Hi Seth! This is a really inspiring article. Thank you for writing it and sharing it.
I think about this a lot from the perspective of being part of a cultural institution, The Christian Community, but also this idea of coalitions— working together across initiatives to help each other become stronger and healthier. And Yes, to educational videos on YouTube! And I have always thought of YOU as a threefold consultant— but of course how to make a living? And to train more threefold consultants who work together across the globe.
The thing I actually really want to share is the idea that it would be wonderful to have at least one (maybe many!) educational center: a place where children, high school students, college students, and the public in general could go and have the chance to have an interactive learning experience, like a science museum that lets visitors put their hands in the water and touch marine wildlife, or what have you. What would that look like to explain and demonstrate why the threefold social organism is so important, how it is different from what we are doing today, etc.? Greetings to you and thanks again for this thought provoking essay.
Liza, the sad truth is that anthroposophists are extremely bad at working together to help each other, when the "other" are cult outsiders, that is not raised in the anthropop cults. I would even say hilariously bad, partly because of the deeply rooted belief of being superior and chosen people.
Hey Youlian - I'm sorry to hear you've had such negative experiences with anthroposophists. I do want The Whole Social to be a place where different viewpoints can be aired, and where we can have good, honest conversation. But it needs to be respectful. There has to be goodwill and interest, and your comment feels to me like you're looking for a fight. If that's what you're looking for, I'm sure you can find it on Facebook. I've seen plenty of that sort of thing there.
Can I ask why you're reading a publication about Steiner's social ideas if you think anthroposophy is a cult and that anthroposophists all think that they're a superior, chosen people? What is it that interests you in threefolding? Thanks.
Just this past week I was listening to Marketplace and pondering how we have such expertise in various fields, and the commensurate positions of power, such as the Fed chair and other regulators, leading academic, voices of authority in the cultural realm, CEOs - all these experts and decision makers, and yet none of them are truly specialists in the whole, even if they are extremely outsized in their influence or depth of knowledge over a large part of the whole, such as the economy.
It left me wondering, who looks at not just the whole of economics, or epidemiology, or the justice system, etc., but the <i>whole</i> whole? The only people I could come up with who might do this are historians attempting a history of the world or a century or something, but they aren't normally involved in significant decision making.
We need an entire group (sector? class?) of people who are experts on the whole who can help reflect that wholeness to the aforementioned experts/leaders while also helping them work together in their decision making. Imagine if Powell, Sanders, Warren, Khan, or Harris had an understanding of threefolding?
And as you say, "Once this work starts really building, there will be no end to the ways we can work for threefolding." - Yes, we need to catch a fire here - and I like your hopefulness that once it does there could be no end in sight as to the positive changes that could occur. Hopefully a positive tipping point is approaching to counter-balance the not-so-positive tipping points we see occurring and predicted all around us. It would be like collectively waking up from a fractured dream into something of a shared social consciousness.
Anyway, kinda wild to run across your substack this morning and see you flesh out an otherwise fleeting inkling that had bubble up in the back of my mind while listening to the radio :)
Hey Steve - great to hear from you, and great to hear that you came to such similar pictures. It's an interesting thought that some historians are might be looking at the whole, but only in relation to the past - I touched on this in my article "Society's Open Secret." Hope all's well with you!
Hello Seth, I continue to read the whole and then try and take a “something I can give selflessly to the world” as my part. The something naturally streams to my skill base. But I find the link between giving in this way, has a side to it that hides the fact that I really have never understood the economy. I have avoided understanding the economy. It is too much aligned with a power play that I thought I had no in-road to even begin to make a change to. So I have “given” my skills or been harnessed safely to a wage while living comfortably in a cultural landscape that is meaningful.
Every time I read your whole article it makes sense. It is filled with hope even if the truths of society seem hopeless!
But, the part that I would like to try and change is how to change my thinking around joining a whole range of schools in my area to become a coalition of schools.
I need to change my thinking because I get stuck, culturally, in the lens of being a worker for a wage. You may not see how I am connecting these two things together. I will try again…
There is a kind of degradation working for a wage, as you say, and it also creates a whole range of conditioned social behaviours. When I do work and I am not waged I align with an essential truth in myself, but I also see that the teachers , I work with and the organisation we are all a part of is very much a child-centred school. I can say there is a healthy working together, even though we are all working for a wage. But when there is a movement towards joining together with other schools, it becomes more personal because the moving away from what is comfortable or manageable into an area that requires a lot of time and commitment and communication, requires a lot of enthusiasm to keep it moving forward.
I think this has to do with love and finding the language to bring that to the college of teachers.
Hey Simone - thanks for your post. I still don't totally understand the connection you're making between working for money and forming a coalition of schools. I can imagine two scenarios where it might create a challenge: 1) a paycheck will likely lull teachers to sleep and take away their initiative for change (they don't want to rock the boat, they just want to do their job and get paid), and 2) it might be hard to form a coalition because it will probably have to be a volunteer effort (no one will get paid, and who can afford to do that). Are either of those what you're pointing to?
If you're interested in forming a coalition, I'd try searching online to see if there are teachers in the public schools who are fighting for greater freedom in what they teach. It's especially important just to try to understand the issue from their point of view - What is it to be pulled back and forth as a public school teacher, or as a teacher at a public school university? In the US, you could be teaching one social science curriculum your whole life and then all of a sudden have to teach something very different (and that you also perhaps don't agree with) simply because the ruling party has changed in your state. It would be interesting to reach out to teachers who have been affected by such changes and see what they think...
I've got to run, but I'll try to reply back later with other ideas... (for instance, why would private-school teachers - who aren't Waldorf teachers - care? Do they have a feeling for how unfair the system is? That you can only teach what you want if you attract families with money to pay for your school?)
Hello Seth, in 2021 we started the ICT which is an initiative with widepsread freedoms allowing for the networking of any and all organisations who wish to bring the threefolding under one umbrellla which at the same time allows for the independence of each individual organisation. Have a look here: https://ictrust.org/ and contact us if you are interested.
Thanks for sharing, Diane. It looks like an interesting initiative. Can you say a little more about how you are working? What does the networking between the organizations look like, and what does it lead to?
Hello Seth - the organisation is under the 508c1a paragraph in the US for the so-called Faith Based Organisations. ICT's statement of faith is defined as the task of unfolding the threefolding and one can read it here: https://ictrust.org/statement-of-faith/. This paragraph 508c1a gives not only freedom of faith, but also freedom to unfold activities under the protection of the FBO without interference from the side of the various governments. The Supreme Court upheld the First Amendement in the USA - one can read more about this here: https://helpinghandoutreach.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/WHY-ALL-CHURCHES-SHOULD-BE-A-508C1A.pdf. The ICT has the authority and mandate to create and/or to integrate so-called branches, integrated auxilliaries, other organisations, etc. so it can be seen as an umbrella organisation with the potential to bring the various initiatives which are working towards the threefolding under one jurisdiction, giving them much more possibilities for cooperation than one coudl otherwise have imagined would be possible. We have started several companies under the ICT, are working on farms joining, etc. Members can begin to work together and easily create their own initiatives under the ICT without needing to have an expensive start up process, etc. Then one can buy and sell under one umbrella with members, etc. begin to form the associations, start school initiatives and other - depending upon member initiative and drive. ICT is a faciltating organisation and brings all initiatives who wish to join into the non-profit jurisdiction.. Does this give some idea? Otherwse we could have a longer talk. greetings and thank you for your work.
I confess to bristling a bit at your distinction (perhaps unintentional) here that, by "putting our heads down" and working on our own small part of the whole, we are not engaged in healing social life. It could be, as you mention, that we "part-workers" can be pretty busy -- our own piece of the puzzle is complicated and stressful enough, how can we be expected to worry about society-at-large? But there's also a feeling that, by making the part in which I work more healthy and whole, this wholeness might radiate out through larger society. If the CSA farm I manage can attain even a modest level of social health, might not it possibly effect positive change throughout the social order, maybe in ways I'm not aware?
Wholes and parts. The following, from Bortoft, has been helpful in challenging me beyond my normal "either/or" way of thinking: "The whole comes to presence within its parts, and we cannot encounter the whole in the same way that we encounter the parts. We should not think of the whole as if it were a thing."
What does it mean to work at the level of "society-at-large" as opposed to the more concrete CSA farm, the school, the organization? I can't get my mind around it. I can imagine larger wholes, in which the farm or school might be a part. But is it possible to somehow bring to presence the totality of parts from the entire social order?
I don't think that's what you're saying, but maybe this "society-at-large" language, and the subtle sense that working at that level -- contra the level of the "part" -- is somehow more important, is throwing me off. I guess how I think about it is that, through a conscious understanding and awareness of certain archetypal social phenomena*, we might more harmoniously order the parts of the whole we're working within (at any level), so that what emerges -- what comes to presence -- is healthy and whole. And yes -- an objective consultant or helper well-versed in those social archetypes could be a real help to that process!
Again, thanks for the amazing work you do Seth! Hope you're well.
Jeff
* These -- as you've expertly explained elsewhere better than this -- are primarily: When working to meet material human needs, something like solidarity or mutuality should be the goal; when making agreements, fairness or a sense of justice should guide our actions; and when dealing with human individuality or creativity, freedom must reign supreme.
This is a great post, Jeff. Thanks for sharing these thoughts. I imagine a number of people might also have bristled when reading the article, so it's good to have the opportunity to address this distinction between working on the part vs. working on the whole.
I definitely don't mean to diminish the incredible work that's happening in all the different initiatives that I mentioned. Far from it - I'm the recipient of a Waldorf education, and very, very grateful for it.
What I'm pointing to is definitely not an "either/or" - it's a "both/and." People will have to continue their incredible work in their field, and... they'll also have to try to better understand and integrate their work into the whole. Of course, people already feel so squeezed in their everyday work that this probably sounds like an impossibility, but I'd just ask: Does anyone think the squeeze will get better on its own? Does anyone think it's going to suddenly ease? That there will be less regulations coming down from the state, and more freedom and creativity in one's work? That profits will start being distributed in healthier, more equitable ways? Or that your profession will still even exist - at least in the ways that you think are most essential - in 20 years time?
But how could we possibly add more to our plate? It's an impossibility, but we have to make it possible. So I think we'll have to shift our priorities. Most teachers that I know already don't feel like there's enough time to prepare for tomorrow's lesson... but I'm still saying that we should spend a little less time preparing and a little more time working in these other ways. And if we do, perhaps we can make some real shifts that will actually ease up on the squeeze.
Also, it would be good if there were people who are interested in supporting and working with the teachers (and the doctors, and the farmers, etc.). We need threefolders who will dedicate themselves to helping facilitate this work.
One last thing. The Steiner quote that I shared can sound so strict: People shouldn't bother with partial reforms! We have to reform the whole thing all at once! But of course that's not what Steiner is saying. So many of his initiatives are working to transform individual fields, and his more explicitly threefold initiatives were still partial (he was very clear that the associations he helped form - The Coming Day and Futurm AG - were not associations at all but miniature prototypes). In this regard, there is an earlier part to the quote I shared that helps clarify his sentiment:
"It would not be right if we were to think that only those who are able to build should do so. No, it depends upon the attitude of mind, even if one knows a great deal. If one has the right direction to one's thinking, and then one engages in social, technical and juristic reform, then one is building the lost temple which is to be rebuilt."
That's it for now. I've got to run! Hope all's well with you.
I want to share two very successful initiatives that spread the kind of thinking represented in Seth’s post above. At age 86,I am enjoying breing a student again, taking a course, along with 5000 other people, conducted by Otto Scharmer at MIT. MIT has pioneer pioneered use of the MOOG format for reaching large numbers of people. My classmates are from South America, China, India, island states, Europe, and America. They are all ages and have various amounts of education. The agenda is to make ourselves better agents of change. Scharmer presents a brilliant model for how this can happen and he has a great deal of success to back him up from hi work with corporate executives and ordinary line workers. There are also small coaching circles that meet weekly where members help one another achieve course goals.. The course is called U-lab 1X. Sharmer’s approach is called awareness-based systems change. Here is a link. https://www.u-school.org/offerings/absc-certification
Another organization that has established itself in the last two or three years is the Inner Development Goals, based in Stockholm. This proceeds from the observation that the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals will never be achievable unless people do inner work to change as individuals. Again, many around the world, have realized this fact, and join the organization so that there are hubs in many different countries. There is an annual conference in Stockholm, which can be atttended virtually Tthis rapidly growing organization provides another model for raising consciousness, original, thinking, and dynamic social change. While neither of these approaches is explicitly anthroposophical, Steiner would approve of their deep inquiry into social issues and solution as well as the emphasis on self knowledge and self change.
From a previous experience as a parent in a Waldorf school, it made a big difference having the support of visiting facilitators and consultants that were seasoned and experienced in the challenges of such projects.
Besides “getting the word out” I believe that having “elders” that could offer support and help divulge three-folding could be a very efficient manoeuvre. This in my view could be done in a structured way (not simply ad-hoc), similar to how Quakers do it (a panel of elders that are available to support local groups) or in line with Next-Stage Organizations described by Laloux.
Thanks for your thoughts, Elsa. Yeah, I can imagine that that sort of support would only be helpful in the schools. (Also, I've only dipped into Laloux's book, so your comment is a useful impetus to spend some more time with his work.) All the best.
Hi Seth, You asked for different ideas. Here are some:
Maybe re-new and re-store bears too much desire for a paradise lost. Maybe re-sponsibility for the mission of earth in the cosmos is, what we should go for.
1906, when Steiner coined the "Soziale Hauptgesetz" (which starts with "Heil" whole, holy, and continues with a bold description of the division of labour. Why would someone work for the needs of someone else? Society would need a spiritual mission, which everybody would give her/his best to make it happen.
This sense of coherence in a shared spiritual mission also would open the "heads up" perspective to the interdependence.
The article ends with: "Precisely because spiritual science cannot be merely theoretical or merely satisfy curiosity, it must work slowly in this way. One of its aims is to characterise the practical side of human progress. However, it can only bring about this human progress if it creates the real conditions for it. And these conditions cannot be brought about in any other way than by conquering one person after another. The world advances only when men want it. But in order to make men want it, each one must do the inner work of soul. And this can only be done step by step. If this were not the case, then Theosophy would also present pipe dreams in the social field and do no practical work. Some further details will be given in the near future."
I read this not as a big number, who heard about threefolding. Isnt't meant as the number who heard and understood and want to practise it?
When we design lectures, courses: Should't we have in mind, that "threefoldness" is the happy outcome of acting in coalition(association with others, not a thing for an individual to learn?
I would consider it a success if we managed to create a space in which threefolding can develop and grow, even if the whole of society is not transformed at the same time.
Anyway, all the best for Your ideas!
btw, the GLS claimed to be the first socio-ecological bank worldwide and afaik nobody showed up and said: "We are earlier". I was involved in this process, when I was working there.
Thanks for your comment, Hans-Florian. I agree that a spiritual mission is essential - we have to have a larger vision to work towards, and we have to be able to meet those around us as directly and selflessly as possible, and have the inner awareness to overcome our antisocial tendencies. A spiritual mission and a spiritual practice are indispensable for this. And of course, everyone is at different stages of developing such work, and it looks different for each individual, but this aspect has to be there especially for those who are bringing threefolding forward. It is essential.
I'm not sure about your distinction between threefoldness being a result of association and not something we learn. It is certainly something that emerges, but it won't emerge on its own. It requires a new way of seeing. We have to develop a phenomenology of social life. Which means we have to come to understand the phenomena of social life (including land, labor, capital, democratic processes, etc) in a living, dynamic way. This can only be described as a learning process in my mind. Do you see it differently?
And it's good to know about GLS being the first socio-ecological bank worldwide. Thanks again for your comment!
a) is threefolding a reality that is in the world that Steiner saw, or is it
b) an idea in the spiritual world that has to be brought into the world by those who have understood/learned it.
I tend towards answer a). It is there, but it has to be redeemed, freed from the falsehood in which it still has to exist.
Karl Rodbertus – whom Steiner read during his time in Vienna, together with Marx, and whom he then described as the German antipode of Marx – wrote in 1842:
The division of labour is, like the legal order and the communication of the spirits, one of these three great fundamental social relationships in which the state and humanity necessarily interconnect and in which history moves towards its goal.
This reads like Rodbertus noticed kind of a threefold social order.
What we can learn is to ask the right questions: where does the principle of freedom bear fruit, where the principle of solidarity, where that of equality?
I learnt this from Christof Lindenau, who recently passed away.
These questions seem more helpful to me than arguing about what belongs where. Is a school ‘intellectual life’?
As Steiner says in the Philosophy of Freedom:
"I do not recognise any external principle of my actions because I have found the reason for action, the love of action, within myself. I do not examine intellectually whether my action is good or evil; I carry it out because I love it.
It becomes ‘good’ when my intuition, immersed in love, is in the right place in the world context to be experienced intuitively; ‘evil’ when this is not the case.’
The world will give the answer. We have to live with the consequences of our actions, as Michael does.
Whilst I am instinctively attracted to the concept and benefits of threefolding I find myself increasingly struggling, as I mature my wisdom, to identify what the right social causes should be and how to resolve if my cause is the right cause over someone else's cause. Left v right, red v blue, dual v non dual, gen x v gen z, etc... etc...
Hi Seth! This is a really inspiring article. Thank you for writing it and sharing it.
I think about this a lot from the perspective of being part of a cultural institution, The Christian Community, but also this idea of coalitions— working together across initiatives to help each other become stronger and healthier. And Yes, to educational videos on YouTube! And I have always thought of YOU as a threefold consultant— but of course how to make a living? And to train more threefold consultants who work together across the globe.
The thing I actually really want to share is the idea that it would be wonderful to have at least one (maybe many!) educational center: a place where children, high school students, college students, and the public in general could go and have the chance to have an interactive learning experience, like a science museum that lets visitors put their hands in the water and touch marine wildlife, or what have you. What would that look like to explain and demonstrate why the threefold social organism is so important, how it is different from what we are doing today, etc.? Greetings to you and thanks again for this thought provoking essay.
Hey Liza - this idea of an interactive exhibit is great. I love it, thanks for sharing!
Liza, the sad truth is that anthroposophists are extremely bad at working together to help each other, when the "other" are cult outsiders, that is not raised in the anthropop cults. I would even say hilariously bad, partly because of the deeply rooted belief of being superior and chosen people.
Hey Youlian - I'm sorry to hear you've had such negative experiences with anthroposophists. I do want The Whole Social to be a place where different viewpoints can be aired, and where we can have good, honest conversation. But it needs to be respectful. There has to be goodwill and interest, and your comment feels to me like you're looking for a fight. If that's what you're looking for, I'm sure you can find it on Facebook. I've seen plenty of that sort of thing there.
Can I ask why you're reading a publication about Steiner's social ideas if you think anthroposophy is a cult and that anthroposophists all think that they're a superior, chosen people? What is it that interests you in threefolding? Thanks.
Just this past week I was listening to Marketplace and pondering how we have such expertise in various fields, and the commensurate positions of power, such as the Fed chair and other regulators, leading academic, voices of authority in the cultural realm, CEOs - all these experts and decision makers, and yet none of them are truly specialists in the whole, even if they are extremely outsized in their influence or depth of knowledge over a large part of the whole, such as the economy.
It left me wondering, who looks at not just the whole of economics, or epidemiology, or the justice system, etc., but the <i>whole</i> whole? The only people I could come up with who might do this are historians attempting a history of the world or a century or something, but they aren't normally involved in significant decision making.
We need an entire group (sector? class?) of people who are experts on the whole who can help reflect that wholeness to the aforementioned experts/leaders while also helping them work together in their decision making. Imagine if Powell, Sanders, Warren, Khan, or Harris had an understanding of threefolding?
And as you say, "Once this work starts really building, there will be no end to the ways we can work for threefolding." - Yes, we need to catch a fire here - and I like your hopefulness that once it does there could be no end in sight as to the positive changes that could occur. Hopefully a positive tipping point is approaching to counter-balance the not-so-positive tipping points we see occurring and predicted all around us. It would be like collectively waking up from a fractured dream into something of a shared social consciousness.
Anyway, kinda wild to run across your substack this morning and see you flesh out an otherwise fleeting inkling that had bubble up in the back of my mind while listening to the radio :)
Hey Steve - great to hear from you, and great to hear that you came to such similar pictures. It's an interesting thought that some historians are might be looking at the whole, but only in relation to the past - I touched on this in my article "Society's Open Secret." Hope all's well with you!
Hello Seth, I continue to read the whole and then try and take a “something I can give selflessly to the world” as my part. The something naturally streams to my skill base. But I find the link between giving in this way, has a side to it that hides the fact that I really have never understood the economy. I have avoided understanding the economy. It is too much aligned with a power play that I thought I had no in-road to even begin to make a change to. So I have “given” my skills or been harnessed safely to a wage while living comfortably in a cultural landscape that is meaningful.
Every time I read your whole article it makes sense. It is filled with hope even if the truths of society seem hopeless!
But, the part that I would like to try and change is how to change my thinking around joining a whole range of schools in my area to become a coalition of schools.
I need to change my thinking because I get stuck, culturally, in the lens of being a worker for a wage. You may not see how I am connecting these two things together. I will try again…
There is a kind of degradation working for a wage, as you say, and it also creates a whole range of conditioned social behaviours. When I do work and I am not waged I align with an essential truth in myself, but I also see that the teachers , I work with and the organisation we are all a part of is very much a child-centred school. I can say there is a healthy working together, even though we are all working for a wage. But when there is a movement towards joining together with other schools, it becomes more personal because the moving away from what is comfortable or manageable into an area that requires a lot of time and commitment and communication, requires a lot of enthusiasm to keep it moving forward.
I think this has to do with love and finding the language to bring that to the college of teachers.
Hey Simone - thanks for your post. I still don't totally understand the connection you're making between working for money and forming a coalition of schools. I can imagine two scenarios where it might create a challenge: 1) a paycheck will likely lull teachers to sleep and take away their initiative for change (they don't want to rock the boat, they just want to do their job and get paid), and 2) it might be hard to form a coalition because it will probably have to be a volunteer effort (no one will get paid, and who can afford to do that). Are either of those what you're pointing to?
If you're interested in forming a coalition, I'd try searching online to see if there are teachers in the public schools who are fighting for greater freedom in what they teach. It's especially important just to try to understand the issue from their point of view - What is it to be pulled back and forth as a public school teacher, or as a teacher at a public school university? In the US, you could be teaching one social science curriculum your whole life and then all of a sudden have to teach something very different (and that you also perhaps don't agree with) simply because the ruling party has changed in your state. It would be interesting to reach out to teachers who have been affected by such changes and see what they think...
I've got to run, but I'll try to reply back later with other ideas... (for instance, why would private-school teachers - who aren't Waldorf teachers - care? Do they have a feeling for how unfair the system is? That you can only teach what you want if you attract families with money to pay for your school?)
Hello Seth, in 2021 we started the ICT which is an initiative with widepsread freedoms allowing for the networking of any and all organisations who wish to bring the threefolding under one umbrellla which at the same time allows for the independence of each individual organisation. Have a look here: https://ictrust.org/ and contact us if you are interested.
https://ictrust.org/
Thanks for sharing, Diane. It looks like an interesting initiative. Can you say a little more about how you are working? What does the networking between the organizations look like, and what does it lead to?
Hello Seth - the organisation is under the 508c1a paragraph in the US for the so-called Faith Based Organisations. ICT's statement of faith is defined as the task of unfolding the threefolding and one can read it here: https://ictrust.org/statement-of-faith/. This paragraph 508c1a gives not only freedom of faith, but also freedom to unfold activities under the protection of the FBO without interference from the side of the various governments. The Supreme Court upheld the First Amendement in the USA - one can read more about this here: https://helpinghandoutreach.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/WHY-ALL-CHURCHES-SHOULD-BE-A-508C1A.pdf. The ICT has the authority and mandate to create and/or to integrate so-called branches, integrated auxilliaries, other organisations, etc. so it can be seen as an umbrella organisation with the potential to bring the various initiatives which are working towards the threefolding under one jurisdiction, giving them much more possibilities for cooperation than one coudl otherwise have imagined would be possible. We have started several companies under the ICT, are working on farms joining, etc. Members can begin to work together and easily create their own initiatives under the ICT without needing to have an expensive start up process, etc. Then one can buy and sell under one umbrella with members, etc. begin to form the associations, start school initiatives and other - depending upon member initiative and drive. ICT is a faciltating organisation and brings all initiatives who wish to join into the non-profit jurisdiction.. Does this give some idea? Otherwse we could have a longer talk. greetings and thank you for your work.
Thanks for your work Seth!
I confess to bristling a bit at your distinction (perhaps unintentional) here that, by "putting our heads down" and working on our own small part of the whole, we are not engaged in healing social life. It could be, as you mention, that we "part-workers" can be pretty busy -- our own piece of the puzzle is complicated and stressful enough, how can we be expected to worry about society-at-large? But there's also a feeling that, by making the part in which I work more healthy and whole, this wholeness might radiate out through larger society. If the CSA farm I manage can attain even a modest level of social health, might not it possibly effect positive change throughout the social order, maybe in ways I'm not aware?
Wholes and parts. The following, from Bortoft, has been helpful in challenging me beyond my normal "either/or" way of thinking: "The whole comes to presence within its parts, and we cannot encounter the whole in the same way that we encounter the parts. We should not think of the whole as if it were a thing."
What does it mean to work at the level of "society-at-large" as opposed to the more concrete CSA farm, the school, the organization? I can't get my mind around it. I can imagine larger wholes, in which the farm or school might be a part. But is it possible to somehow bring to presence the totality of parts from the entire social order?
I don't think that's what you're saying, but maybe this "society-at-large" language, and the subtle sense that working at that level -- contra the level of the "part" -- is somehow more important, is throwing me off. I guess how I think about it is that, through a conscious understanding and awareness of certain archetypal social phenomena*, we might more harmoniously order the parts of the whole we're working within (at any level), so that what emerges -- what comes to presence -- is healthy and whole. And yes -- an objective consultant or helper well-versed in those social archetypes could be a real help to that process!
Again, thanks for the amazing work you do Seth! Hope you're well.
Jeff
* These -- as you've expertly explained elsewhere better than this -- are primarily: When working to meet material human needs, something like solidarity or mutuality should be the goal; when making agreements, fairness or a sense of justice should guide our actions; and when dealing with human individuality or creativity, freedom must reign supreme.
This is a great post, Jeff. Thanks for sharing these thoughts. I imagine a number of people might also have bristled when reading the article, so it's good to have the opportunity to address this distinction between working on the part vs. working on the whole.
I definitely don't mean to diminish the incredible work that's happening in all the different initiatives that I mentioned. Far from it - I'm the recipient of a Waldorf education, and very, very grateful for it.
What I'm pointing to is definitely not an "either/or" - it's a "both/and." People will have to continue their incredible work in their field, and... they'll also have to try to better understand and integrate their work into the whole. Of course, people already feel so squeezed in their everyday work that this probably sounds like an impossibility, but I'd just ask: Does anyone think the squeeze will get better on its own? Does anyone think it's going to suddenly ease? That there will be less regulations coming down from the state, and more freedom and creativity in one's work? That profits will start being distributed in healthier, more equitable ways? Or that your profession will still even exist - at least in the ways that you think are most essential - in 20 years time?
But how could we possibly add more to our plate? It's an impossibility, but we have to make it possible. So I think we'll have to shift our priorities. Most teachers that I know already don't feel like there's enough time to prepare for tomorrow's lesson... but I'm still saying that we should spend a little less time preparing and a little more time working in these other ways. And if we do, perhaps we can make some real shifts that will actually ease up on the squeeze.
Also, it would be good if there were people who are interested in supporting and working with the teachers (and the doctors, and the farmers, etc.). We need threefolders who will dedicate themselves to helping facilitate this work.
One last thing. The Steiner quote that I shared can sound so strict: People shouldn't bother with partial reforms! We have to reform the whole thing all at once! But of course that's not what Steiner is saying. So many of his initiatives are working to transform individual fields, and his more explicitly threefold initiatives were still partial (he was very clear that the associations he helped form - The Coming Day and Futurm AG - were not associations at all but miniature prototypes). In this regard, there is an earlier part to the quote I shared that helps clarify his sentiment:
"It would not be right if we were to think that only those who are able to build should do so. No, it depends upon the attitude of mind, even if one knows a great deal. If one has the right direction to one's thinking, and then one engages in social, technical and juristic reform, then one is building the lost temple which is to be rebuilt."
That's it for now. I've got to run! Hope all's well with you.
Thanks Seth -- the earlier part of Steiner's quote does help balance things out a bit!
SPREADING THE WORD
I want to share two very successful initiatives that spread the kind of thinking represented in Seth’s post above. At age 86,I am enjoying breing a student again, taking a course, along with 5000 other people, conducted by Otto Scharmer at MIT. MIT has pioneer pioneered use of the MOOG format for reaching large numbers of people. My classmates are from South America, China, India, island states, Europe, and America. They are all ages and have various amounts of education. The agenda is to make ourselves better agents of change. Scharmer presents a brilliant model for how this can happen and he has a great deal of success to back him up from hi work with corporate executives and ordinary line workers. There are also small coaching circles that meet weekly where members help one another achieve course goals.. The course is called U-lab 1X. Sharmer’s approach is called awareness-based systems change. Here is a link. https://www.u-school.org/offerings/absc-certification
Another organization that has established itself in the last two or three years is the Inner Development Goals, based in Stockholm. This proceeds from the observation that the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals will never be achievable unless people do inner work to change as individuals. Again, many around the world, have realized this fact, and join the organization so that there are hubs in many different countries. There is an annual conference in Stockholm, which can be atttended virtually Tthis rapidly growing organization provides another model for raising consciousness, original, thinking, and dynamic social change. While neither of these approaches is explicitly anthroposophical, Steiner would approve of their deep inquiry into social issues and solution as well as the emphasis on self knowledge and self change.
From a previous experience as a parent in a Waldorf school, it made a big difference having the support of visiting facilitators and consultants that were seasoned and experienced in the challenges of such projects.
Besides “getting the word out” I believe that having “elders” that could offer support and help divulge three-folding could be a very efficient manoeuvre. This in my view could be done in a structured way (not simply ad-hoc), similar to how Quakers do it (a panel of elders that are available to support local groups) or in line with Next-Stage Organizations described by Laloux.
Thanks for your thoughts, Elsa. Yeah, I can imagine that that sort of support would only be helpful in the schools. (Also, I've only dipped into Laloux's book, so your comment is a useful impetus to spend some more time with his work.) All the best.
Hi Seth, You asked for different ideas. Here are some:
Maybe re-new and re-store bears too much desire for a paradise lost. Maybe re-sponsibility for the mission of earth in the cosmos is, what we should go for.
1906, when Steiner coined the "Soziale Hauptgesetz" (which starts with "Heil" whole, holy, and continues with a bold description of the division of labour. Why would someone work for the needs of someone else? Society would need a spiritual mission, which everybody would give her/his best to make it happen.
This sense of coherence in a shared spiritual mission also would open the "heads up" perspective to the interdependence.
The article ends with: "Precisely because spiritual science cannot be merely theoretical or merely satisfy curiosity, it must work slowly in this way. One of its aims is to characterise the practical side of human progress. However, it can only bring about this human progress if it creates the real conditions for it. And these conditions cannot be brought about in any other way than by conquering one person after another. The world advances only when men want it. But in order to make men want it, each one must do the inner work of soul. And this can only be done step by step. If this were not the case, then Theosophy would also present pipe dreams in the social field and do no practical work. Some further details will be given in the near future."
I read this not as a big number, who heard about threefolding. Isnt't meant as the number who heard and understood and want to practise it?
When we design lectures, courses: Should't we have in mind, that "threefoldness" is the happy outcome of acting in coalition(association with others, not a thing for an individual to learn?
I would consider it a success if we managed to create a space in which threefolding can develop and grow, even if the whole of society is not transformed at the same time.
Anyway, all the best for Your ideas!
btw, the GLS claimed to be the first socio-ecological bank worldwide and afaik nobody showed up and said: "We are earlier". I was involved in this process, when I was working there.
Thanks for your comment, Hans-Florian. I agree that a spiritual mission is essential - we have to have a larger vision to work towards, and we have to be able to meet those around us as directly and selflessly as possible, and have the inner awareness to overcome our antisocial tendencies. A spiritual mission and a spiritual practice are indispensable for this. And of course, everyone is at different stages of developing such work, and it looks different for each individual, but this aspect has to be there especially for those who are bringing threefolding forward. It is essential.
I'm not sure about your distinction between threefoldness being a result of association and not something we learn. It is certainly something that emerges, but it won't emerge on its own. It requires a new way of seeing. We have to develop a phenomenology of social life. Which means we have to come to understand the phenomena of social life (including land, labor, capital, democratic processes, etc) in a living, dynamic way. This can only be described as a learning process in my mind. Do you see it differently?
And it's good to know about GLS being the first socio-ecological bank worldwide. Thanks again for your comment!
To put the question in an extreme way:
a) is threefolding a reality that is in the world that Steiner saw, or is it
b) an idea in the spiritual world that has to be brought into the world by those who have understood/learned it.
I tend towards answer a). It is there, but it has to be redeemed, freed from the falsehood in which it still has to exist.
Karl Rodbertus – whom Steiner read during his time in Vienna, together with Marx, and whom he then described as the German antipode of Marx – wrote in 1842:
The division of labour is, like the legal order and the communication of the spirits, one of these three great fundamental social relationships in which the state and humanity necessarily interconnect and in which history moves towards its goal.
This reads like Rodbertus noticed kind of a threefold social order.
What we can learn is to ask the right questions: where does the principle of freedom bear fruit, where the principle of solidarity, where that of equality?
I learnt this from Christof Lindenau, who recently passed away.
These questions seem more helpful to me than arguing about what belongs where. Is a school ‘intellectual life’?
As Steiner says in the Philosophy of Freedom:
"I do not recognise any external principle of my actions because I have found the reason for action, the love of action, within myself. I do not examine intellectually whether my action is good or evil; I carry it out because I love it.
It becomes ‘good’ when my intuition, immersed in love, is in the right place in the world context to be experienced intuitively; ‘evil’ when this is not the case.’
The world will give the answer. We have to live with the consequences of our actions, as Michael does.
Whilst I am instinctively attracted to the concept and benefits of threefolding I find myself increasingly struggling, as I mature my wisdom, to identify what the right social causes should be and how to resolve if my cause is the right cause over someone else's cause. Left v right, red v blue, dual v non dual, gen x v gen z, etc... etc...