The Creative Word
I went to install the latest json gem this morning and got “make is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”
Poking around my path, I discovered that c:\railsinstaller\devkit\bin was no longer there! I have no idea what removed it — the last thing I did on this machine was install the latest version of SmartGit/Hg (which is another story.)
Anyways, adding the path back in fixed the gem install issue.
A new article on function pipelining and function composition in Ruby, attempting to emulate F#’s capability, is here.
I’ve been working with some folks on the concepts of and around generosity communities. When I explore this concept, I discover that there are some fundamental questions about the premise for a generosity community that I think need to be looked at. This is the working list of questions that I’ve come up with so far that I believe are important for each participant of any community, not just a generosity community, to explore by themselves and in community groups:
Values
Authority
Wealth
Balance
Health
Body / Soul / Spirit
Communication
How can I articulate a spiritually-based value system in such a way that it is capable of entering into a dialog with other conventional value-based systems? This is an important question for “interfacing” something like a generosity community with, for example, monetary-valuation systems (banks, businesses, the stock market, Wall Street, etc.)
Other Thoughts
We can replace the words “person”, “people”, “community” with other concepts: “partner”, “business”, “co-worker”, “boss”, “child”, and so forth. These questions are not limited to our relationship with a generosity community but are valuable whenever we are in relationship with something or someone else.
Also, we have many relationships with people and entities (work place, church, charity, grocery store, etc) based on the context of our needs. What is still a question for me, when I look at the trends of generosity communities, Local Investment Opportunity Networks, income pooling, and crowdfunding, is that these all express the need to fill a void that people are experiencing. I am still unclear on what exactly that void is that isn’t being filled by our current social structures and how to clearly articulate that void in an objective and concise way. That will be the topic of further investigation and discussion.
Success!
Here are my raw notes on how this was accomplished.
As per my previous posts, use RailsInstaller to install Ruby on Rails for Windows. Catarse requires Ruby 1.9.3, so make sure you download that version of RailsInstaller.
Then, from my previous post:
Now for the fun stuff.
Bundle install will fail for a variety of reasons.
From here: http://jes.al/2012/10/installing-curb-gem-on-windows-7/
You are reading this probably because you might have encountered an error like this on Windows:
Installing curb (0.7.18) with native extensions
Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
Here’s how to fix it (Note: This is assuming you have successfully installed RailsInstaller or similar.)
1) Download libcurl (under the “Win32 – Generic” section) and extract the contents to C:\ At the time of writing 7.27.0 was the latest. If you download a different version, don’t forget to the update the paths below.
2) Add C:\curl-7.27.0-devel-mingw32\bin to your Windows path
3) Run:
gem install curb --version 0.7.18 --platform=ruby -- -- --with-curl-lib="C:/curl-7.27.0-devel-mingw32/bin" --with-curl-include="C:/curl-7.27.0-devel-mingw32/include"
By the way, those multiple dashes are not a mistake! That’s the only way I could get it to work. You can change the version to meet your needs. I had another gem which was specifically dependent on version 0.7.18 so I choose that in particular.
The actual download file was:
http://curl.haxx.se/gknw.net/7.31.0/dist-w32/curl-7.31.0-devel-mingw32.zip
Setting the path to the unzipped folder :
The command I used (this is all one line:
gem install curb –version 0.8.4 –platform=ruby — — –with-curl-lib=”C:/curl-7.31.0devel-mingw32/bin” –with-curl-include=”C:/curl-7.31.0-devel-mingw32/include”
Remove from Gemfile in the production group the line “gem ‘unicorn'”
Remove from Gemfile.lock references to kgio and unicorn
Add to Gemfile’s development group:
gem ‘thin’
Replace:
gem ‘rmagick’
with:
gem ‘rmagick-win32’
All the instructions that I found for getting libv8 to install failed except for the instructions related to getting therubyracer_for_windows to install, which are:
From there: https://github.com/hiranpeiris/therubyracer_for_windows
followed the instructions (the ruby folder I used was: C:\RailsInstaller\Ruby1.9.3\bin)
This seems to have fixed the dependency issue on libv8!
I was actually successful with this but none-the-less I ditched it later. Here’s how I installed RMagick:
Follow the instructions here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4873276/i-cant-install-rmagick-gem-on-windows
Prerequisites:
Ruby > 1.8.6
DevKit (any version)
No other ImageMagick installation or PATH entry
Step 1: Installing ImageMagick:
Download ImageMagick: http://imagemagick.spd.co.il/binaries/ImageMagick-6.8.0-3-Q16-windows-dll.exe
Install ImageMagick:
*Important: The installation path should NOT contain any spaces.
Ideally select “C:\ImageMagick″
Please make sure to select the below options:
Add application directory to your path system
Install development headers and libraries for C and C++
Step 2: Installing rmagick:
Use the following command to install rmagick gem:
gem install rmagick --platform=ruby -- --with-opt-lib=c:/ImageMagick/lib --with-opt-include=c:/ImageMagick/include
or:
gem install rmagick –version=2.12.2 –platform=ruby — –with-opt-lib=c:/ImageMagick/lib –with-opt-include=c:/ImageMagick/include
No worries, we still needed to install the ImageMagick application, so continue along with this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/808657/unable-to-install-rmagick-in-windows-machine
This actually worked!
Make sure the Gemfile reads:
gem ‘rmagick’, ‘2.12.0’, :platforms => :mswin
Well, the gem did install, but when I ran “build install”, I got the error “cannot load such file RMagick” in uploader.rb, which I didn’t pursue further.
Happily, carrierwave also supports mini-magick, (and besides, I read a post the RMagick is no longer supported) sooo…
gem ‘mini-magick’
but version 3.6.0 blows up (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16677634/watir-gem-install-error-due-to-mini-magick-file-w-special-characters)
so, we need:
gem ‘mini_magick’, ‘3.5.0’
You know, it actually amazes me that anything in this environment can be successfully built, given how fragile these builds seem to be!
Of course, this leaves me wondering, what the heck the file Vagrantfile is all about, and the references here:
# Image handling
chef.add_recipe “imagemagick”
chef.add_recipe “imagemagick::devel”
chef.add_recipe “imagemagick::rmagick”
ok:
Vagrant allows you to run your Rails application and all of its dependencies in a portable, sharable environment. Use for development, set it up as a staging server, or experiment with a production setup.
So, I’m just going to replace this with:
chef.add_recipe “min_imagick”
Delete it (it’s in lib\tasks).
At this point, bundle install should finish without any errors. Now, what about the database? Well, there are problems here too:
problem while using OauthProvider model:
‘PG::Error: ERROR: relation “oauth_providers” does not exist
LINE 5: WHERE a.attrelid = ‘”oauth_providers”‘::regclas…
^
: SELECT a.attname, format_type(a.atttypid, a.atttypmod),
pg_get_expr(d.adbin, d.adrelid), a.attnotnull, a.atttypid, a.atttypmod
FROM pg_attribute a LEFT JOIN pg_attrdef d
ON a.attrelid = d.adrelid AND a.attnum = d.adnum
WHERE a.attrelid = ‘”oauth_providers”‘::regclass
AND a.attnum > 0 AND NOT a.attisdropped
ORDER BY a.attnum
‘
No association found for name ‘unsubscribes’. Has it been defined yet?
Given that this appears to be an issue starting with an empty database: https://github.com/catarse/catarse/issues/145
I am copying my existing database from Ubuntu to Windows. I had originally created that database from the danielweinmann github version, the did a migrate from that version of the database.
Yes, this is something of a cheat, having already gotten a database installed from the my previous erroneous attempt using the danielweinmann github version of catarse. I guess it was useful for something!
Also note though:
For rake db:migrate to work (after you’ve gotten the old DB installed), you’ll need to put your PostgreSql bin path into the PATH env variable, as there is now a pg_dump call being made.
Are we done? No!
the program can’t start because libcurl.dll is missing from your computer
Copy all the dll’s from the curl-7.31.0-devel-mingw3 folder into the railsinstaller\Ruby1.9.3\bin folder. Don’t replace files that already exist!
No, adding the curl… folder to your PATH var doesn’t work.
Just to prove it, here’s a screenshot with RubyMine in the foreground showing the server log:
Yay!
Woohoo! If you want a refreshing view of unit testing (would you expect anything else, hahaha) download Unit Testing Succinctly[^].
Incidentally, I quite enjoyed working with SyncFusion – they paid decently for the book, did some great editing, and the entire experience was very pleasant.
The Resurrection of Speech
by Marc Clifton
Logos
Why wonder about the loaves and fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into the many.
Imagine him, speaking
and don’t worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it was all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept too, each spoken word
spoken with love.
— Mary Oliver
Marjorie Spock’s concept of Goethean Conversation derives from the questions asked of the snake by the king in Goethe’s The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily:
“Whence came you hither?” asked the golden king.
“Out of the clefts where gold dwells,” replied the serpent.
“What is more glorious than gold?”
“Light!”
“What is more quickening than Light?”
“Conversation!”[1]
The form of conversation that Marjorie Spock is asking us to strive towards in her essay is achievable in both formal and informal (spontaneous) settings. However, this requires forming the right relationship with both speaking and listening, developing speaking from a place of intuitive listening, and developing listening with a gesture of love for the speaker’s soul. Both speaker and listener prepare to hear the words of the spiritual world and recognize that conversation, the exchange of words, is an act of creation, willing and spiritual attunement. Conversation requires attunement between speaker, listener, and the spiritual world. Developing a living thinking, so that we can hold an image of the spiritual world as leading the way and actively participating with our conversation, enlivens and resurrects our conversation.
How do we approach conversation?
Is not conversation, in its ideal, the movement of soul that occurs in the speaking and the listening, in the alchemical transformation of the word, uttered and heard, into a synergistic and sympathetic experience of an idea and its universal ideal? Do we not “begin to hear through the words, into the other person’s soul”?[2] In the word, is there not both willing and creation –the creative willing of expressing that which moves us to speech and that which moves us, willingly, to the willful activity of listening?
Like Parzival, where speech and action are first guided by the advice of his mother and “the teaching[s] of older, grey-haired men”[3], our speech is frequently unfree, determined by codes and rules imposed by others. In this unfree state, we fail in intuitive listening, and in not hearing the spiritual world, our speech derives from external laws. Like Parzival, we can miss the opportunity where our speech can bring about transformation and healing.
As a young Parzival, our speech and how our actions speak for us can result in misunderstanding and harm when we follow external rules. When Parzival leaves his mother, she advises him “whenever possible, to win a good woman’s ring by kissing and embracing her.”[4] Parzival soon encounters Jeschute and faithfully following the “code” given to him by his mother, “he leaps onto the bed and, over the protests of the startled lady, forces his mouth to hers.”[5] The consequences are profound – Orilius, Jeschute’s husband, assumes his wife has betrayed him, does not listen to her protests of innocence, and “punishes her…forcing her to ride behind him in rags, exposing her to shame…[whose grief] Parzival does not witness.”[6] Parzival, following an external code of conduct, is yet incapable of the listening required for moral intuition (“the capacity to experience for himself the particular moral principle for each single situation”[7]) and therefore to act with moral freedom (“an action determined purely and simply by its own ideal content.”[8]) Nor does Orilius hear his wife’s protestations of innocence, and lastly, Parzival himself is no longer present to witness and correct the situation.
“All of us often go wrong; the man who never says a wrong thing is a perfect character, able to bridle his whole being. If we put bits into horses’ mouths to make them obey our will, we can direct their whole body. Or think of ships: large they may be, yet even when driven by strong gales they can be directed by a tiny rudder on whatever course the helmsman chooses. So with the tongue. It is a small member but it can make huge claims. What an immense stack of timber can be set ablaze by the tiniest spark! And the tongue is in effect a fire.”[9]
How do we engage in conversation with the moral freedom that sets ablaze, not a destructive force, but the fire of love towards our activity of speaking and listening, and our love for “the other person’s soul”?
Parzival begins his journey of finding his right place “within the intuitively experience-able world continuum”[10]by first following external codes of conduct, setting ablaze many misunderstandings with both his tongue and his actions, culminating in his failure to speak the question on his first encounter with the Grail King. “…[N]ature does not send man forth from her arms ready-made as a free spirit, but that she leads him up to a certain stage from which he continues to develop still as an unfree being until he comes to the point where he finds his own self.”[11] It is this premature yet necessary encounter that instills in Parzival his vow to not rest until he can encounter the Grail King again. On this journey, he encounters experiences that develop in him the capacity for speaking and acting from a place of moral intuition – “he finds his own self.”
What then, is “moral artistry?”
We are speaking from a place of our true self when we speak out of no impulse other than our own intuition–when we are guided by that intuition into the activity of speech. “To achieve true conversations one must, in short, build with the material of intuition.”[12] Part of the path to this intuitive speaking is through our love for activity of that speech. What is love, “the modern word for what, in antiquity, was called ‘the good’”?[13] “Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.”[14] Love, in other words, is a verb[15], not just a feeling, and as a verb, is this not the very embodiment of doing “the good?”
If the activity comes from our moral intuition, then we necessarily approach that activity with love. “To live in love towards our actions, and to let live in the understanding of the other person’s will, is the fundamental maxim of free men.”[16] We experience ourselves as free beings when we engage in the activity of speaking as well as deep listening of the other person’s words, approached with love. “I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy, and know every hidden truth; I may have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing.”[17]
The “moral artistry” of conversation occurs not just in the formal, scheduled times of conversation, but also and perhaps more importantly in the informal, spontaneous conversational opportunities. A preparedness for these spontaneous moments is however the same – “One must be willing to sacrifice previous thinking…in order to clear the scene for fresh illumination,”[18] as well as maintaining an equanimity achieved through an imagination of love towards the other person. Our posture as we enter conversation, guided by meditation, enables us to listen with a willing love, openness, and discernment. And this discernment is then a gift received by the speaker. The listener, “…by cleansing himself of sympathy and antipathy in order to serve as an objective sounding board against which the words of the speaker ring true or false [brings the] speaker…to hear himself and weigh his own utterances. Correction – in the sense of an awakening – is there without others sitting in judgment on him.”[19] The listener is crucial to this process of awakening in the speaker. Conversation is then set ablaze with a fire of creation rather than destruction.
How do words form conversation as a willing, creative force?
“In a word, there are three things that last forever – faith, hope and love, but the greatest of them all is love.”[20] “In a word”, we find three things – the faith that the word is connected with the divine, the hope in its transformative abilities, and the love imbued in the word itself.
The world begins with the spoken word. God speaks “Let there be light.”[21] This speaking is more quickening than the light itself –it is the word that creates the light! It is from this light that “God saw that the light was good.”[22] The world begins with God entering into a conversation, quickening first the “light” and glorifying the world, the “gold”, with the conversation of creation that brings forth both form and life out of the void. “In the beginning…the earth was without form and void.”[23] Conversation is like this – we begin without form, and out of the formless void of silence we create form and life. Do we not try to “see” if what we speak is good? As God created the world from the Word, so can we, through our speech, create something in which we also see the good.
“When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt in God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men.”[24] The Word, the Logos, was before the beginning. In its incarnation, “…the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove; and there came a voice from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, in you I have willed the good.’ ”[25] In conversation, we must not just see that the word is good; we must also will the good. But how can we will good if our activities are derived from a place of non-freedom, from a place of external rules? To will the good, to engage in activity with love, our speech must come from a place of free activity. This is the transformation that occurs when we move out of the sphere of external rules of conduct and engage in the task of developing our moral intuition. The words we choose to speak become a focused activity of discernment as we stay in relationship with the spiritual world through our intuition.
For where two or three have met together in my name, I am there among them.[26]
The listener also has an active role in engaging in the activity of listening from his/her own freedom. Conversation occurs when the listener, choosing to freely listen, engages in the hearing of the other person’s soul, being conveyed in the speaker’s words, with the gesture of love towards the speaker. “Only when we have learned to listen selflessly and to be inwardly receptive, without any personal opinion or feeling stirring in us, can the higher beings … speak to us. The beings of the spiritual world will remain silent as long as we still pit any personal feelings or opinions against what we hear from others.”[27] This selfless listening from a place of equanimity requires engaging the will, not just during the conversation but as a meditative practice before entering into conversation, approaching and remaining in equanimity.
“Once we are practiced in listening in this way without criticism, then gradually…we begin to learn how to unite ourselves with the being of the other person and fully enter into it. We begin to hear through the words, into the other person’s soul. As we consistently practice this new habit, [speech] becomes the medium through which we can perceive soul and spirit…The soul becomes capable of hearing ‘words’ from the spiritual world…Perception of the ‘inner word’ awakens.”[28] “There must be no room for rivalry and personal vanity among you, but you must humbly reckon others better than yourself. Look to each other’s interest and not merely to your own.”[29]
In our practice of listening, in our willing to listen in equanimity, the Logos, the Word, incarnates in us and enables us to unite with the other person’s soul through their speaking. Approached from a place of moral intuition, we enter into conversation in freedom and a love for the act of conversation. Hearing the ideas of the other person sets ablaze a fire within us – we become interested and engaged. “And there appeared to them tongues like flames of fire, dispersed among them and resting on each one. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them power of utterance.”[30]
The spiritual world speaks to us as we converse and as the conversation resonates within the speaker and listener. The listener resonates to the love in the words spoken by the speaker, as the speaker resonates with the love in the willingness on the part of the listener to hear. “If then our common life in Christ yields anything to stir the heart, any loving consolation, and sharing of the Spirit, any warmth of affection or compassion, fill up my cup of happiness by thinking and feeling alike, with the same love for one another, the same turn of mind, and a common care for unity.”[31] Conversation requires resonance between speaker and listener. Dialogue, from the Greek “dialogos”, is “sense broadened to ‘a conversation’”[32] – a sensing of the presence of the spiritual world and the resonance “across” speaker and listener.
The speaker and listener must be attuned. The Viola d’Amore is an instrument that has a second set of strings below, listening and resonating with the strings above, speaking, that the musician plucks or bows. And like the Viola d’Amore, conversation occurs when the soul of the listener resonates, through the spoken word, with the soul of the speaker. Speaking, the sound itself “communicates something that lies outside our own souls”[33] yet resonates, when we are attuned, in our souls. The catalyst for this resonance is the presence of the spiritual world. “Perhaps the first pre-requisite is to be aware that the spiritual world beyond the threshold wishes every bit as keenly to be known to us as we wish to know it. It does not have to be taken by assault; it comes gladly to meet us, much as a wise and loving teacher responds to the warmth of a student’s interest. And no one genuinely eager to approach such a teacher with the proper reverence fails to elicit his responses. The spiritual world is no less eager to meet our interest. We recall Christ’s assurance of this: ‘Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’”[34]
How do we bring the spiritual world into conversation?
“The Logos is not alive in contemporary languages, and has not been for a long time. These languages are word-languages, i.e., every word “means” something once and for all. They are not appropriate to express life or presence directly, but only indirectly as signals for wordless word. True thinking, improvisation (when one does not know in advance what one is going to think–a rare achievement), lives beyond word-languages. Once thinking and speaking were united, as they still are today for the child. Living thinking must penetrate solidified, dead language: this is the resurrection of language.”[35]
Fundamental to living thinking is a relationship with the spiritual world, enlivening our thinking with intuition. Fundamental to conversation is an instrument capable of resonance – the soul. We enable the knowledge of the spiritual world to enter into our thinking when we shift our relationship with knowledge so that, rather than knowledge being a tool for our thinking, we see ourselves instead as a thinking tool for knowledge. When “…a thinker uses all himself as a tool of knowledge, where – in the manner of his thinking – he takes part as a creative spirit in the ongoing creative process of the cosmos”, then can conversation “enter the sun-warm realm of living thoughts.”[36]
“…[T]he creation of a Grail Cup consciousness require[s] an intact circle of fully active, responsible individuals whose only leader is the spiritual world.”[37] Are we not so often vying for the center of the conversation? Lacking the sensation of resonance, is not the point and the periphery obscured and the conversation formless? What happens when, as an imagination, we place the spiritual world in the center, intuitively receiving thoughts as part of our conversational technique? ”The moment a percept appears in my field of observation, thinking also becomes active through me. An element of my thought system, a definite intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept.”[38] Placing the spiritual world in the center, where we on the periphery listen and receive intuitive, living thoughts, enlivens our speech. We actively acknowledge that when two or more of us are gathered, the spiritual world is present, wishing to be known, wishing to be approached with reverence. If we hold this as an imagination in every conversation, whether it is a formal discussion or a spontaneous meeting of two people, does this not change the quality of our speech? When, rather than listening to ourselves, we instead listen to what the spiritual world wishes to say, this creates a shift in us – our speech and actions change.
On his second encounter with the Grail, Parzival…
“…[n]o longer in the thrall of what he has been told to do and say, … ‘reads’ Anfortas’s suffering, and his own spontaneous tears flow from his eyes. …He does not awkwardly blurt out the question. Instead he asks where the Grail is kept and, facing in its direction, genuflects three times and prays for God’s goodness to ‘triumph in me.’ The he asks the question: ‘Uncle, what is it that troubles you?’
A subtle alchemy operates here. What Parzival says is not entirely his own, and yet it is, Certainly, Trevrizent told him the content of the question…Yet, finally, the question he asks is neither only what he has been ‘taught’ to ask nor only what he ‘wants’ to ask, but also what he ‘must’ ask, in freely chosen service of the Grail…Parzival is filled with the speech of the Grail when he points himself in its direction…If the speaker is not first placed in service of the whole community, then it is not speech of Grail.”[39]
This is the shift that occurs when we hold in our imagination the spiritual world, eager to speak to us.
Concluding Thoughts
“Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and to relieve others of suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope.”[40]
With a mindful turning of face to the spiritual world, receive the intuitions from the spiritual world, the flame of the Holy Spirit hovering within each of us as we engage in resurrected speech.
[1] Marjorie Spock, The Art of Goethean Conversation, http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/1987
[2] Rudolf Steiner, How To Know Higher Worlds (Anthroposophic Press, 1994), pg 47
[3] Linda Sussman, The Speech of the Grail (Lindisfarne Books, 1995), pg 37
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964), pg 133
[8] Ibid.
[9] James 3:1-5, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[10] Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964), pg 136
[11] Ibid., pg 151
[12] Marjorie Spock, The Art of Goethean Conversation, http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/1987
[13] Linda Sussman, The Speech of the Grail (Lindisfarne Books, 1995), pg 48
[14] I Corinthians 13:4-7, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[15] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 2004), pg 80
[16] Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964), pg 139
[17] I Corinthians 13:1-3, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[18] Marjorie Spock, The Art of Goethean Conversation, http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/1987
[19] Ibid.
[20] I Corinthians, 13:13, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[21] Genesis 1:3, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[22] Genesis 1:4, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[23] Genesis 1:1, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[24] John 1:1-5, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[25] Luke 3:22, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[26] Matthew, 18:20, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[27] Rudolf Steiner, How To Know Higher Worlds (Anthroposophic Press, 1994), pg 48, footnote 2
[28] Rudolf Steiner, How To Know Higher Worlds (Anthroposophic Press, 1994), pg 47
[29] Philippians 2:3-4, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[30] Acts, 2:1-4, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[31] Philippians 2:1-2, The New English Bible (Oxford University Press Inc., 1976)
[32] Online Etymology Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dialogue
[33] Rudolf Steiner, How To Know Higher Worlds (Anthroposophic Press, 1994), pg 45
[34] Marjorie Spock, The Art of Goethean Conversation
[35] Georg Kuhlewind, Becoming Aware of the Logos (Lindisfarne Press, 1985), pgs 21-22
[36] Marjorie Spock, The Art of Goethean Conversation, http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/1987
[37] Ibid.
[38] Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964), pg 84
[39] Linda Sussman, The Speech of the Grail (Lindisfarne Books, 1995), pgs 238-239
[40] Thich Nhat Hanh, You Are Here (Shambhala Publications Inc, 2009), pgs 136-137
Here’s a great example of a fail, in my opinion, of a Metro design. It’s the installer for Wix Toolset:
This is a Metro looking starting screen, and it took me probably 15 seconds to figure out where I was supposed to click to install the toolset.
First issue: What’s with all the red? This means I should be paying attention to something, right?
Second issue: What the heck is this screen? I was expecting a standard install screen.
Third issue: Now what? What am I supposed to do? The icons are meaningless to me. Oh wait, maybe I should read that teansie-weansie text for each of the boxes.
Fourth issue: Ah, there is “Install” in a tiny font.
Really, just because Microsoft says “Metro” doesn’t mean we all need to jump like automatons, does it? And if you think Metro is the right way to go, please, please, design something that actually is intuitive.
After clicking on “Install”, I note the following further failures:
That’s helpful.That my 2c.
Marjorie Spock (1904-2008) wrote a short essay on The Art of Goethean Conversation which has been of interest to me since I first heard of the concept almost 20 years ago. Subsequently, I have been noticing on the Internet various commentary on her essay, most of which, quite frankly, seems quite far off the mark from her original essay. As I have been wanting to develop an understanding of this concept further in myself, it seemed appropriate to revisit the subject, and starting with her text, define and identify the characteristics of this “art.”
The essay begins with a quote from Goethe’s The Green Snake and The Beautiful Lily, in which the serpent declares that light is more glorious than gold and conversation more quickening than light.
Here the stage is set for the value of conversation – it is more life giving than light, taking the word “quickening” to mean “enlivening,” as in the expression “the quick and the dead.” Light is indisputably life giving, yet conversation is more quickening, leading to the idea that while light is life giving to the body, conversation goes deeper, giving life to the soul. Thus we arrive at the very premise of the concept of Goethean conversation: conversation enlivens the soul.
Unfortunately, we do not often speak in soul enlivening ways – our “conversation” has devolved into, as Spock writes “casual exchange, to the most idle, inconsequential chit-chat.” Spock contends that in the “salons of earlier centuries” conversation was much different. It was:
whereas today our conversations are chaotic, irrelevant, and depleting.
What images come up when we imagine “salons of earlier centuries?” A salon “is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.”1 Invented in Italy in the 16th century and so called for the large reception hall of Italian mansions, salons flourished in France in the 17th and 18th centuries and was a place for exchanging ideas and integral to the process of Enlightenment. Women played an important (though debated) role in salons, seen either as the creating salons or facilitating the ideas and debates generally associated with the Enlightenment.1
Regardless of the debate historians have, it is clearly connected to the Enlightenment, which was a “cultural movement of intellectuals…[whose] purpose was to reform society using reason, challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith, and advance knowledge through the scientific method. It promoted science, skepticism and intellectual interchange and opposed superstition, intolerance and some abuses by church and state.”4
We can imagine a disciplined discourse around specific themes, bringing new understanding to the participants. However, being associated with the Enlightenment and its emphasis on scientific method and opposition to “superstition,” it would appear that the conversations occurring in salons were moving away from a spiritual world concept and towards a scientific world concept.
Still, Goethean conversations are not the same as the conversations in the salons of previous times, which were “displays of intellectual fireworks.” Rather, Goethean conversations “call forth a fullness of spiritual life.” An important premise to the concept of Goethean conversation is:
If we have this belief, we can proceed with the basic tenets of Goethean conversation:
Spock contrasts this spiritually enlivened conversation with that of “lesser forms of exchange”, having the characteristics of:
and while these conversations can be disciplined, they are also often simply “mindless associative rambling.” While these are often necessary forms of conversation, they are none-the-less devoid of spiritual content.
This leads to the following observations:
These two observations change my relationship to the process of conversation – rather than conversation being an egoistic process of talking about myself or trying to convince someone else of my way of thinking, conversation instead becomes the process of receiving knowledge as part of a creative process. This shifts my self-view from that of being the center and everyone else being the periphery to instead viewing myself and everyone else as the periphery and the “cosmos”, if you will, as being the center, from which conversation emanates. This change in perception helps take me from (at best) an intellectual discourse to a spiritual discourse.
As Rudolf Steiner writes regarding intuition in the Philosophy of Freedom: “In contrast to the content of percept which is given to us from without, the content of thinking appears inwardly. The form in which this first makes its appearance we will call intuition. Intuition is for thinking what observation is for percept. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. An observed object of the world remains unintelligible to us until we have within ourselves the corresponding intuition which adds that part of reality which is lacking in the percept.” (Chapter 5)
Goethean conversation is intimately connected with thinking – and as such is related to the process of associating percepts with concepts (intuition.) “The moment a percept appears in my field of observation, thinking also becomes active through me. An element of my thought system, a definite intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept.” (Chapter 6) But this is a process that takes place, not in the “physical world” of things, but in the etheric world, the world of forces animating the things in the “physical world” with life. Here we see again how Goethean conversation is
intimately connected with life itself–“more quickening than light.”
Conversely, “living thought” is the concept of focusing on a theme and developing one’s “mood of supernaturally attentive listening” in order to develop the skills of intuitive perception – taking our percepts and developing concepts from them in such a way that our thoughts are a part of a universal process and we ourselves are “a tool of knowledge.”
This requires an inner poise of listening, not just to others but also to ourselves, our thinking process, and most importantly our impressions from the spiritual world. It also requires a receptivity, an openness “to the life of thought.” Thought,
being the precursor of Goethean conversation, is a process that has life (dinstinct from the physical processes of life), and as such is entwined with the spiritual. It is at
this point that conversation is transformed into a communion or fellowship.
How do we go about having this spiritually enlivened form of conversation? Here Spock provides some guidelines:
The recurring themes in these techniques are:
all of which point to the necessity of meditation in one’s life.
Preparation however is also key – this is an opportunity to individually delve deeply into the theme of the meeting by exploring our individual thoughts on the matter. Personally, I do not exclude research to develop a deeper understanding of a topic – especially when the issues are complex, I find it helpful to understand the concepts, terminology, history, and thoughts of others. However, one cannot become attached to a particular way of thinking – in fact, Spock recommends that we sacrifice our previous thinking in order to let new ideas come to life.
Spock describes several practices that we can work with to deepen the techniques of conversation:
These all aim at developing our spiritual life, enliven our thinking and develop our skills of intuitive thinking. These practices help to develop and refine the techniques described earlier.
Spock describes attributes of the members of the group when coming together for conversation:
When the group meets, the techniques described above (equanimity, non-attachment, etc.) are actively engaged. The image of the group being the periphery (easily imagined when the group forms itself on the circumference of a circle) and the spiritual world being the center from which knowledge emanates is perhaps a good mental picture to hold. Questions, which enliven the discussion, are not necessarily asked to other members of the group but are asked rather to “the center”, and members respond when thinking, formed out of listening, creates the necessity of speech. In this way the spiritual world is both an active participant and, through the members of the group, provides the leadership for the conversation – “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of you.” Here we see the concept of the salon enlivened by integrating and including the spiritual world into the conversation.
Spock describes the framework in which to have meetings:
Adhering to a strict form and respecting the meeting’s timeframe provides a physical structure that all members of the group can rely on and avoids the confusion and emotions that occur when people arrive late or talk amongst themselves. Beginning and ending the meeting with a spiritually oriented reading is creates an in-breath at the beginning of the meeting, bringing focus, and an out-breath at the end of the meeting, a concluding release.
In The Speech of the Grail, Linda Sussman writes:
“…the initiate-speaker has to leap in two directions, and both leaps are a kind of listening. The speaker, like language, stands at the intersection of the manifest and unmanifest worlds, whether ‘unmanifest’ refers to the unconscious, the spiritual domain or just to the unknown. If preconceptions, assumptions and the tendency to be judgmental have been sufficiently released, the initiate-speaker stands mostly in ‘not-knowing.’ One can then listen into what wants to be said, for which one must leap toward the unmanifest, and into what can or must be said, for which one must leap
toward the manifest, the social context. Both are difficult leaps, but if accomplished, the speaker allows those two worlds to touch in and through the words.”
This eloquently summarizes the gesture of Goethean conversation: there is a “leap toward the unmanifest” through the act of listening to the spiritual world for what “wants to be said,” followed by a “leap toward the manifest” in which one determines what “must be said” and bringing those words to the social context of the group. This is the “art” of Goethian conversation, and Marjorie Spock has built a concise guide for the practice, technique, and framework in which to develop this art.
Marjorie Spock was born Sept. 8, 1904, in New Haven, Connecticut, the second child and first daughter of six children. The Spock family was prominent in New Haven; her father was a corporate lawyer, and her older brother, Dr. Benjamin Spock, became a renowned pediatrician. Marjorie became a student of Anthroposophy as a teenager in Dornach during the 1920s, and became a eurythmist, teacher, biodynamic gardener, and the author and translator of numerous books. In the 100th year of her life, she produced, directed, and choreographed a video about eurythmy, followed by two short training films when she was 101 and 102 years of age. Marjorie Spock died at her home in Maine, Jan. 23, 2008, at the age of 103. 2
Marjorie Spock was also an environmentalist, author and poet. In the 1950’s, she was a biodynamic gardener on Long Island, New York, and sued the U.S. government for spraying DDT to control the gypsy moth epidemic. Her case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1960, which came to the attention of Rachel Carson and was the impetus for Carson’s book, Silent Spring. While Spock lost the case, the government was required to perform an environmental review and Spock’s action helped lead to the rise of the
environmental movement. 3
1 – Salon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(gathering)
2 – Marjorie Spock:
http://www.steinerbooks.org/author.html?au=1300
3 – Marjorie Spock:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Spock
4 – The Enlightenment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
What lies behind the need for anonymity? These are some of the ideas that formed out of some recent discussions with my friends.
Anonymity is a way of ensuring that safety of the person, whether from physical harm or emotional / psychological harm, such as embarrassment, judgement, and so forth.
Anonymity is a way of separating “the message” from “the messenger.” We all too often judge the message by the person delivering it. But the opposite is true as well, the person is judged by his/her message (which leads back to the first point, safety.) Anonymity separates the two, allowing both message and messenger to remain in a more objective space.
In its higher-ego sense, anonymity is a way for an idea to not be associated to an individual, which would otherwise lead to perceiving an “ownership” relationship between the idea and the person that came up with the idea. Instead, anonymity allows the idea to be “owned” by the group.
Anonymity as a Tool
The three concerns described above are entangled, as each of these can lead to violence:
Whether it is flame wars in an online forum or physical violence over issues like abortion, anonymity is a tool to ultimately avoid an act of violence, whether it is physical, emotional or spiritual.
Anonymity as a Crutch
Conversely, anonymity can prevent us from doing the really deeper work of achieving:
for our thoughts and actions.
The circumstances will determine the necessity and measure of anonymity, as a crutch is, after all, an important tool.
Ask the question you really want to ask,
The question that leaves you completely vulnerable,
The question whose answer might be too terrifying to hear.
Ask the question that is truly in your heart
Rather than seeking answers that the mind thinks it needs to find,
And in that asking, you will discover your true self
And you will find the person who will answer you.
Marc Clifton 