the Political Anthroposophist, and Social Michaelic
Courage
by Joel A. Wendt
Rudolf Steiner was an organic and pure thinker (1).
He “modeled” for us how to think, more than what to think. Recall please that his original impulse
was not to have his lectures recorded and later published. All
the same it turned out people were going to do it anyway, so he
accepted this.
He did suggest at the Christmas Conference (I seem to
recall) that “politics” was not the mission of the Anthroposophical
Society, meaning (I imagine) that the Society should not get behind
political agendas and pursue a course, as a Society, of seeking
legislative actions.
His ideas on social life, such as pointing to the
Cultural Sphere, the Political-Legal (Life of Rights) Sphere, and the
Economic Sphere, did not mean (again I imagine) that anthroposophists
were not to be actors in the Life of Rights, although we might well
mainly be workers and contributors to the Cultural Life. We are
also citizens - members of the State - and in the ways many of us
individually act out our own sense of responsible citizenship, we are
contributors to that Sphere as well.
To sum up, a bit: collectively as a Society it is not our
business to advocate for specific political-legal agendas. As
individuals, who happen to be culturally anthroposophists, there are at
the same time no limits on our freedom of expression. I
suspect Steiner’s concern was that if people approached the Life of
Rights, naming themselves as “anthroposophists”, this collective action
would harm the Movement and the Society, probably much the same way
that the self-identified Christian Right today makes a lot of other
Christians appear to be out of touch politically, when in fact they are
not.
In my experience Anthroposophy has a very healthy and
rare card it can play in the Life of Rights:
This concerns how we think, more than what we think. If we just do what we think, then anthroposophists generally get up and
going on about the Threefold Social Order, and that can become a
kind of oddly interesting spiritual ideology. It says: “Hey, we have this great idea
about how things would be better if they were just organized this
idealistic way”. Then, of course, we
have to explain it, which is frankly complicated, and hard for a lot of
people to grasp.
If instead, we focus on how we think, we first have to be able to actually
consciously think, in the manner modeled by Steiner. Many of us
strive to do that, although as an action it too is not so simple.
For Americans there is an advantage, to which Steiner pointed: 1)
to the workman at the Goetheanum he said, in 1923, that Americans came
to Anthroposophy naturally, meaning (again I imagine) that we come
instinctively toward the new thinking-cognition through just being
American; and, 2) in Challenge
of the Times, he said that English speakers
were instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of Rights.
For evidence of this, I would offer the dramatic
television works of two Americans: David E. Kelley, who gave us:
L.A. Law; Picket Fences; Ally McBeal; the Practice; and finally Boston
Legal - all shows quite frequently involving taking social and
political questions, and framing them in such a way that their relative
merits could then be argued in a court of law. In addition, Aaron
Sorkin, who gave us seven seasons of the West Wing, where he
placed us inside the center of American political life and illuminated
its hopes and its failures in the form of remarkable dramatic art.
Currently Sorkin is writing The Newsroom for HBO, where he is
examining the failures and potentials of television media, again in a
pointed and astute fashion. Both of these writers won many
awards, as did the actors who said their words.
The fact is, of course, that many anthroposophists in
America are trying to “think” about what to do to heal the dysfunctions
they perceive in our social/political life. No one should doubt
their own impulses here. Some Emerson: “In self-trust all virtues are
comprehended”.
For my part, here is what I wrote for anthroposophists,
in 1991, in my little essay: Threshold
Problems in Thinking the Threefold Social Order
(2): Media,
if its present condition is clearly understood, is young; i.e. it is
still undergoing formative developments, and functions today with a
kind of moral or spiritual immaturity. In this sense Media may take one
of two different courses of future development. It may become a kind of
moon center, rigid, arid, not light originating, but rather only able
to reflect those impulses which come to it from the outside. Or, it may
become a sun center, a source of warmth and understanding, a medium of
creative forces flowing into the social order and carrying both in deed
and in word a true image of man as a being of soul and spirit. I
imagine then, Media becoming a sun, a true heart of the heart of the
social organism, so that the common understanding of the People will
find a renewed vision of the State. In Media a song can yet be heard,
the song of the truly free man, the moral man.
For the general public I have done a lot of writing (and
videos - seem my website), but around the time of the Arab Spring and
Occupy Wall Street (2011), I wrote this booklet (3): 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.
These are my contributions out of a renewed how of thinking to our public life, which Steiner called the
Life of Rights.
To give a further example, let me move this piece in a
more pragmatic direction with some “thinking” about the gun issue in
America, which has recently acquired a lot of attention.
As a practiced “organic” (Goetheanism) thinker of the
social-political world, my experience is that we always need to keep in
mind the history, or the stories of a situation. America seems to
have won its independence with guns; guns played a major role in the
winning of two world wars; and, in some sense we won the cold war by
having too many guns. I say “seems” because as most all
anthroposophists believe, something called karma plays a role here that
is often hard to understand.
Also in America part of our story has been mythical in
the best sense, and has been especially displayed in the film and
television dramas we call: the Western, concerning which I wrote about
in the 2009 summer-fall issue of our newsletter: Learning to Perceive
the American Soul. (4) There I wrote: Let’s consider for a moment
the basic plot structure of the Western (and somewhat, of the detective
story). First there is in the community the presence of evil. This evil
evokes fear, and thus paralyzed, the community is unable to act. Then
enters the lone stranger, who at sometimes great personal cost makes
individual sacrifices that result in the removal (or taming) of evil.
Often the community will not be grateful for this service, and the lone
stranger (if he survives) might be rejected by the community. There
are, of course, many variations on this basic theme.
What the “stories” of America require of us, in thinking
about this “gun" political issue, is to understand that the gun is an
iconic archetype of dramatic power (along with the car which has
replaced the horse). There are few other places in the world where so
many ordinary people drive around in powerful pickup trucks (whose
engines are rated in terms of horsepower), often with rifles
and shotguns displayed in gun racks in the back. Keep in mind
that in the truck-bed tool boxes (saddlebags) there most often are many
different kinds of tools. Men and women who make things drive
these trucks: farmers, carpenters, masons, veterinarians, road
builders, and so forth. Plus, the SUV (suburban utility vehicle)
is a more “home” oriented version of the pickup truck - a “home-maker”
often drives the SUV.
Each People and Nation has “temples”, where they devote
themselves to that which they love. If we wish to understand the
“other” - the Thou - we need to appreciate the “temples” that have
arisen in phenomenological manifestation of the individual folk-nature.
Some manifestations are common, for many large cities world-wide
have financial districts, with high rise banking and commercial
buildings, piercing the sky, - virtual earth-like heavens from which
those who believe they are socially dominant look down on those who are
below. Keep in mind that those who would be first, often are
actually last. The world, as it is, is a divinely ordained
picture of reality and organic and pure thinking need only imagine it
as living and in movement to begin to grasp what is written in plain
sight.
As a consequence we should realize that fixing “gun
violence”, among a People with this kind of “story” as part of their
soul-history, would not be simple. We can’t, if we want to think
clearly, just assume that because Americans are the most armed People
on the planet this means we are in some manner defective. To
correctly assay the causal relations of social and political realities
requires quite careful thinking, whatever Nation and People we want to
understand. Politicians, as is their usual practice, frame the
“gun issue” in America in whatever way will win them votes - they are
forced by their profession to accept the iconic elements of their
political base. Our core problem is that many of us are like the
“community”, which the soul-myth of the Western portrays as paralyzed
with fear.
Some fears drive us to doomsday preparation, and other
fears drive us to joining fundamentalist Churches, even the Church of
the New Atheist. Out of fear we demand of our political leaders
actions, and new laws. We want from those we conceive of as our
leaders new impulses of will, but often hypocritically cannot
bring ourselves to change our own behaviors. America, being a
kind of democracy, produces so many points of view that all
we often get is arguments and a lot name calling. Yet we
might ask, following the Myth of the Western, where’s the stranger -
the one who overcomes his fear - who is going to come to our rescue?
Is there wisdom in Anthroposophy, that we as individuals
could offer, that might heal the situation? If what we offer is
only an Idea (such as threefolding), my view is that we would just end
up taking a side (our own) in the arguments. Plus, we really need
to act as individual citizens, not just as partisans from some mostly
unknown edge of the spiritual spectrum of human thought.
The fact is that as an individual all I have is myself.
If I want politics to evolve or change that is only going to
happen from my participation. I might have to put down my Steiner
books for a time, and find something useful that my “I” can do, right
in the intense middle of the political-legal life. Yet politics
is a “we” process after all, not an “I” process, and perhaps my
interest in the other - the Thou - which Anthroposophy is waking up in
me, will enable me to participate as a small part of a whole.
I know for some readers the above idea may seem kind of
slight or weak, because we all want human society to become instantly
“better”. There are a lot of people urging quite grandiose and
unrealizable goals in politics - do we want to join that? But
perhaps our public life already is what it needs to be, because part of
what it is drives me out of myself and into engagement with others, who
are not like me. Which is, of course, what a lot of
anthroposophists are already doing - going out into the world and
meeting the Thou.
At the same time, in practice and in politics, this can
cause one to be a bit frightened. How much of my truth can I
give, without creating a backlash or some harm.? Do I ride in on
my white horse, or do I just come into town, as a stranger-other, and
see what of my own strength and courage I can give? Attending a
city council meeting, or a school board meeting, can be intimidating
until we figure out how it works and who are the players and in what
ways we might be able to help.
At a fundamental level the Life of Rights takes place
locally. Think
globally,
act
locally. This is a social
realm where persistence pays off. Only those who show up get to
make real changes. The Religious Right consciously took over
school boards all over America, when no one was really looking.
The reason various States are dominated today by Tea Party and
Far Right conservatives is because those folks showed up at a local
level. Where then are there individuals that have the
courage to go to these places and try to mediate and moderate these
often furious and divisive political arguments, without taking a side
or having a side, as is suggested in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Right now the American conversation in the realm of
politics suffers from a loss of the basic questions. Everyone
wants to talk about “issues”, such as gun violence, or whether GMO food
should be labeled; and, what about the coming crisis as regards
water? (5) Organic and pure thinking about public life in America
discovers something more fundamental to talk about. The fact is
that there has been a loss to the public dialog in America of an
authentic knowledge of Civics, and this causes great harm. In
reality America is an Idea - a profound and powerful Idea. (6)
The core Idea as regards America is that it is/was an
experiment in self-governing. Power was wrested from the elites
of blood - the English aristocrats - and then seen as belonging only to
the People (“We
the People” ... “do ordain and establish”, begins the Constitution). The American
government, to skip over a lot of confusion here, exists only as a
limited grant of power from the People to a federal or central
government, via a “contract”. Which prompted the American
creators of the movie V for
Vendetta to write the line: “People
shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid
of their people.”
Power thus granted can be taken back, and that act
doesn’t even require an “amendment” to the Constitution, being a power
we retain under the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”. It was that “We power” Idea which originally
made possible the first Constitution, i.e. “We the People” ... “do ordain and establish”.
At the time of the creation of the U.S. Constitution
there was in the background thought of the Founders an awareness of the
idea of the Social Contract (7). This term, “the social
contract”, was recently mentioned by Elizabeth Warren during her
campaign for Senate. The Constitution is, in fact, an attempt to
take part of the commonly understood social contract and render it into
words, although with the 9th Amendment, the Founders acknowledged that
not all that could be said, had been said: “The enumeration in the
Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the people.”
Another common Idea to the Founders was the recognition
that by creating the Constitution they were agreeing, as part of this
“contract”, to all being bound by the same rule of law. The rule of
law was also mentioned recently by Chris Hedges, a “liberal” writer on
matters political. This Idea of the “rule of law” is well known,
but what is seldom - if ever - talked about is what happens when a
particularly powerful group decides to no longer follow the rule of
law, which is what has led to the current economic crisis unfolding now
world-wide. What happens when government is corrupted by money,
and laws are passed that violate the Declaration of Independence’s
insight that the only just laws come from the consent of the People? Many
laws today come from what has to be called: manufactured consent.
Nor is it understood in what way the “law” and the
“moral” are distinct from each other. A lot of people, many
calling themselves Christian, want to impose the moral through the
application of “law”. Christ knew better, and indicated the need
for a separation between the State (Caesar in His time) and God: “Render unto Caesar the things
which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” Matthew 22:21
The Founders also knew about banking, far better than we
do today. Thomas Jefferson wrote, when bankers had succeeded in
maintaining their special position after the Revolution and the
Original Constitution:
“The
country
is
headed
toward a single and splendid government of an
aristocracy founded on banking institutions and monied incorporations
and if this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and
democracy, the few will be ruling and riding over the plundered plowman
and the beggar . . . I hope we shall take warning from the example of
England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations which dare already to challenge our government to trial
and bid defiance to the laws of our country. I sincerely believe that
banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”
Around 1790, Mayer Amschel Rothschild (a well known
banker of that time), was said to have stated: “Let me issue and control a
nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” That’s where we are today, with the Federal
Reserve, a private bank (one among many central banks common now over
the whole world) having been unconstitutionally (manufactured consent) granted this power. In fact, the U.S.
Constitution grants (from the People, remember) to the Legislative
Branch “the power
to coin money and regulate the value thereof.” The Constitution doesn’t say this power, granted by
the people, can be passed over to a private bank.
Right now banks get to create (coin)
money
when
they
loan it out (8). Before that it doesn’t even
exist, contrary to the myth most of us believe, which is that the
loaned money is already on deposit. The Fed also controls
interest rates (regulate
the
value
thereof).
Giving away this power over money to banks is sort of
like giving away the power to make war to arms manufacturers (Dick
Chaney and George W. Bush were creatures of the arms industry and the
oil industry). These things only happen because the government
has been corrupted in some fashion (mostly by money, as campaign
finance reformers try to fix), which is obvious if one is honest
about who actually benefits from modern legislative actions.
What’s the point?
Right now the American people are lost in a Media-Storm
of divisive issues (9), whereby
are completely masked the more fundamental questions of: the social
contract; the rule of law; the difference between the legal and the
moral; and the real significance of what banking is (recall Rothschild:
“Let me issue and
control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”).
If one or two or more individuals were to go into their
local public dialogs and suggest we get back to fundamentals, and find
through the discussion of basic Civics and the reality of banking what
unites us rather than divides us, - now that would be a social deed
full of Michaelic courage.
To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable
foe ... (10)
(1) GA 2 (“The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception” - 1886); GA 3 (“Truth and Knowledge” - Steiner’s dissertation - 1892); and, GA 4 (“The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” - 1894)
(2) Threshold Problems in Thinking the Threefold Social Order http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thpts.html
(3) Economic and Social Rebellion http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Rebellion.html
(4) Learning to Perceive the American Soul http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/learning.html
(5) The American novelists Frank Herbert (Dune) and Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land) wrote presciently about water shortages and the sacred nature of water all the way back in 1961. Both wrote in these same works about the dangers of a cooperation between politics and religion, with Herbert writing in Dune: “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until its too late."
(6) Keep in mind that an Idea, in the platonic sense, is the outer ethereal garment of a spiritual being.
(7) (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(8) The American natural anthroposophist, Rich Kotlarz, has penetrated the confusion in this realm (money) with great skill. http://www.concordium.us/resolution/column.htm
(9) Dividing people up is sort of Ahriman’s favorite thing. See my Outrageous Genius,which is the story of Ahriman’s Incarnation into American public life, beginning with his birth in America on Christmas Day, 1950: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/genius.html
(10) The Impossible Dream from “Man of La Mancha", music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion.
Joel Wendt’s latest book is called: The Art of God: an actual theory of Everything. [http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/artofgod.html]