A conversation about where humanity goes from here
Talking Rudolf Steiner and social threefolding on The Jim Rutt Show
Thanks to many of my readers I was recently voted onto The Jim Rutt Show as the first guest in a new series called “Who Are You?” where Jim doesn’t know anything about the person he’s interviewing :)
I was a little nervous going into it, but I found Jim to be a super warm and hospitable host and the conversation to be a pretty fascinating look at different aspects of large-scale societal change. Jim’s background is in complexity theory and a movement for civilizational change called “Game~B,” among other things. I brought social threefolding to the table and we went from there!
You can listen to the conversation here.
(Or, if you want to listen on your normal podcast app, just search The Jim Rutt Show and Seth Jordan).
And if you want to know more about what we spoke about, here’s a list of some of the topics:
Rudolf Steiner’s view of society
the differences between complicated & complex as well as between operating systems & organisms
the contingency of human systems & methods of nudging, starting with human nature
a tripartite picture of government functions
breaking society into political, economic, and cultural realms & whether they should be kept separate
the dominance of culture by the economic realm
organizing at the meso-scale
the Amish & other local cultures
giving full autonomy to educators
the post-WWI creation of the nation-state & the advantages of separating nation from state
making participation a reality
moving from “me” to “we”
honoring cross-cultural autonomy
separation of church & state
the challenge of community coherence
and much more…
And one additional note: I mentioned on the podcast that I hoped to have an introductory essay on threefolding up on The Whole Social by the time this episode came out, but unfortunately it’s going to be a few more days. C’est la vie!
A conversation about where humanity goes from here
Looking forward to giving it a listen Seth!
Loved hearing you here. There was a point towards the end of the discussion, where I sensed that you were aiming at a selfless universal spiritual interest in the other... And that this may be different from tolerance of small communities towards each other. How do you cultivate that which is beyond egoism? In going back to small communities with people you identify with, or in learning not to identify oneself at all (or one could also say identify only with the universal spirit of humanity), which, to me, is a definite force in our age?
It does make sense to me that part of moving forward towards solutions may indeed involve living in small communities with more contact to nature. But that does not contradict the previous point regarding the antidote to egoism.