Rudolf Steiner

In academia many regard the subject of ‘political science’ as a bit of a joke, because where ‘government’ is concerned, except for the constant and unenlightened repetition of words like ‘democracy’ no one has any real sense of direction.

After more than twenty years of struggle to establish a democratic ‘two state’ solution to the Middle East impasse, many on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians, are beginning to think that a ‘one state’ solution might be the only answer. The problem here, of course, being that both sides are prone to think of statehood only in terms of a theocracy. The one person who gave us the answer to this problem, almost a hundred years ago, but has since been completely ignored in academia, was Rudolf Steiner.

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Dear WeStrive Community,

One of the most compelling and consistent arguments in the social renewal movement rests upon the importance of education. Education has been seen as the golden key to instilling moral social values and fostering human responsibility in young and old alike. It has been critical to shaping the developing mind of young ones and in empowering citizens of the world to create and affect real change.

Education has led to the sharing of information, wisdom and the expansion of creativity. Education fuels ideas; it begins at a very young age, often at the knee of a parent.

As a theme, it’s an incredibly broad concept, so within the context of this eNews issue, we've narrowed our focus just a little, in order to look at how we educate ourselves—so that we can better understand new, emerging ways for young people to expand their classroom education into the world and for older people to take up their education, inspired by the world, in order to focus on it.

Since 1994 the European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education (ECSWE), together with the Friends of Waldorf Education, have been promoting and encouraging the Waldorf One World (WOW) Day activities in Waldorf schools throughout Europe and Germany to raise funds for the development of Waldorf education all over the world. Until now pupils have raised up to a 1.5 million Euros and supported Waldorf initiatives working mostly with disadvantaged children worldwide. Almost all Waldorf initiatives worldwide do not receive any kind of support from the government. In many cases, parents are not able to pay the tuition or the school/ kindergarten do not have the financial resources for investments necessary to both running the school and for providing a meal for the children.

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Discerning the true spirit of initiative requires an inquiry, which considers factors beyon the appearance of an action. The most significant feature of an initiative is not apprehended as a percept. Although the idea of initiative conjures up notions of an external activity, it can never be separated from the one who has initiated the action. There is always an internal field of concepts and motives standing behind every initiative. It is my contention that inquiry into this realm holds the possibility of grasping the true spirit of any specific initiative.

It would be naïve realism to conclude that all initiative springs from either a feeling to do or a compelling sense of willfulness. Such conclusions omit to consider the role of thinking and its conceptual power to engender new realities. And it is after all, the very character of great initiatives to create new realities. Another flaw in assuming the position of naïve realism is that it bypasses the individual’s own moral disposition. Only when these two areas are given serious consideration can the true spirit of initiative be found. Naïve realism simply does not distinguish the drive of egoism from the moral intuition of the “I”. The former is often a set of desires expressed as responses to outer stimuli, yet masked as initiative; whereas the latter is a free act based on a love for the significance of a deed. Read more »

We live in a time where money rules the world, where low prices are set as an ideal, where humanity is enslaved to working for a living rather then unfolding his unique potential. Money, today, has taken on a life of its own. It has started doing business for itself rather then representing the exchange that takes place between one person and another.

The ideal of low prices has crept into the cultural-fabric to such a degree that we do not give a second thought to the devastating consequences it has for the world, namely, the decrease of available income worldwide. On top of this, there is the perception that each person must work for a living, must earn a wage, that he is paid for his time, his labor, rather than the result of his labor.

How did humanity arrive at this situation? Must humanity accept these circumstances or are they in fact maya, illusions we have given effect to because of an inadequate understanding of Money and therefore perceive as real? Are we, in fact, living in a world where each human being has the potential to understand Money and use it as a tool to create a world where everyone receives enough income to support himself and his dependents, where he is no longer a slave to earning a wage? What is Money, anyway? Read more »

“The truth is that the economic life of a particular time, and the spiritual life of a particular time (the times are not quite identical), hold the same relation as a nut to its shell; the economic life is invariably the shell which the spiritual life has thrown out. It takes its cast from the spiritual life. Today’s abstract economic life is, therefore, the product of an abstract spiritual life.”

-Rudolf Steiner, Economist. New Economy Publications, Canterbury 1996, p. 83.

The above quotation indicates that if humanity has an issue with the economic circumstances by which it is faced today then it need look no further than its thinking about those circumstances, for they offer us a reflection of our spiritual selves. If we would have different circumstances, then the first and most direct approach one can take is to think differently about them. Economic thinking, in this respect, implies not a divorce from spiritual life but a relation to it. Moreover, the future economic life of humanity will depend on little more than the quality of economic thinking that is brought towards it.

Dear Friends,
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Sexuality has always had a particular complexity to it; this has only further developed in the course of the 20th and 21st centuries as individuals have come to recognize, categorize and express themselves in terms of their gender and their sexual identity. What is, though, the relationship between our sexuality or our gender and the spiritual world? Is the increase in poly-gender identities and polyamory indicating a shift in both our relationship with and to sexuality and gender? Are the genders evolving? In terms of gender, Steiner indicates that we are, over time, evolving into a hermaphroditic gender. But on sexuality, he has much more to say, including the need for balance between lust and morality. In “Reincarnation in the Light of Ethics,” Friedrich Rittelmeyer explores the relationship between morality and sexuality. For Steiner, sexuality is not just a question of identity and pleasure, but of morality, ethics, and freedom, which he further discusses in “The Mission of the Earth: Wonder, Compassion and Conscience the Christ Impulse." Read more »

In the July-August 2004 issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review  (Vol. XI, Number 4), Lewis Gannet’s essay, "C.A. Tripp, Sexual Emancipator," provides an insight into the role of the gay identity in the emergence of individualized sexuality, or sexual revolution.  He suggests that Tripp’s book, The Homosexual Matrix, published in 1975, “was the first work to explain in cogent psychological terms why homosexuality is not a developmental failure to achieve heterosexuality,” that is, not a mental illness, as it was categorized at the time. Gannet explains that in Matrix Tripp rejected the division of men into normal or regular (heterosexual) and abnormal or impaired (homosexual). According to Gannet, Tripp argues that “gays and straight people develop their sexual orientation in exactly the same way. In other words, [homosexuals] express a rational and valid sexual development...[that] is an integral and natural component of human sexuality.” Read more »

Last March the Santa Cruz Monterey Bay Branch supported my going to the North American Class Holders’ Conference in Spring Valley, NY. On the way home, after already having spent a night in Salt Lake City because of a cancelled flight, I took the opportunity to be “bumped” and spend an extra couple of hours in the Salt Lake City airport in exchange for a travel voucher on Delta Airlines. I have had this voucher since last March and, when I suddenly realized it will run out this March 23rd, rather like Rudolf Steiner’s value-decreasing money, I decided to check in with Matthew Temple, former student and close friend, founder of NetworkM, now President of the Board of WeStrive. I thought WeStrive might be able to use the voucher—and sure enough, Matthew was very excited when I told him my idea. If you don’t know WeStrive, please take a look at www.westrive.org and discover what this community network is doing to support social renewal. Read more »