PIPE DREAMS #23
>this is a kind of longer piece, like something maybe you see in a magazine<
It is the job of the artist, in any culture, to see the world’s strangest beauty, and celebrate it.
The Trump Event: What does it All Mean?
(a view with an anthroposophical bent, or is it a view with a bent anthroposopher? Works either Way, for me)
Although, ... a very attractive young woman, a clerk at the insurance company where I worked on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley (circa 1971 or so), gave me a limerick for a present one day (there were other presents too). Walked up to stand in front of my desk (in a room full of desks), gave a bit of a bow, spoke her “piece”, turned, and then walked away (I was about 32 years old):
“There once was a man named Wendt,
Whose mind became boggled and bent.
One fine sunny day,
Wendt went away,
and no one knew where Wendt went.”
Social Change takes time. Live to be 76, it is kind of obvious. Try spending a few decades working with the Reality that social-life is living - is an “organism”, whether you are predisposed to think this via “Steiner’s threefolding”, or not. It only took decades of painstaking work to become so at odds, as I am today, with the Social Science Section of the School of Spiritual Science (of which I was a member for a long time).
Why?
Basically, ... I was asking a seriously different question, than what was being thought in the Section. There - in the Section - Steiner’s conceptions of the Three Spheres of Social Life: Cultural Sphere; Political-Legal Sphere; and, Economic Sphere, are sufficiently aptly, and addictively, descriptive such that you can actually end up not seeing the Social-Political World at all - just Steiner’s take on it.
My riddle/question, before ever meeting Steiner through his books, was this: What is the Social Life Itself Doing? In the Section, their point of view is mostly ideological ... that is: What will help social life is that we make it conform in various Ways, small or large, to Threefolding. The Section has the answer - a formulation of Steiner’s, and no other questions need apply.
In my early 30‘s, I started having spontaneous spiritual experiences, some connected to drugs. So around the year 1978 or so (keep in mind that all this was happening - for me - within a very fertile political and spiritual culture belonging to that Santa Cruz / Silicon Valley-Palo Alto / Oakland / Berkeley / San Francisco / Marin County / Santa Rosa (rose-cross) spiritual nexus ][ ... 1978, I wrote this in a note book: “If the world, and the human beings occupying it, are all grounded in a spiritual non-material reality (my personal experience): How does this change our understanding of political and social life?”
Three weeks later I meet Rudolf Steiner through his books. Not too long after (2 years thereabouts) I began reading Goethean Science, as well as Steiner’s: “A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception”, trying to work out how to apply those principles of observation and thinking to the phenomena of the Social World. I had my question/riddle, and to aid in my ruminations, I now had Steiner’s books etc, revealing a Method of Self-Aware Thinking, that seemed to have no difficulty with the Age of Science, even when addressing the Worlds of the Gods.
In the coming 2018, at the time of the next major battle in the 2nd America Revolution, when once more all the members of the House of Representatives, and 1/3rd of the Senate, will be up for re-election, ... In 2018: I will have been practicing, for 40 years, the related arts, skills, and crafts, necessary to “see the social-political with the thinking/imagination”. The conversion of what is “seen” to words on a page, - that metamorphosis from Experience to Word, is a whole other-ness of major magic, discussed previously, and always worth the readers consideration, because he/she/it <the reader> plays the central role in dragging meaning out of print.
This is a cooperative Art. Steiner: It thinks in me. Tomberg: Learn to think on your knees. The Inside Spirits of the Social-Political World want to be known, just as we want to be known. You will not find them on a page. The page is only a finger pointing to what-???? , make a guess, sweetie pie ... then look in a mirror brightly.
Where Goethe taught himself to read the Book of Nature; I taught myself to read: The Book of Social-Political Life. These are living “books”, and intercourse with invisible patrons, and interested others, is the norm: Although the main rule turns out to be that they are more interested in what you do with your cognitive gifts (shaping thought-forms that live), than they are in providing answers. Even Our questions often surprise.
There are tricky issues, which can be discussed - detailed in the links below. Link to: <Introduction to a Spiritual Social Science> http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/introductionsss.html I also wrote essays and books and websites, for the general public, without using the “anthroposophical language”: Link to: <Freely Thought American Politics> http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/americanpolitics.html
The Trump Event can’t be isolated from its living context. In this case - the Trump Event - we must be able to step back and see as well the Whole: the Living Context of Earth Existence. This following link to general map might give support to individual action. <Economic and Social Rebellion - a money debt owed bankers is merely a number, while what lives in the hearts of a People is a spiritual currency of infinitely greater value>
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Rebellion.html
Have no doubt, Steiner gave us a lot of “wholeness stuff”, which is fine, expect/except for the fact that if you don’t do your own thinking (by relying on anyone else), certain capacities for thinking will be lamed, because you never exercised them.
The main feature of the Social Political World of Humanity is that it is given “order” through the opposite of what we assume creates order. We assume that by looking to the Past, to historical events, and see the surface of something - its broad outlines - that Past will teach how the Present arose. Not the deeps though, ... we have in “history” a lot of disagreements about whys and wherefores, as appears on the surface. To say: “that Lincoln freed the slaves and was murdered for it” grabs a moment, out of context. It is always crucial, especially with The Trump Event, to see the flowing details of our seas of troubles, from which he arose as a kind of Ahab, seeking to kill the White Whale of American Politics. If Trump is that, then his story is tragic, and his pursuits of windmills to rout may well (as we fear), actually sink the ship of state.
[Enough easy cliches ... shall we dig deeper?]
To try to create cause and effect thoughts, about the Why’s of our social-political lives only out of stories from the Past, won’t get the Reality. Reality is far more complicated.
Thing is: We are always “In the Beginning”, and the Present is only a collision of Past and Future mental pictures, memories, tales, social ties, and possibilities. We are never there in either - Past and Future only have value conceptually - traditional tales and unbound dreams.
This is true: The problem is that what is exposing itself in the >changing-surface-now-events<, can only be seen, in the sense of our having knowledge of their meaning which we oddly enough create, by the Effort put into the disciplines of seeing: <change-over-time>. It is not the moment we are now in, but the layers of context, that helps us appreciate Trump&Company.
Trump ran for President of the United States of America. That is a “context” with a lot of gravitas.
The Past was once the Present, and lingers yet, visible to the imagination. Tomorrow, ah, a sigh, ... The Present births dreams, hopes, wishes, the heart near to crucifying itself.
The Trump Event context is a mingling of many many streams, and riddles of existence, all of which are in movement. I will sketch small parts of this contextualizing “seeing/naming” below. Bigger pictures require much longer forms of exposition.
The US of A was founded out of the human debris of a slow moving long term dying of European (Western) Civilization. Where they were living - this debris, was confining. Millions moved, blown about by winds of opportunity, ambition, fear, obligation, threat, compunction even to the level of slavery. “Indentured servants”, hoping to become farmers, and tavern owners. Refuse from the endless wars in Europe. The religiously persecuted. Criminals turned into seamen, jumping ship anywhere in the New World. Collectively: Adventurers.
In the thinking, of the “founders” (mostly educated white men with land), existed all the general questions and understandings connected to: The Enlightenment; The Renaissance; and the Reformation. In effect, some great whole, of the political wisdom of Western Civilization, was planted like a seed in the US Constitution. Which, entirely newly invented form of government, shows its qualities by continuing to survive in an insane world, full of changes far more radical than Americans so far have had to endure - WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, all that was “over there”, not here.
We have only been at this for two and one-half centuries.
Yet, clearly, even Americans are insane - in all the Ways people overstressed by crap they can’t control get to act out being overstressed.
Few of us, Americans or otherwise, recognize that the American People are becoming the People of Peoples. What is worse, is to admit that these crazy Americans are the world’s children. The People of Peoples needs to see itself as the adolescent child of the World’s Peoples. And the World’s Peoples, who want to complain about us, have to recognize their own cultures and languages working fully in what is growing in the Americas as a whole.
Americans did not invent: war, torture, theft of resources, slavery, abuse of women, and on and on and on. Americans watched their “parents” behave this Way.
The Americas were invaded, colonized, raped, and plundered, very nearly reaching the level of a complete genocide of the aboriginal peoples living here. The Americas were wrecked and then Europeanized. So now comes payback. See the movie The Arrival, where Benjamin Whorf dances with H. P. Lovecraft. It is not just Winter that is coming.
A massive change of consciousness was in play all over the world, when the birthing of Steiner’s Economic Sphere was appearing. A change directed toward the goal that each and every biography will have the opportunity to experience painfully deep moral life-trials, and choices. Each individual is to be freed, to the degree possible, of social constraints on what to think, and what to believe, and how to live.
Even though many do not believe this, the human being is immortal already, and we come into Earth Existence in order to have experiences that allow us to grow and become.
The now ongoing metamorphosis of civilization begins with the death of traditions, and habits. These individual trials required social chaos, so the World’s social order is being made to, apparently, break down. The Reality is Other-wise: Dying into a New Becoming would be how Goethe would phrase it. Consciousness changed. This changed the world, because the “traditions” limited individualism, and the young cannot but want to be free of the chains carried by their parents.
What you are watching on TV is the beginning of a social-purgative in action. Culture is sick of Itself. But, at the same time, Culture - being a living process - will shed its skin. Culture is always being reborn by something working from the inside of the human being: Outward. Life is always Art.
So, for example: Rock ‘n Roll goes to Japan. Japan has an affinity for American Culture. Jazz, one of the roots of Rock, is very at home in Japan. The two cultures share “movie-themes”, as a kind of cross-cultural dialogue. At the same time, Japan is a place of very strong traditions, regarding behaviors, and the expression of emotion. Japanese social life has rules on its rules.
Rock rips the young free of this. This kind of change, which American Culture has exported to the whole World, serves the development of individualism, as against, group consciousness in how behaviors are governed, and what is “appropriate” emotional expression.
Notice this: Civilization was mostly born in the East: China and India. It moves, over time, Westward, through Persia, then Babylonia et. al, where in Greece a light shines, which light becomes the property of Rome (the Greek genius-slave is used everywhere in Rome, to “think” and “reflect”).
Rome encompasses the tribes of Europe, then Rome swoons, and during the Faint, the Christian “Church” (westward and eastward) rules the life of the mind, which ruler-ship is actually recognized as a “dark” age. Free thinking not allowed. Literacy controlled. The Mass is in Latin, and few present know the mysterium of the words. Cathedrals rise. The composting of Rome, finishes in a reign of new light for the mind: Natural Science kicks the Church’s Ass.
In spite of all the Drama, including all the wars starting with WWI, the Earth still spins in Her Dance with the Father-Stars, and Their Progeny of planets, moons, and moon-lets ... All cupped to the Bosoming Life of the Light of the Son. “In It (the Word, Him) was Life, and the Life was the Light of the World” (<a fully scientific statement>)
TV, however, is not to be trusted with poetic meaning. Media and Politics can’t even agree on what are truth and facts anymore. Which is not News, for the two have been pretending for years not to talk about a whole lot of stuff. A kind of gentleman’s agreement, which now lies in pieces on the Floor of the Republic.
No doubt Media are not showing us the best stuff, the true stuff, the places where kindness and trust build communities around themselves - the real rocks standing in fields, everywhere and everywhen, all the way back in the long-ago. “The Dragon is Awake” (Tora, Tora, Tora); and, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Pogo, 1970)
The historical events were secondary effects of the primary event, which was a change of consciousness through moral trials (Jung, New Age, most everyone paying attention saw this coming). The Hopi called this dawning antiquarian Age: The Day of Purification, or for Christians: The Third Millennium After Christ.). The world of matter was being used as a lever to advance invisible development that cannot be measured, except by the free individuals themselves. We can use big words like: Karma, Love, and Justice, and not feel it until those three hit our personal lives right in the gut. Everyone on the Planet is riding this Ride.
Karma, Love, Justice, three of the horseman, with us as the fourth. The horseman are harbingers, nothing more than a brutally effective writing on the wall, pointing out that the Gods are still here, watching.
Large, socially-living, institutions come into existence. The Catholic Church. Natural Science. Politics. Everywhere people gather to share-work-live. Meanwhile, the villages, the large families, the viable small communities, ... they all fall apart because of: a) the rock ‘n roll individualization process fractures the ties of blood (as Steiner put it); and, b) the no longer viable social understandings, such as to what is sex, race, and fun - the old Ways always pass away generation by generation. Individuals are re-inventing life, and the left-over macro social forms of the past, are often now too rigid and fragile - they are not able to live with the social-tensions being created by the individualization processes: <“I come not to bring peace, but a sword.”>
“Don’t think I came to cause peace across the land. I didn’t come to cause peace, I came to wield a sword, because I came to divide a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a bride against her mother-in-law, and to make a man’s servants his enemies. Whoever prefers father or mother over me is not worthy of me; and whoever prefers son or daughter over me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever found his life will lose it, and the one who lost his life because of me will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me, receives my Sender.” Matthew 10: 34-40 The Unvarnished Gospels, by Andy Gaus.
If the 1960‘s, and everything since, “says” anything: fractious change is everywhere. People of Faith, in the US of A, called those years: “culture wars”, and the “moral values crisis”. Meanwhile, the political Left <progressives> got into drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll, civil rights, feminism, and gay rights; While just pretending/forgetting that the side losing those battles were also American Citizens. Five decades later: Enter Stage Right: “I’m going to make America Great Again.”
But: Citizens of What?
The design of the American government was to create, not a democracy, but a Democratic Constitutional Republic. You can read details here: “Uncommon Sense: The Degeneration, and the Redemption, of Public Life in America - or, why play by the rules, when the game is already fixed?” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/degeneration.html
Craving power, wealth, social importance, mixed in with less and less bits of love of the Republic, Political Parties took over this process of representative government, sold votes and favors to economic interests, all the while lying over and over again to the American People.
There are a lot of People of Faith. A lot. Between the ground, where the food you are eating today grew, and that food being in your kitchen, a whole lot of People of Faith had a hand in getting it to you. They also pay taxes, and started completely giving up on “politicians” with the Tea Party thing a few years ago. The usual characters tried to take advantage, but that’s a string quickly running out.
Then comes Trump - whose main virtue was: Not a Politician.
[[[ By the wayside, here<: The actual faith in god, of People of Faith, may be easily judged flawed in many ways, but mostly those judging are outside. People of Faith made this Country, but not by holding one particular “faith” of more value than the others ... except: personal freedom, limited by social necessities, which limits were placed first of all on the social-form-body (Federal Government), which was to stand above all other “deciders”. Those We the People gave the right to set limits for All in law, were themselves set within limits.
People who think politics is not about emotions on a fundamental level are dreaming. Emotions, deeply felt, give people reason to act. The Red State Blue State aspect is not just reasonable statistics and social science, the colors are crucial. We, Americans, are thinkers And doers. Not high culture artists, and certainly not traditionalists, except for many: A long family history of Faith.
Many pretenders in “scientific ideas", often sort of “intellectuals”, don’t get religion at all, thinking religion is an act of the intellect, and not the will of the heart. School of Hard Knocks has rules, and mysteries. That Faith so many laugh about - it keeps a lot of us sane. Are You saner today, than You were yesterday?
What is noted, to a degree, is how willingly people support social change, or don’t. There isn’t a right or best Way. Those freedoms to choose are why we are here - in America, which was/is/ and will always be: messy, raucous, devilish, frustrating, kind, heroic, and ours.
Trump had a play-acted coronation-inauguration, while the Spirit and Soul of America, had a Rite of Courage, Confession, and Forgiveness. The fractures between human beings and the land, are starting to heal.
Those that resist, and those that insist - don’t usually get along. Particularly when the Political Parties keep making >how to get along< impossible. Trump clearly is seeking to “control”, and very much needs the advice of a Confucius. He’s clearly not looking for advice though, so it will be the sad duty of the American Citizen to teach Trump how to want to look for another job. We get to say: Your Fired! Won’t that be cool. When we see Sarah Palin visiting the White House, we will know, he’s ready and wants some advice about how to quit a political office for a higher calling.
Not to worry.
What we see is a lot of people giving a shit about their lives, because everywhere in the world people’s lives are being screwed over by others, and we - Americans - are sometimes appalled to have so much, in a world which has so little. And, what is worse is the lies they tell us from school onward, about we being the greatest country in the world. Whole Peoples undergo hard lessons, and the Trump Event is not just being delivered in the US of A. Everyone in the World goes to the real school - the School of Hard Knocks. Even Putins and the Sheiks. Wealth and Power do not protect anyone from the Tides now moving the World.
The Trump Event then is not about Trump at all. It is about Citizens of the US of A, getting their Citizen’s Hats back on, and having Tea Parties, and being wrecking crews for both major Political Parties, which Parties stopped giving a shit about their actual constituents almost right out of the gate, just as certain of the Founders predicted. Money-banking, and political-parties: the predicted murderers of the Republic.
Recently, the political Left in America came back to life, so that Sanders and friends messed with the Democrats, occupying the Center like some kind of pile of dead logs in the Way of anything “modern”. The Faith folk of the Heartland (which is everywhere, actually, being a state of mind), went on the March, so that now both the Dems and the GOP are pretending all is well, and they are on top of things - which is a cracked and worn old record, and not on anyones Top 40 anymore.
The Political Parties are broken, and they can’t hold a rally without facing some serious questions. These “waves” of change are really evidence of a angry shift happening to the real power in America: the Citizen. Last night on the News was a woman yelling at her lame Congressperson: “You work for me!”.
The Press is >Actually< applying rules of Truth to political speech (although still loving - mostly - the sensational bits more). And, the Press like most (>opps>) of us is defining its/our position as having had nothing to do, casually, with the Liar, Liar, Hair On Fire noise: Which is shaking up peace of mind everywhere. Nope, wasn’t us, it was Them.
Except, well, Citizens are marching again. When Afghanistan and Iraq came, a lot of folks wondered why people weren’t marching, like during Vietnam. Mostly I think folks are tired. Got enough on their plates. No need to go looking for trouble, given how easily it finds you all on its own.
Seems, however, the “Owners” as George Carlin liked to call them: Finally went-too-far. Not all at once, but their games only work when not noticed. 2008 :nuf, said.
When the Press asks for the truth, and people are showing up at political rallies to give a huge in -your-face ration of shit to a politician, that’s a Second American Revolution being birthed. Main thing about the first one, staying on the sidelines doesn’t work. You will have to make choices. That’s why you came to the Celebration of Life, to help America bust the chops of the Political Party System, rewrite the Constitution, and actually do its job as a breadbasket of healthy food for the whole world. Right. Right!
Want to tame at least some of the crazy in the world? Come visit America. Trump may not have the welcome-mat out, and such, but there’s a lot of places in America were this will heal the world heart of US of A folks. Americans have a lot, even when they have little, and it is obvious others are way more in need. All the same, a Second America Revolution needs more than the “colonists” - more than just locals, same as the first.
What the world is, and what is the relationship of America to all that: Is everyone’s business.
See, .. . ... here too the Citizen has been cut out of the decision loop, by the money and their servant politicians. Americans, being/having a little bit of ass-kicking everyone in their DNA, all have a MF degree in the school of hard knocks. Who do you think went to WWI, WWII, Korean,Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq? Americans are ripe to clean their own house, which house belongs to everyone. Not without pain and suffering though. Real historical change is never pretty, being as it conjures: food fights and sleeping outside with no indoor toilets time.
If Putin is screwing with American Politics, who gains from this? No anyone here, or in the rest of the world either. I personally, as a Citizen of the US of A, politely request the presence of: Anyone who wants, to come to America and help us with the 2018 election. Just, you know, have an open mind. Help, don’t boss. We’ve got to work this out ourselves. Most of us, just like most of the People in the world, would like the whole world to be a better place. Borders are a problem, only if people don’t forget to appreciate that it isn’t always necessary to color inside the lines
http://www.thegrandmotherwar.com/
