The appeal of the threefold social order has always been there in theory. But as you've pointed out so well, we may well have reached the point where ideas like it will be our only alternative if we wish to avoid the demise of our country and society's great experiment.
Hi Friend! It seems to me that the state defunding of Harvard, NPR, PBS, the Kennedy Center - institutions of ideally independent higher learning and the arts - is a perfect opportunity for “malicious compliance” for the greater good. So if the state stays in its lane, what replaces the equitable funding for cultural institutions?
Great question, Joan. There are two different paths that I see: the short-term path, which is compromised in various ways, and the long-term path, which we need to keep in mind if we actually want a healthy society.
The short-term path would be to institute a voucher system for such things. I would start with higher education:
1) The first step is to champion higher education as essential to both individual and national success (society prospers more and more as people develop their capacities more and more), and by higher education here I mean both intellectual and vocational.
2) Concretely, this would mean expanding the impulse for universal public education into college - but by 'public' I only mean publicly-ensured, not publicly-detemined. This distinction is essential: Every adult should have the right to a basic higher education and the government can ensure that right is available to anyone who wants it. But the government shouldn't have any say in determining what that education looks like. The government shouldn't micromanage colleges - we need academic freedom after all, and not a nanny state telling us what to learn.
3) So the way to do this would be to create a universal voucher system for adults to receive 4 years of higher education at the institution of their choice.
The progressives should like this idea because it expands public education into college. The conservatives should like the fact that it's based on vouchers and is therefore based on personal freedom.
This should ensure that much more money flows into colleges. This won't help Harvard make up its shortfall, because the money will be much more distributed, which would create a boom in the field of higher education and the proliferation of many more small- and medium-sized colleges. But when it comes to Harvard and the research it's been undertaking (which is now taking a hit), there should be a separate voucher system for people to support scientific research, and then such institutes and labs can appeal to those funds.
All of this would ensure that cultural life is created in response to what everyday people actually want - the kind of education, art, and science that they want to see flourish, and not what politicians or philanthropists deem worthy of existence.
The long-term path is to work to rebuild the economy along cooperative lines. From the government's point of view, this would mean creating stronger ownership and labor laws. Labor laws should be formed so that people can no longer sell their labor, which is an illusion anyways. The reality is that we all sell the fruits of our labor in the form of goods and services. This all becomes unclear when we get hired by a business and they pay us a wage, but they're not really paying us for our labor, instead their just splitting the profits for the goods and services they're selling.
The requirement that needs to come from the government - and that businesses must be free to creatively work out the solution for - is that everyone needs to receive a "true price" for what they're selling. This is the amount of money that will allow them to live a dignified life as they continue to produce more such goods and services. Importantly: This amount of money includes what people need in order to support cultural life (education, art, science, etc). So when this happens we won't need vouchers any more, which are just a kind of work-around - the government redistributing wealth. Now we'll have a proper distribution of wealth in the economy, and people will be able to support cultural life completely out of themselves.
Thanks for painting a vision of how we could make a dent towards threefolding the system to be more education-friendly. We might want to find a better term than "vouchers" which, though accurate, drips with social injustice stigma. Maybe the concept of "investment" is more to the point? We the People - the "public" - are "patrons" investing in the future. But instead of investing in the manufacture of an invented thing, we invest in the potential of a person who is inventing themselves. Each child and youth is one of Beuys's artists where "the future is a new category of art". The marriage of social justice and individual freedom happens because only an equal right to freedom is just. It's a little bit of an itchy-mind situation - now its a particle, now its a wave - depends on how you look at it.
One of the most creative people I know in LA - founder of https://twobitcircus.com/ - created a "debit card" for entrance that says "THE REMITTANCES HEREIN PERMIT ENJOYMENTS HEREABOUTS". Imagine if a child could presents such a pre-paid credit card to school enjoyment every morning. :-)
Seth - you talk about the three spheres needing to be independent as per social threefolding, then use a referee as a metaphor. Players are not independent of referees in sports, nor the inverse.
The vast majority of MSM is owned by seven corporations. Social media is owned by a handful of players. How is threefolding, or your proposed constitutional amendments, going to rectify this?
I still don't understand how an independent economic realm is going to stop laying waste to the Earth, or what the word 'need' means to economists.
So seven corporations run the mainstream media. How can it become more diverse? We see a phenomena like Substack occur, where technology and people’s dissatisfaction come together to lead to a flowering of independent media, but it’s still funded by a relatively expensive subscription model. But imagine if every citizen was given a media voucher that allowed them to support 5-10 news outlets of their choosing and receive subscriptions to them in turn. They were given the money to pay for the news they wanted. I would think that would lead to a lot more support for all the small and medium size outlets.
It’s the same experiment with education. The state has a monopoly on schools - over 80% of Americans attend public schools. What if every parent got a voucher to use at the school of their choice? I would assume it would lead to a flowering of independent education. Many would continue to support public education - great - but many would choose different.
Do you imagine that wouldn’t happen? And you imagine something else that would more effectively break up the monopolies that you’re describing?
I should say that I don’t think vouchers are the end game - they’re just a relatively easy way to understand what’s needed, and they could be an effective step in the right direction. What we really need is “True Price,” which I described in my comment to Isaiah.
The wasting of resources question is similar. People with money can currently buy up most of the land - over half of the land in England is owned by less than 1% of the country. That’s old money. That’s money connected to politics, money that has a say over our laws, money that has a say over our property laws. But what’s a better way of working with property? We’re never going to change the existing property regime unless we come up with alternatives that work. Steiner describes “circulating ownership” - property that is “owned” by those who can use it for the benefit of the whole. If they’re not using it productively, and if they’re abusing it and making it less productive for future generations, then it should be taken away and given to someone else who can use it productively. (It should circulate from the productive to the productive.)
On the one hand, is the reality that we shouldn’t destroy the land/resources, and on the other there is the reality that people need to eat and we require land to do so. When wealthy capitalists own the land there is more innovation but also more destruction. When the government owns the land,under communism, you have less innovation and (potentially) also less destruction. But we need both - more innovation, less destruction. I wrote about this in more depth in my article “Who Should Own the Land?” If you’re interested.
I wonder if you think that those ideas fall short in some way? Is there some essential aspect you think they’re not addressing, or do you think there are better solutions? I’d be very interested.
I am glad, as always, for your work on three folding and the fact that you continue to publicize it. My thoughts always go to people's consciousness levels and how hard it is to bring new ideas to the attention of lazy minds. And then I remember - of course! - ideas are "things". The more people hear and read and think about the same idea, the more "substance" it gains until one day, like in the 100th monkey case, everyone suddenly warms up to the concept.
In that sense, I am grateful to people like you who continue to bring up new and creative ideas, who keep those ideas alive so that more people will come across them. Myself, I do my part by reading, pondering, joining my thoughts to yours. Cheers!
Thanks Ati, so nice to hear it described so clearly. I agree there is a tipping point that we have to work towards in whatever way we can, and reading, pondering, and joining our thoughts together is a huge part of that! Thanks so much for taking it up! All the best - Seth
Hey Seth, great as usual, you lay out the three folding really clearly here. Curious, when you say “Government is meant to provide the framework for business and culture to unfold”, what does that look like for culture and business? How can we set something up that supports lower class market needs; and which encourages cultural diversity? General questions, I know. Thanks.
Hey Isaiah - thanks for the question. One straightforward way of imagining what real cultural diversity would look like is just taking the idea of vouchers - basically government-issued coupons. They allow you to send your child to the school of your choice while the government foots the bill based on what they’ve alotted per child in that state (usually between 10 and 15k). Arizona is doing something like this now. So a parent can send the child to any school they want - “public” (ie. government), religious, Montessori, Waldorf, nature-based, homeschool, etc. Just imagine if teachers were free to teach whatever they wanted to teach as long as there were parents who wanted to send their children there. If such a system exists for any length of time, I could imagine a real flowering of different types of education. And the same has been proposed for news outlets by the academic Robert McChesney - that every citizen would get a coupon for $300 or $400 that they could give to the news outlet of their choice. The same could happen with art, science, religion, etc, etc. This would be grassroots funding of culture, so culture would be based on what actually inspires people, not in what the government and rich philanthropists like.
But the ideal is NOT that government gives vouchers in this way. This is still just the government redistributing wealth, and ideally we don’t need the government to be a middleman and control the purse strings. What really needs to be fundamentally addressed is the distribution of wealth in the first place. The government (which is really just us) - we should make labor laws that ensure that people receive enough income for what they produce (what Steiner called a “true price”) so that they can pay for all of these things themselves - so that they can meet their basic, physical needs, and also their cultural, spiritual needs. If we want every person to have a dignified life, then this is what is required - that they have enough money to send their kids to the school of their choice, support the local radio (or substack writer :), be nourished by theater, art, music, etc.
To do this we need to make the two constitutional changes I’m describing, but we also need to do a lot more. But most importantly, we need many more people to grasp the nature of society. It has to become a movement - one person after another doing what they can to grasp the living, changing social organism to the best of their ability. The artist Joseph Beuys said “Everyone is an artist,” by which he meant everyone is participating in social life every day, which is the highest art form, and we have to take it up creatively, intelligently, artistically. We have to strive to make something beautiful of it. This is what is necessary, one person after another becoming inspired and doing what they can, becoming intelligently and creatively engaged wherever their placed in life.
Thanks again for the question, and sorry to be so preachy :) Let me know if you have any questions about my examples or anything else. Thanks!
Wow - Seth, my friend. I replied to your reply rather than to the original piece intentionally. So many points of interest to comment on!
I'd first like to ask a question. Do you or anyone else truly believe that the answer to the nation's ills is too be found in the politics we're living with today, regardless of a person's individual preference? I'd suggest that there has never been a government handout that didn't have pretty strong strings - no CHAINS- attached. Look at the billions spent on education and ask if the young folks today are further ahead in the basics to include lessons in civics (not politics). I don't think the taxpayers have gotten their money's worth in that realm.
You started with the thought that the constitution needs a change. I'd suggest a very interesting book "How To Read The Constitution" by Paul Skousen. I can also recommend searching out and reading the words of good old Tom Jefferson. He was a major player in promoting more and better education of "WE the People" when it came to the founding and meaning of our Republic. We should take his words and the founders intent seriously.
I'd suggest that the constitution should not be changed but rather studied and more deeply understood. What we are witnessing today is, in principle and in practice, a full and complete overreach by our "government" which is nothing more than another corporation. To quote Thomas Jefferson, "The purpose of government is to enable the People of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors." Is that what we've got?
Would that we could sit for hours Seth and share thoughts about this huge subject. Lincoln gave away the Republic in 1871, fully intending to bring it back when the foreign powers which were funding our civil war were repaid. An assassins bullet prevented that and his VP had no interest. So, here we sit - a nation run by a corporation which has no interests but its own survival. The Republic, was not destroyed by Lincoln but rather "vacated". It's empty shell is still alive and well and being attended to by WE the People.
I'd love to bring more to the table but, you might agree, it's a huge and worthy subject - more amenable to conversation than going back and forth. Threefold? Absolutely!! If and when We the People finally get the picture. We can't rely on the present corporation in DC to even begin to "get it". I applaud your efforts to expand that understanding!! Blessings on your work!
Hey King - thanks for your thoughts. I have a few questions: 1) I can see the separation of culture and state in germinal form in the First Amendment, so I could imagine an updated understanding and reading of that amendment being satisfactory, but I don’t see the separation of economy and state anywhere in the constitution - I doing see any recognition that government’s role in directing the economy or business’ role in influencing politics should be off limits. Do you see it anywhere in there? If not, how could you imagine it happening if not through changing/amending the constitution? 2) I disagree with Jefferson’s words - not that the government is for the people and not for the rulers, but that it should lead to safety and happiness. Happiness has to be left to the people themselves, the government shouldn’t have a role in working positively in this direction (I take my cue from Humboldt’s reasoning, which can be found in the Gopi Krishna Vijaya article I published on The Whole Social). And 3) I don’t understand the significance of your description of the US being a corporation that Lincoln gave away. I’ve heard this spoken about before, but how would things be different if this hadn’t happened? How would the government, and how would society, look different?
We have all been far too well educated by the very government which was supposed to Guarantee that all men have been "Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". Government has no authority to determine, for the people, the manner in which they are to live to realize these Rights.
At to your first point regarding the role of business in influencing politics, it was clearer until the Supreme Court determined that we should consider the corporation as an individual with the right of free speech. That continued what was already pretty messed up by lobbyists and contractors. in the words after the ones I've quoted above, the Declaration of Independence defines the role of the Republic as (my words) keeping out of the peoples lives as far as possible. Government does not have the right or authority to dictate what we are to know or what we are to do with that knowledge.
As to the significance or the turnover by Lincoln, our country had been a Constitutional Republic until the time of Lincoln. He abandoned the Republic and created the Corporation of the US. His intention was to return to the Republic but - - -. His Vice President considered the Civil Was to be the resolution to an economic problem which was splitting the country apart.
I"m totally with you Seth, that Government has no business being in so very many of the things it sticks it's nose in. It's supposed to guard and protect our freedoms, not take them away!!
Again, I recommend reading "How to read the Constitution". It includes the connection between the Declaration of Independence - which set us free of the rules of the British Crown and it's 28 misdeeds - and the Constitution, which defined how we were to govern ourselves with that new found Freedom so as to avoid those misdeeds of the British Crown and the amendments which further defined and limited the powers of the government.
Interestingly, there was much debate, some heated, in Philadelphia about should have be a monarchy under George Washington or a Republic. You've probably heard Ben Franklin's response to the lady who asked him, as he let the final session of debate, "Mr Franklin, do we have a republic or a monarchy?" He replied, "A Republic Madam, if you can keep it".
We were able to keep it for a bit over 100 years. The republic and it's virtues, were abandoned and lost. There is now a strong effort to recover those virtues.
No, that’s not preachy at all, Seth, I appreciate someone so intelligently laying this out. I actually find you very balanced, and not all a zealot, so thanks for making a much needed space around this.
The cultural voucher thing sounds like a great idea. I also like your notion that the cultural life nourishes us; I’m a poet, and I’m struggling to articulate to people that real art can actually nourish us and is a need. Beauty and truth restores. And, as nourishment, helps us grow.
As a teacher, I also like your idea about teachers being able to teach what they want - so lots to like in your comment, haha. I wonder how long it will take for schools like that to start getting some traction. I’ve heard some positive things in that direction, but in Australia where I’m based it’s all quite stuck in place and not much diversity on offer outside of one or two Steiner schools.
The true price is interesting. I feel like people have a lot of growing to do before they can start to reward the “higher” expressions in any field. A lot of them just can’t seem to sense it. That’s what I’ve been learning lately.
Inspiring thoughts and a persuasive argument, Seth. The one thing about threefolding I've never understood is this: even if the meeting of needs configures an innate other-orientation in economy, what's to stop unregulated behemoth corporations from forming monopolies, polluting, mistreating workers etc? Can they truly be counted on to self-regulate adequately? I can see, for instance, how McDonald's phased out styrofoam due to its increasing unpopularity(despite its lower cost), but would you mind providing some more detail about how those basic protections (ostensibly, poorly) afforded by government regulation will be covered in a threefold system. Thanks!
Hey Dan - great to hear from you. It's a fantastic question - "Can corporations truly be counted on to self-regulate adequately?"
A couple things: One is that it is the government's rightful role to regulate, to make laws to protect the community from harm. And pollution clearly harms the community. Monopolies harm the community. Mistreating workers harms the community. This is why I talk about the need for "far stronger labor and property laws to provide a framework" for economic activity (and under property laws I'd include both the use of resources as well as the disposal of waste products). And I really do mean "far stronger" laws than what currently exist.
I've written about changing the laws around land, resources, and factories - everything that economists call the "means of production" (see "Who should own the land?" https://thewholesocial.substack.com/p/who-should-own-the-land). Steiner advocated for a legal regime, a system of laws, that would constantly move such resources into the lands of those who could use them productively on behalf of the community, not just for speculation or their own benefit. As he said, such resources should circulate "from the capable to the capable." So those who were mistreating such resources and not using them for the good of all, wouldn't long have access to them. This makes sense from an economic pov (otherwise they're being inefficiently utilized) and it also makes sense from a government pov - property laws aren't divinely ordained, the community decides how we should use our collective resources to best serve the community. We could decide something different.
And I've written in a number of different places (see below) about how buying and selling labor should cease, should become unlawful, and instead we should only buy and sell the fruits of our labor, which in a business means profit-sharing with co-workers, instead of paying a wage. This might seem like a subtle shift, and by itself it wouldn't be adequate, but the larger picture is that work should be entirely separated from income - general standards for how much we work and the conditions of the work should be decided by the community (by the government), not by the business - with the understanding that if we do such work we will receive a "true price" (what we need to live a dignified life) for our work. And then the business should be responsible for working that out - finding the right people to do the work, and making sure they receive a "true price."
Both these examples show that the government still has a significant role to play in protecting land and labor, and they also help make clear what that rightful role is: it's creating the laws, the rules, that businesses have to abide by. It doesn't need to direct the economy, just ensure that the right laws are in place and that the laws aren't broken. For instance, the government shouldn't decide who the next capable entrepreneur is who should receive the means of production - Steiner describes how those with expertise should do so - the government just has to make sure that the transfer occurs at the right time. And the gov shouldn't pay people a true price for their products and services, but just make sure that a true price is paid.
This hands-off approach already happens to a large extent (at least in America) - but they're are still a number of government-run businesses and services, and the government has a huge hand (especially right now) in trying to balance the economy in terms of tariffs and subsidies. So on the one hand I'm talking about stepping out of those roles. But on the other, I'm talking about instituting far stronger, far more effective laws where they're appropriate. Does that make sense? Let me know if it doesn't. Hope all's well!
(And here are a few of the articles I've written about work:
Per your excellent question … “the dying throes of a terminally ill society?” Reviewing notes from a workshop on good and evil with Christine Gruwez I came across the following thought (of hers): “The INTERVAL from Germ to Flower is the Agony of Potential; the INTERVAL from Fruit to Seed is the Agony of Decay.” Well, that just won’t stop resonating for me right now!
Good call, we might need some cultural pressure against legalised lying (by gov). It's only truth that will help us find a sustainable human compass in our lives and societies..
Exactly. And the search for truth is a cultural activity, an individual pursuit that can then affect others, the government, and the whole of society. The government should have no role in determining what’s true or not…
Seth - I'm very happy that Karen MO posted the comment about your workshop last Feb with Robert. I had forgotten about it and hope it was immensely successful. I'm also very happy that the 1st amendment to the Constitution was in place so that you could pursue your Life, Liberty and Happiness, unfettered by any restricting government, through your right to peaceably assemble and practice free speech with no interference. To me - that holds the possibility of freedom in the cultural life.
Yeah, it’s wonderful that we have the first amendment and all that it contains, including the centuries of case law interpreting it. It’s a real doorway for healthy social development to emerge…
Do you really think Americans could be that foolish???? Risking total demise of the country for political revenge? I'm counting on the moral conscience of enough Americans to stand together in the political arena to come to terms for the good of the country, not good for their party. Hopefully the middle sphere will emerge out of the necessity to work together.
Hey Kathryn - I do think it’s a definite possibility because it won’t be Americans as a group, but this person here and that person there. It reminds me of the Great Recession in 2008 - Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve, was totally shocked that bankers could crash the financial system because it was against their self-interest. But it wasn’t the banking community that crashed the system, it was thousands of individual bankers here and there, working to get as much as they could out of the system for themselves, not thinking about the whole system at all, but only acting and reacting on their little part of it. But individual actions have a cumulative effect… I think it would be the same general dynamic. The actions of individuals that leads to mob action and further escalation. We’ve seen individual acts of violence in recent years (police killings, Kyle Rittenhouse, etc) and then protests and riots in response. We’ve seen the National Guard called out in the more distant past, and we’ve also seen cities burn. A lot of fear and rage has been engendered…
And I also don’t know how a middle sphere will form unless people are able to come together around some actual ideas, around new ways of doing things that accord with reality. Without new ideas, new understandings, we’ll only recreate the same old thing with all its dysfunction.
I'm not sure you have seen the whole picture. Yes, we see the dying throes of a terminally ill country, but we also see the hope of the world there with you, and the resurrection!
Just being honest totally opens the pathways for redemption and Kennedy has been praying for 18+ years to be granted the opportunity to help bring healing, (starting with truth into the science).
I think we are witnessing a middle come together with new ideas. Although outwardly the MAGA movement is identified with Republican party, it's actually a new group. Trump/Gabbard/RFK/Rubin/Gutfield/Rogan/many others came from liberalism. The attraction is as great as the repulsion. Strengthen nat'l identity yet negotiate fair trade (ultimately eliminate tariffs), stop the killing, stop terrorism, rebuild cities/countries, uncover fraud and establish accountability, support farming/healthy food/medical care, encourage private business and renew manufacturing, be transparent, offer choice, deregulate, revise education. Set up international interests working together more actively for greater good (rebuilding cities, technological advancements, R&D, military deescalation, etc). I don't understand crypto but some believe it's an "unfettered" way of financial exchange. Certainly it will take higher moral development to manage spacial exploration! This judicial warfare has to be "tamed." That's where the anthroposophical view may have the most important impact!!!!
The appeal of the threefold social order has always been there in theory. But as you've pointed out so well, we may well have reached the point where ideas like it will be our only alternative if we wish to avoid the demise of our country and society's great experiment.
Hi Friend! It seems to me that the state defunding of Harvard, NPR, PBS, the Kennedy Center - institutions of ideally independent higher learning and the arts - is a perfect opportunity for “malicious compliance” for the greater good. So if the state stays in its lane, what replaces the equitable funding for cultural institutions?
Great question, Joan. There are two different paths that I see: the short-term path, which is compromised in various ways, and the long-term path, which we need to keep in mind if we actually want a healthy society.
The short-term path would be to institute a voucher system for such things. I would start with higher education:
1) The first step is to champion higher education as essential to both individual and national success (society prospers more and more as people develop their capacities more and more), and by higher education here I mean both intellectual and vocational.
2) Concretely, this would mean expanding the impulse for universal public education into college - but by 'public' I only mean publicly-ensured, not publicly-detemined. This distinction is essential: Every adult should have the right to a basic higher education and the government can ensure that right is available to anyone who wants it. But the government shouldn't have any say in determining what that education looks like. The government shouldn't micromanage colleges - we need academic freedom after all, and not a nanny state telling us what to learn.
3) So the way to do this would be to create a universal voucher system for adults to receive 4 years of higher education at the institution of their choice.
The progressives should like this idea because it expands public education into college. The conservatives should like the fact that it's based on vouchers and is therefore based on personal freedom.
This should ensure that much more money flows into colleges. This won't help Harvard make up its shortfall, because the money will be much more distributed, which would create a boom in the field of higher education and the proliferation of many more small- and medium-sized colleges. But when it comes to Harvard and the research it's been undertaking (which is now taking a hit), there should be a separate voucher system for people to support scientific research, and then such institutes and labs can appeal to those funds.
All of this would ensure that cultural life is created in response to what everyday people actually want - the kind of education, art, and science that they want to see flourish, and not what politicians or philanthropists deem worthy of existence.
The long-term path is to work to rebuild the economy along cooperative lines. From the government's point of view, this would mean creating stronger ownership and labor laws. Labor laws should be formed so that people can no longer sell their labor, which is an illusion anyways. The reality is that we all sell the fruits of our labor in the form of goods and services. This all becomes unclear when we get hired by a business and they pay us a wage, but they're not really paying us for our labor, instead their just splitting the profits for the goods and services they're selling.
The requirement that needs to come from the government - and that businesses must be free to creatively work out the solution for - is that everyone needs to receive a "true price" for what they're selling. This is the amount of money that will allow them to live a dignified life as they continue to produce more such goods and services. Importantly: This amount of money includes what people need in order to support cultural life (education, art, science, etc). So when this happens we won't need vouchers any more, which are just a kind of work-around - the government redistributing wealth. Now we'll have a proper distribution of wealth in the economy, and people will be able to support cultural life completely out of themselves.
Thanks for painting a vision of how we could make a dent towards threefolding the system to be more education-friendly. We might want to find a better term than "vouchers" which, though accurate, drips with social injustice stigma. Maybe the concept of "investment" is more to the point? We the People - the "public" - are "patrons" investing in the future. But instead of investing in the manufacture of an invented thing, we invest in the potential of a person who is inventing themselves. Each child and youth is one of Beuys's artists where "the future is a new category of art". The marriage of social justice and individual freedom happens because only an equal right to freedom is just. It's a little bit of an itchy-mind situation - now its a particle, now its a wave - depends on how you look at it.
One of the most creative people I know in LA - founder of https://twobitcircus.com/ - created a "debit card" for entrance that says "THE REMITTANCES HEREIN PERMIT ENJOYMENTS HEREABOUTS". Imagine if a child could presents such a pre-paid credit card to school enjoyment every morning. :-)
Seth - you talk about the three spheres needing to be independent as per social threefolding, then use a referee as a metaphor. Players are not independent of referees in sports, nor the inverse.
The vast majority of MSM is owned by seven corporations. Social media is owned by a handful of players. How is threefolding, or your proposed constitutional amendments, going to rectify this?
I still don't understand how an independent economic realm is going to stop laying waste to the Earth, or what the word 'need' means to economists.
Hey Tad - thanks for the questions.
So seven corporations run the mainstream media. How can it become more diverse? We see a phenomena like Substack occur, where technology and people’s dissatisfaction come together to lead to a flowering of independent media, but it’s still funded by a relatively expensive subscription model. But imagine if every citizen was given a media voucher that allowed them to support 5-10 news outlets of their choosing and receive subscriptions to them in turn. They were given the money to pay for the news they wanted. I would think that would lead to a lot more support for all the small and medium size outlets.
It’s the same experiment with education. The state has a monopoly on schools - over 80% of Americans attend public schools. What if every parent got a voucher to use at the school of their choice? I would assume it would lead to a flowering of independent education. Many would continue to support public education - great - but many would choose different.
Do you imagine that wouldn’t happen? And you imagine something else that would more effectively break up the monopolies that you’re describing?
I should say that I don’t think vouchers are the end game - they’re just a relatively easy way to understand what’s needed, and they could be an effective step in the right direction. What we really need is “True Price,” which I described in my comment to Isaiah.
The wasting of resources question is similar. People with money can currently buy up most of the land - over half of the land in England is owned by less than 1% of the country. That’s old money. That’s money connected to politics, money that has a say over our laws, money that has a say over our property laws. But what’s a better way of working with property? We’re never going to change the existing property regime unless we come up with alternatives that work. Steiner describes “circulating ownership” - property that is “owned” by those who can use it for the benefit of the whole. If they’re not using it productively, and if they’re abusing it and making it less productive for future generations, then it should be taken away and given to someone else who can use it productively. (It should circulate from the productive to the productive.)
On the one hand, is the reality that we shouldn’t destroy the land/resources, and on the other there is the reality that people need to eat and we require land to do so. When wealthy capitalists own the land there is more innovation but also more destruction. When the government owns the land,under communism, you have less innovation and (potentially) also less destruction. But we need both - more innovation, less destruction. I wrote about this in more depth in my article “Who Should Own the Land?” If you’re interested.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thewholesocial/p/who-should-own-the-land?r=kfj6s&utm_medium=ios
I wonder if you think that those ideas fall short in some way? Is there some essential aspect you think they’re not addressing, or do you think there are better solutions? I’d be very interested.
Thanks again for the questions! Hope alls well.
I am glad, as always, for your work on three folding and the fact that you continue to publicize it. My thoughts always go to people's consciousness levels and how hard it is to bring new ideas to the attention of lazy minds. And then I remember - of course! - ideas are "things". The more people hear and read and think about the same idea, the more "substance" it gains until one day, like in the 100th monkey case, everyone suddenly warms up to the concept.
In that sense, I am grateful to people like you who continue to bring up new and creative ideas, who keep those ideas alive so that more people will come across them. Myself, I do my part by reading, pondering, joining my thoughts to yours. Cheers!
Thanks Ati, so nice to hear it described so clearly. I agree there is a tipping point that we have to work towards in whatever way we can, and reading, pondering, and joining our thoughts together is a huge part of that! Thanks so much for taking it up! All the best - Seth
Hey Seth, great as usual, you lay out the three folding really clearly here. Curious, when you say “Government is meant to provide the framework for business and culture to unfold”, what does that look like for culture and business? How can we set something up that supports lower class market needs; and which encourages cultural diversity? General questions, I know. Thanks.
Hey Isaiah - thanks for the question. One straightforward way of imagining what real cultural diversity would look like is just taking the idea of vouchers - basically government-issued coupons. They allow you to send your child to the school of your choice while the government foots the bill based on what they’ve alotted per child in that state (usually between 10 and 15k). Arizona is doing something like this now. So a parent can send the child to any school they want - “public” (ie. government), religious, Montessori, Waldorf, nature-based, homeschool, etc. Just imagine if teachers were free to teach whatever they wanted to teach as long as there were parents who wanted to send their children there. If such a system exists for any length of time, I could imagine a real flowering of different types of education. And the same has been proposed for news outlets by the academic Robert McChesney - that every citizen would get a coupon for $300 or $400 that they could give to the news outlet of their choice. The same could happen with art, science, religion, etc, etc. This would be grassroots funding of culture, so culture would be based on what actually inspires people, not in what the government and rich philanthropists like.
But the ideal is NOT that government gives vouchers in this way. This is still just the government redistributing wealth, and ideally we don’t need the government to be a middleman and control the purse strings. What really needs to be fundamentally addressed is the distribution of wealth in the first place. The government (which is really just us) - we should make labor laws that ensure that people receive enough income for what they produce (what Steiner called a “true price”) so that they can pay for all of these things themselves - so that they can meet their basic, physical needs, and also their cultural, spiritual needs. If we want every person to have a dignified life, then this is what is required - that they have enough money to send their kids to the school of their choice, support the local radio (or substack writer :), be nourished by theater, art, music, etc.
To do this we need to make the two constitutional changes I’m describing, but we also need to do a lot more. But most importantly, we need many more people to grasp the nature of society. It has to become a movement - one person after another doing what they can to grasp the living, changing social organism to the best of their ability. The artist Joseph Beuys said “Everyone is an artist,” by which he meant everyone is participating in social life every day, which is the highest art form, and we have to take it up creatively, intelligently, artistically. We have to strive to make something beautiful of it. This is what is necessary, one person after another becoming inspired and doing what they can, becoming intelligently and creatively engaged wherever their placed in life.
Thanks again for the question, and sorry to be so preachy :) Let me know if you have any questions about my examples or anything else. Thanks!
Wow - Seth, my friend. I replied to your reply rather than to the original piece intentionally. So many points of interest to comment on!
I'd first like to ask a question. Do you or anyone else truly believe that the answer to the nation's ills is too be found in the politics we're living with today, regardless of a person's individual preference? I'd suggest that there has never been a government handout that didn't have pretty strong strings - no CHAINS- attached. Look at the billions spent on education and ask if the young folks today are further ahead in the basics to include lessons in civics (not politics). I don't think the taxpayers have gotten their money's worth in that realm.
You started with the thought that the constitution needs a change. I'd suggest a very interesting book "How To Read The Constitution" by Paul Skousen. I can also recommend searching out and reading the words of good old Tom Jefferson. He was a major player in promoting more and better education of "WE the People" when it came to the founding and meaning of our Republic. We should take his words and the founders intent seriously.
I'd suggest that the constitution should not be changed but rather studied and more deeply understood. What we are witnessing today is, in principle and in practice, a full and complete overreach by our "government" which is nothing more than another corporation. To quote Thomas Jefferson, "The purpose of government is to enable the People of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors." Is that what we've got?
Would that we could sit for hours Seth and share thoughts about this huge subject. Lincoln gave away the Republic in 1871, fully intending to bring it back when the foreign powers which were funding our civil war were repaid. An assassins bullet prevented that and his VP had no interest. So, here we sit - a nation run by a corporation which has no interests but its own survival. The Republic, was not destroyed by Lincoln but rather "vacated". It's empty shell is still alive and well and being attended to by WE the People.
I'd love to bring more to the table but, you might agree, it's a huge and worthy subject - more amenable to conversation than going back and forth. Threefold? Absolutely!! If and when We the People finally get the picture. We can't rely on the present corporation in DC to even begin to "get it". I applaud your efforts to expand that understanding!! Blessings on your work!
Hey King - thanks for your thoughts. I have a few questions: 1) I can see the separation of culture and state in germinal form in the First Amendment, so I could imagine an updated understanding and reading of that amendment being satisfactory, but I don’t see the separation of economy and state anywhere in the constitution - I doing see any recognition that government’s role in directing the economy or business’ role in influencing politics should be off limits. Do you see it anywhere in there? If not, how could you imagine it happening if not through changing/amending the constitution? 2) I disagree with Jefferson’s words - not that the government is for the people and not for the rulers, but that it should lead to safety and happiness. Happiness has to be left to the people themselves, the government shouldn’t have a role in working positively in this direction (I take my cue from Humboldt’s reasoning, which can be found in the Gopi Krishna Vijaya article I published on The Whole Social). And 3) I don’t understand the significance of your description of the US being a corporation that Lincoln gave away. I’ve heard this spoken about before, but how would things be different if this hadn’t happened? How would the government, and how would society, look different?
We have all been far too well educated by the very government which was supposed to Guarantee that all men have been "Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". Government has no authority to determine, for the people, the manner in which they are to live to realize these Rights.
At to your first point regarding the role of business in influencing politics, it was clearer until the Supreme Court determined that we should consider the corporation as an individual with the right of free speech. That continued what was already pretty messed up by lobbyists and contractors. in the words after the ones I've quoted above, the Declaration of Independence defines the role of the Republic as (my words) keeping out of the peoples lives as far as possible. Government does not have the right or authority to dictate what we are to know or what we are to do with that knowledge.
As to the significance or the turnover by Lincoln, our country had been a Constitutional Republic until the time of Lincoln. He abandoned the Republic and created the Corporation of the US. His intention was to return to the Republic but - - -. His Vice President considered the Civil Was to be the resolution to an economic problem which was splitting the country apart.
I"m totally with you Seth, that Government has no business being in so very many of the things it sticks it's nose in. It's supposed to guard and protect our freedoms, not take them away!!
Again, I recommend reading "How to read the Constitution". It includes the connection between the Declaration of Independence - which set us free of the rules of the British Crown and it's 28 misdeeds - and the Constitution, which defined how we were to govern ourselves with that new found Freedom so as to avoid those misdeeds of the British Crown and the amendments which further defined and limited the powers of the government.
Interestingly, there was much debate, some heated, in Philadelphia about should have be a monarchy under George Washington or a Republic. You've probably heard Ben Franklin's response to the lady who asked him, as he let the final session of debate, "Mr Franklin, do we have a republic or a monarchy?" He replied, "A Republic Madam, if you can keep it".
We were able to keep it for a bit over 100 years. The republic and it's virtues, were abandoned and lost. There is now a strong effort to recover those virtues.
No, that’s not preachy at all, Seth, I appreciate someone so intelligently laying this out. I actually find you very balanced, and not all a zealot, so thanks for making a much needed space around this.
The cultural voucher thing sounds like a great idea. I also like your notion that the cultural life nourishes us; I’m a poet, and I’m struggling to articulate to people that real art can actually nourish us and is a need. Beauty and truth restores. And, as nourishment, helps us grow.
As a teacher, I also like your idea about teachers being able to teach what they want - so lots to like in your comment, haha. I wonder how long it will take for schools like that to start getting some traction. I’ve heard some positive things in that direction, but in Australia where I’m based it’s all quite stuck in place and not much diversity on offer outside of one or two Steiner schools.
The true price is interesting. I feel like people have a lot of growing to do before they can start to reward the “higher” expressions in any field. A lot of them just can’t seem to sense it. That’s what I’ve been learning lately.
Thanks Seth.
I have the same question - in imagination what would it look like?
Hey Joan - I tried to answer this under Isaiah’s comment. Hope it clarifies things for you but let me know if you have any other questions!
Lots of food for thought here, and kind of scary, too. Thanks for bringing it, Seth.
Thanks for all your support in helping me bring it :)
Thank you Seth. 🙏 Been eagerly looking forward to you posting about this … just like this.
Glad it resonated :)
Inspiring thoughts and a persuasive argument, Seth. The one thing about threefolding I've never understood is this: even if the meeting of needs configures an innate other-orientation in economy, what's to stop unregulated behemoth corporations from forming monopolies, polluting, mistreating workers etc? Can they truly be counted on to self-regulate adequately? I can see, for instance, how McDonald's phased out styrofoam due to its increasing unpopularity(despite its lower cost), but would you mind providing some more detail about how those basic protections (ostensibly, poorly) afforded by government regulation will be covered in a threefold system. Thanks!
Hey Dan - great to hear from you. It's a fantastic question - "Can corporations truly be counted on to self-regulate adequately?"
A couple things: One is that it is the government's rightful role to regulate, to make laws to protect the community from harm. And pollution clearly harms the community. Monopolies harm the community. Mistreating workers harms the community. This is why I talk about the need for "far stronger labor and property laws to provide a framework" for economic activity (and under property laws I'd include both the use of resources as well as the disposal of waste products). And I really do mean "far stronger" laws than what currently exist.
I've written about changing the laws around land, resources, and factories - everything that economists call the "means of production" (see "Who should own the land?" https://thewholesocial.substack.com/p/who-should-own-the-land). Steiner advocated for a legal regime, a system of laws, that would constantly move such resources into the lands of those who could use them productively on behalf of the community, not just for speculation or their own benefit. As he said, such resources should circulate "from the capable to the capable." So those who were mistreating such resources and not using them for the good of all, wouldn't long have access to them. This makes sense from an economic pov (otherwise they're being inefficiently utilized) and it also makes sense from a government pov - property laws aren't divinely ordained, the community decides how we should use our collective resources to best serve the community. We could decide something different.
And I've written in a number of different places (see below) about how buying and selling labor should cease, should become unlawful, and instead we should only buy and sell the fruits of our labor, which in a business means profit-sharing with co-workers, instead of paying a wage. This might seem like a subtle shift, and by itself it wouldn't be adequate, but the larger picture is that work should be entirely separated from income - general standards for how much we work and the conditions of the work should be decided by the community (by the government), not by the business - with the understanding that if we do such work we will receive a "true price" (what we need to live a dignified life) for our work. And then the business should be responsible for working that out - finding the right people to do the work, and making sure they receive a "true price."
Both these examples show that the government still has a significant role to play in protecting land and labor, and they also help make clear what that rightful role is: it's creating the laws, the rules, that businesses have to abide by. It doesn't need to direct the economy, just ensure that the right laws are in place and that the laws aren't broken. For instance, the government shouldn't decide who the next capable entrepreneur is who should receive the means of production - Steiner describes how those with expertise should do so - the government just has to make sure that the transfer occurs at the right time. And the gov shouldn't pay people a true price for their products and services, but just make sure that a true price is paid.
This hands-off approach already happens to a large extent (at least in America) - but they're are still a number of government-run businesses and services, and the government has a huge hand (especially right now) in trying to balance the economy in terms of tariffs and subsidies. So on the one hand I'm talking about stepping out of those roles. But on the other, I'm talking about instituting far stronger, far more effective laws where they're appropriate. Does that make sense? Let me know if it doesn't. Hope all's well!
(And here are a few of the articles I've written about work:
"Your work is not a commodity. It's your reason for being here." (https://thewholesocial.substack.com/p/your-work-is-not-a-commodity)
"A crucial lesson of the Great Resignation"(https://thewholesocial.substack.com/p/a-crucial-lesson-of-the-great-resignation)
"Welcome back to work. Now please hold still while we put your collar and leash back on." (https://thewholesocial.substack.com/p/welcome-back-to-work-now-please-hold)
Per your excellent question … “the dying throes of a terminally ill society?” Reviewing notes from a workshop on good and evil with Christine Gruwez I came across the following thought (of hers): “The INTERVAL from Germ to Flower is the Agony of Potential; the INTERVAL from Fruit to Seed is the Agony of Decay.” Well, that just won’t stop resonating for me right now!
Good call, we might need some cultural pressure against legalised lying (by gov). It's only truth that will help us find a sustainable human compass in our lives and societies..
Exactly. And the search for truth is a cultural activity, an individual pursuit that can then affect others, the government, and the whole of society. The government should have no role in determining what’s true or not…
Nor take part in intentional lying (proposedly for the general good)
Seth - I'm very happy that Karen MO posted the comment about your workshop last Feb with Robert. I had forgotten about it and hope it was immensely successful. I'm also very happy that the 1st amendment to the Constitution was in place so that you could pursue your Life, Liberty and Happiness, unfettered by any restricting government, through your right to peaceably assemble and practice free speech with no interference. To me - that holds the possibility of freedom in the cultural life.
Yeah, it’s wonderful that we have the first amendment and all that it contains, including the centuries of case law interpreting it. It’s a real doorway for healthy social development to emerge…
Do you really think Americans could be that foolish???? Risking total demise of the country for political revenge? I'm counting on the moral conscience of enough Americans to stand together in the political arena to come to terms for the good of the country, not good for their party. Hopefully the middle sphere will emerge out of the necessity to work together.
Hey Kathryn - I do think it’s a definite possibility because it won’t be Americans as a group, but this person here and that person there. It reminds me of the Great Recession in 2008 - Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve, was totally shocked that bankers could crash the financial system because it was against their self-interest. But it wasn’t the banking community that crashed the system, it was thousands of individual bankers here and there, working to get as much as they could out of the system for themselves, not thinking about the whole system at all, but only acting and reacting on their little part of it. But individual actions have a cumulative effect… I think it would be the same general dynamic. The actions of individuals that leads to mob action and further escalation. We’ve seen individual acts of violence in recent years (police killings, Kyle Rittenhouse, etc) and then protests and riots in response. We’ve seen the National Guard called out in the more distant past, and we’ve also seen cities burn. A lot of fear and rage has been engendered…
And I also don’t know how a middle sphere will form unless people are able to come together around some actual ideas, around new ways of doing things that accord with reality. Without new ideas, new understandings, we’ll only recreate the same old thing with all its dysfunction.
I'm not sure you have seen the whole picture. Yes, we see the dying throes of a terminally ill country, but we also see the hope of the world there with you, and the resurrection!
Just being honest totally opens the pathways for redemption and Kennedy has been praying for 18+ years to be granted the opportunity to help bring healing, (starting with truth into the science).
I think we are witnessing a middle come together with new ideas. Although outwardly the MAGA movement is identified with Republican party, it's actually a new group. Trump/Gabbard/RFK/Rubin/Gutfield/Rogan/many others came from liberalism. The attraction is as great as the repulsion. Strengthen nat'l identity yet negotiate fair trade (ultimately eliminate tariffs), stop the killing, stop terrorism, rebuild cities/countries, uncover fraud and establish accountability, support farming/healthy food/medical care, encourage private business and renew manufacturing, be transparent, offer choice, deregulate, revise education. Set up international interests working together more actively for greater good (rebuilding cities, technological advancements, R&D, military deescalation, etc). I don't understand crypto but some believe it's an "unfettered" way of financial exchange. Certainly it will take higher moral development to manage spacial exploration! This judicial warfare has to be "tamed." That's where the anthroposophical view may have the most important impact!!!!
Money out of politics; UBI is freedom to pursue happiness.