interaction with the other person.

[i] GA 191, October 4, 1919, “Social Understanding Through Spiritual Scientific Knowledge,” a few paragraphs from end of lecture

[ii] Soziale Zukunft, GA 332a, Question/Answer following Lecture 6, translation by Kate Reese Hurd

[iii] GA 141, Between Death and Rebirth, Lecture 7

[iv] https://www.studysmarter.us/explanations/politics/political-ideology/egoism/

[v] GA 191, “Cosmogony, Freedom, Altruism”

[vi] GA 61, March 14, 1912, “Self-Education in the Light of Spiritual Science”

Troy Weldy’s Proposal for Ooms Conservation Area

Having read the Troy’s proposal regarding Ooms:

Click to access september-reduced.pdf

I have some concerns:

  • A serpentine boardwalk circling the pond that will allow visitors to access the water safely without disturbing the ecosystem

Sounds like this would completely destroy the gorgeous view of the pond and its inherent natural beauty by surrounding it with a manmade boardwalk.

  • Plantings that support wildlife habitat and provide shade for visitors

I’m not sure how wildlife would be attracted to “plantings” that are in close proximity to people.

  • Pathways that are welcoming to all regardless of ability and supportive of different levels of stamina

I have wondered in the past regarding how Ooms can be more handicap accessible — given the hilly nature of Ooms and the marshy quality near the parking lot, that seems rather difficult.

  • Additional fishing structures and piers that will increase access to the pond

Again, disruptive to the natural beauty of the pond.

  • Rock block stepping stones into the water with water level markers showcasing the impact of climate change on our water ecosystems

Again, disruptive to the natural beauty of the pond.  Furthermore, I’m not clear how climate change is affecting this ecosystem and how water level markers would actually demonstrate climate change.

  • New picnic areas, play equipment for children and families, and rest spaces along the walkways

Play equipment tends to be ugly.  Both play equipment and picnic areas are places where people don’t pick up their litter.  Not to be overly negative, but historically, playground / picnic area attracts nighttime drug activity.  Regarding litter, I almost always take a trash bag with me and pick up the trash I find at the current gazebo at the top of the hill (including the occasional used condom.)  I think this demonstrates the issue.

  • Educational signage highlighting the site’s special features

Personally, I don’t go to Ooms to read signage.  I can read about Ooms on the web.  That said, if the signage were limited to the parking lot, rather than being disruptive on the trails, that would be great.

If Writing is Hard…

In Kislay Verma’s excellent post Why programmers don’t write documentation (April 29, 2021), he writes:

Software engineers, like everyone else, don’t write because writing clearly is very, VERY difficult.

I find this both amusing and scary. If writing documentation clearly is very VERY difficult then doesn’t this imply that writing code clearly is also very difficult?

And there we have it. If you can’t write documentation clearly, I suspect your code is equally unclear, which is exactly my experience.

Putting COVID Deaths Into Perspective – The Profit Motive

Tragically, as of 7/11/2021, over four million people have died COVID according to how COVID deaths are recorded over the last year and half of the pandemic.

Even more tragically, this is how many people die worldwide every year from:

Starvation: an estimated 9 million people.

Air pollution: an estimated 7 million people.

Smoking: more than 7 million deaths.

Car accidents: approximately 1.35 million.

Remember, those are per year, totaling over 24 million people a year.

To put that in a different way — in the 18 months that 4 million people have died of COVID, approximately 36 million or 9 times as many, have died from starvation, air pollution, smoking, and car accidents.

But we don’t consider these 24 million yearly deaths to be a pandemic. Why not? Because there is in no profit in addressing these issues particularly as it is strenuously argued by various industries and corporations that there would monetary loss. And who suffers? The people of this planet and the planet itself.

But there is profit in manufacturing drugs. Pfizer made $3.5 billion dollars in revenue just in the first quarter of 2021 from the vaccine alone, nearly 1/4 of its total revenue with profits predicted in the high 20% range. (source)

Moderna logged a profit of $1.2 billion dollars. (source)

The word “pandemic” comes from the Greek pandēmos (from pan ‘all’ + dēmos ‘people’.) It doesn’t refer to just viruses (“a pandemic disease”, first use recorded in 1853) but rather anything that affects all people. We have several global pandemics which are being ignored by governments and corporations for one simple reason: there is no profit in fixing them.

The Servitude Language of Corporations and Managers

I was reading Don’t Let Employees Pick Their WFH Days and, like so many other articles of this kind, am struck by the use of “servitude” language when speaking of employees. Or, to use the more politically incorrect term, “master/slave” language. As Merriam-Webster defines servitude: a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one’s course of action or way of life.

Examples:

How much choice should workers have in the matter?

When someone curtails the freedom of choice of another, that is control, and in the workplace, servitude.

On the one hand, many managers are passionate that their employees should determine their own schedule.

While that sentence sounds rather positive, the subtle message here is that managers have control over their employees schedule.

after talking to hundreds of organizations over the last year, have led me to change my advice from supporting to being against employees’ choosing their own WFH days.

“against employees’ choosing” – servitude.

So I have changed my mind and started advising firms that managers should decide which days their team should WFH. For example, if the manager picks WFH on Wednesday and Friday

Just amazing to me, the idea that someone else can have such control over my life.

Thankfully, there is this manager:

One manager told me “I treat my team like adults. They get to decide when and where they work, as long as they get their jobs done.”

An employer/employee relationship is an agreement that among other things usually includes an expectation of work hours. Where the work is done can be explicitly stated (and often the work must be done in “the office”, but it is also frequently ill-defined. However, in many cases, particularly in the tech industry, the requirement to work at the office is entirely arbitrary. It is often prejudiced, with managers having more flexibility to work from home than the non-manager employees. It is often arbitrary, where one manager in the organization is very flexible regarding work-from-home and another manager is a militant about his team working in the office.

I have been lured into employment in the past with a stated “very flexible work from home schedule” during the interview, only to find myself “managed” by a militant dictator who doesn’t allow any work from home.

I have worked successfully as a contractor for 20 years, where it is illegal to require the contractor to work on premise unless required by the work itself.

And I have worked for companies where the response to working from home is “no problem!”

During the pandemic, I have had the luxury (many do not) of being able to work from home. This has dramatically and ironically improved the quality of my life. I live in a very rural, artistic, community. Working from home has afforded me the luxury of meeting with people in my pod with much greater flexibility. This includes artistic presentations, outdoor gatherings, and so forth, that I would have missed if I were in the office from 8 to 5 (all of course following the guidelines of the CDC.) And simple things as well, like running an errand during lunchtime or even when I just need to take a break and think about a problem away from the computer screen.

At the other extreme, 21% tell us they never want to spend another day working from home. These are often young single employees or empty nesters in city center apartments.

Corporations and their managers need to embrace diversity, as everyone’s individual needs are different.

They [managers] often confided that home-based employees in their teams get passed over on promotions because they are out of touch with the office … given the evidence that working from home while your colleagues are in the office can be highly damaging to your career.

This isn’t the responsibility of the employee to fix. It is the responsibility of the company and the managers.

While we have laws against slavery, in many ways working for corporate America is a silent, permissible, accepted form of servitude, and like slavery, does not recognize the free human being. While often we have little or no choice regarding the employer for which we work, that does not mean that the employer should treat us with any less human dignity.

To conclude, Merriam-Webster has this to say:

Servitude is slavery or anything resembling it. The entire black population of colonial America lived in permanent servitude. And millions of the whites who populated this country arrived in “indentured servitude”, obliged to pay off the cost of their journey with several years of labor. Servitude comes in many forms, of course: in the bad old days of the British navy, it was said that the difference between going to sea and going to jail was that you were less likely to drown in jail.

So I ask, why are we so willing to pay off the cost of “our journey through life” in servitude, rather than the antonyms of servitude. freedom, liberty? What are managers so afraid of?

Is Emerson’s Self-Reliance a Cosmic Joke on the Rest of us?

Really. Is Emerson not laughing in his grave?

Emerson begins (thereabouts) with:

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

And yet, here we are, in some circles quoting Emerson the bard, Emerson the sage, and do we not feel shame in taking our opinion from him rather than our own genius? He must be laughing in his grave.

Who actually has the time to wade through all this eloquence? How, if it all, does it apply to our world, 180 years later, where social media, news media, politicians, doctors, scientists — the entire plethora of so-called “experts” — is constant bombarding us with “this is how and what you should think.” Where 180 years have gone by and scientific, medical, social and economic advancement has occurred because thinking has been built upon other thinking rather than each person going off on their own direction willy-nilly and progressing no further than the threshold of their own personal cave.

Emerson concludes with:

He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

As John of Salisbury wrote almost 1000 (yes, one thousand!!!) years ago (in 1159): “Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants.” The phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants” has become a metaphor which means “Using the understanding gained by major thinkers who have gone before in order to make intellectual progress.” (wikipedia)

No, my dear Emerson, not our feet, not our head, but rather standing on the shoulder of giants.

So, if you read Emerson’s Self-Reliance, read it with the idea that, if you think he was a giant, you are standing on his shoulders and will make your own moral and intellectual progress. Just try not to be so long-winded about it.

The COVID-19 Spike Protein and Vascular Disease and the mRNA Vaccine

The CDC says this about the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine1:

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.

In a paper published 4/30/2021 in Circulation Research, summarized by SciTechDaily2, we read:

Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2’s distinctive “spike” proteins help the virus infect its host by latching on to healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that they also play a key role in the disease itself…

…the paper provides clear confirmation and a detailed explanation of the mechanism through which the protein damages vascular cells for the first time...

…In the new study, the researchers created a “pseudovirus” that was surrounded by SARS-CoV-2 classic crown of spike proteins, but did not contain any actual virus. Exposure to this pseudovirus resulted in damage to the lungs and arteries of an animal model—proving that the spike protein alone was enough to cause disease. Tissue samples showed inflammation in endothelial cells lining the pulmonary artery walls.

From those excerpts, and the parts that I underlined, it would seem to be a logical conclusion that the mRNA vaccine also causes vascular disease. How could it not? Doesn’t the vaccine cause the cells in your body to manufacture the same spike protein that the Salk researchers found to be the cause of vascular disease?

What am I missing? It’s confusing to read “…classic crown of spike proteins…” (plural) but then “…that the spike protein alone…” (singular), as the question is, well, is one or all of the spike proteins that cause vascular disease, and if it’s only one, then is it the same protein that the mRNA vaccine causes your cells to produce?

If anything, this is why we need open disclosure – what spike protein does the mRNA vaccine produce, and what spike protein (or proteins) did the Salk researches work with?

If anyone who reads this post knows, please leave a comment, and with your sources!

Sources

1 – https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html

2 – https://scitechdaily.com/covid-19-is-a-vascular-disease-coronavirus-spike-protein-attacks-vascular-system-on-a-cellular-level/