Glad to hear your perspectives on this, and that you make it available in audio form and over the global communications network.
I want to add some points:
1) demands for working remotely for jobs that do not need to be done in person help us in overall, collective, ecological efficiency, not just in segmented selfish ways. In the long run, decentralization of the means of production, localization of food production, medicine, and culture, serve social threefolding aims as well as the resigners' self-interest for more convenience (and additionally a more meaningful life and balance.)
2) Many businesses make useless, unwanted things that no one will miss. The heads of these business do their work because they see an obligation to make money, or have a desire to find inner freedom, and are perhaps somewhat cynical about what is really wanted by the market, but they can meet these needs with more useful businesses that will actually give the worker-consumers what we need (good food, sustainable shelter, communications technologies, health) and want (conveniences, gifts to express love, true beauty and truly stimulating entertainment). There is plenty of excess to trim from our economy and especially our entertainment industry. This isn't 1920, much of the economy is dispensible, and even in necessary fields such as agriculture, a good proportion of the "value" as measured monetarily is in proprietary seed ownership and other non-productive holdings. These companies could go away and no one would be any the poorer in the longterm, not even their owners whose profit is only conceptual. Many companies' innovations are suspect, and have not proven themselves in real comparisons with sustainable agricultures/means of production. "Farm smarter not harder" will be the direction of food production in the coming decades. It will not drive prices up, rather the worker who stays home more and tends their garden will find that food can be produced much more easily than it can be bought. So, the great resignation is more than simply a bargaining for wages, but a call for more thoughtful stewardship of limited resources and more visionary investment in local value and beauty.
In addition, leaving jobs that are without value opens up space for people to think, to pay attention to their homes, and to ask what they really need to consume. From there they can have a hope to be of true service, rather than merely reacting to what the job listings offer them.
3) We have the internet now. That wasn't there in 1920, and it changes the cultural sphere vastly from what it was, and facilitates the negotiating of rights and even of hurt feelings in the political sphere. This may be a strange claim, given the famous information wars and the havoc wreaked by the algorithms, but the potential for communication is greater now than ever. Before, we had no way to carry on a conversation with Great Britain from the American shores, and representation was not even a practical possibility.
Additionally, what can be received from afar informationally can be discussed and investigated locally to great economic benefit. New ideas can be circulated to save decades or centuries of error or loss due to limited beliefs in the gardens of localities. (Without the internet, I would not have learned of the chestnut canopies of Corsica which could feed the whole island's population in a temperate climate.) The cultural sphere is free to a large extent from its two companions, and yet most thinkers do not seem to remember that the global communications network exists when discussing national quarrels, policies, or trends. Yet we use it every day, and it is in plain view. The Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the elections of populist candidates, these are only the tip of the iceberg. The impact the internet has facilitated is inestimable, we are so used to it by now as the air we breathe that we do not sense it nor remember what our lives were before. And the impact that it can have is mostly unrealized, since we haven't thought to try.
Much of what is valued today in money is service, not commodity (even setting aside time-wasters). Therapy, personal growth workshops, spirituality retreats, social support for fasts or attention from social media followers (which meets a valid social need, if messily), all of these things have dollar values put on them directly or indirectly. These needs can be met without money too, and are being met: time trade circles, parallel work sessions, intentional communities, conversations on the audio application "Clubhouse," to name a few. These services can often be carried out without the structures of money or government, because communicating about them to coordinate efforts is so much easier with internet platforms. The desire to be of service can be gratified in a broader set of ways than simply brewing or baking, and in ways that are more effective than simply giving someone cheaper bread and booze.
Granted, our thinking about the global communications network needs to evolve past simply using it to remake political forms and organize for higher wages, or for mindless wasting of time, but its potential for facilitating a threefold social order is vast. Imagine if Steiner and the others working on threefolding in the 1920's had been able to reach thousands of people with livestreams, adjusting even for the differences in total population numbers. They could have drawn many into the appeal of the message simply by showing an appealing example, no need for politicians to agree. At the least, it is a false comparison to talk about changing the social body of 1920 to a threefold model and changing the social body of 2020.
I appreciate that I got to hear your article thanks to the internet, and that you're willing to use this tool. I would hope that anthroposophists make more use of it. And even if they don't, others who are not anthroposophists will eventually find the Steiner archive and grab onto the valuable resources they find there (rsarchive.org).
I would really like to hear your thoughts on threefolding and the internet as a general topic. It is so vast an issue that I think I have barely scratched the surface, but it seems like a key missing piece in all of the discussions of this issue, and in the question of how to live up to the ideals today.
Glad to hear your perspectives on this, and that you make it available in audio form and over the global communications network.
I want to add some points:
1) demands for working remotely for jobs that do not need to be done in person help us in overall, collective, ecological efficiency, not just in segmented selfish ways. In the long run, decentralization of the means of production, localization of food production, medicine, and culture, serve social threefolding aims as well as the resigners' self-interest for more convenience (and additionally a more meaningful life and balance.)
2) Many businesses make useless, unwanted things that no one will miss. The heads of these business do their work because they see an obligation to make money, or have a desire to find inner freedom, and are perhaps somewhat cynical about what is really wanted by the market, but they can meet these needs with more useful businesses that will actually give the worker-consumers what we need (good food, sustainable shelter, communications technologies, health) and want (conveniences, gifts to express love, true beauty and truly stimulating entertainment). There is plenty of excess to trim from our economy and especially our entertainment industry. This isn't 1920, much of the economy is dispensible, and even in necessary fields such as agriculture, a good proportion of the "value" as measured monetarily is in proprietary seed ownership and other non-productive holdings. These companies could go away and no one would be any the poorer in the longterm, not even their owners whose profit is only conceptual. Many companies' innovations are suspect, and have not proven themselves in real comparisons with sustainable agricultures/means of production. "Farm smarter not harder" will be the direction of food production in the coming decades. It will not drive prices up, rather the worker who stays home more and tends their garden will find that food can be produced much more easily than it can be bought. So, the great resignation is more than simply a bargaining for wages, but a call for more thoughtful stewardship of limited resources and more visionary investment in local value and beauty.
In addition, leaving jobs that are without value opens up space for people to think, to pay attention to their homes, and to ask what they really need to consume. From there they can have a hope to be of true service, rather than merely reacting to what the job listings offer them.
3) We have the internet now. That wasn't there in 1920, and it changes the cultural sphere vastly from what it was, and facilitates the negotiating of rights and even of hurt feelings in the political sphere. This may be a strange claim, given the famous information wars and the havoc wreaked by the algorithms, but the potential for communication is greater now than ever. Before, we had no way to carry on a conversation with Great Britain from the American shores, and representation was not even a practical possibility.
Additionally, what can be received from afar informationally can be discussed and investigated locally to great economic benefit. New ideas can be circulated to save decades or centuries of error or loss due to limited beliefs in the gardens of localities. (Without the internet, I would not have learned of the chestnut canopies of Corsica which could feed the whole island's population in a temperate climate.) The cultural sphere is free to a large extent from its two companions, and yet most thinkers do not seem to remember that the global communications network exists when discussing national quarrels, policies, or trends. Yet we use it every day, and it is in plain view. The Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the elections of populist candidates, these are only the tip of the iceberg. The impact the internet has facilitated is inestimable, we are so used to it by now as the air we breathe that we do not sense it nor remember what our lives were before. And the impact that it can have is mostly unrealized, since we haven't thought to try.
Much of what is valued today in money is service, not commodity (even setting aside time-wasters). Therapy, personal growth workshops, spirituality retreats, social support for fasts or attention from social media followers (which meets a valid social need, if messily), all of these things have dollar values put on them directly or indirectly. These needs can be met without money too, and are being met: time trade circles, parallel work sessions, intentional communities, conversations on the audio application "Clubhouse," to name a few. These services can often be carried out without the structures of money or government, because communicating about them to coordinate efforts is so much easier with internet platforms. The desire to be of service can be gratified in a broader set of ways than simply brewing or baking, and in ways that are more effective than simply giving someone cheaper bread and booze.
Granted, our thinking about the global communications network needs to evolve past simply using it to remake political forms and organize for higher wages, or for mindless wasting of time, but its potential for facilitating a threefold social order is vast. Imagine if Steiner and the others working on threefolding in the 1920's had been able to reach thousands of people with livestreams, adjusting even for the differences in total population numbers. They could have drawn many into the appeal of the message simply by showing an appealing example, no need for politicians to agree. At the least, it is a false comparison to talk about changing the social body of 1920 to a threefold model and changing the social body of 2020.
I appreciate that I got to hear your article thanks to the internet, and that you're willing to use this tool. I would hope that anthroposophists make more use of it. And even if they don't, others who are not anthroposophists will eventually find the Steiner archive and grab onto the valuable resources they find there (rsarchive.org).
I would really like to hear your thoughts on threefolding and the internet as a general topic. It is so vast an issue that I think I have barely scratched the surface, but it seems like a key missing piece in all of the discussions of this issue, and in the question of how to live up to the ideals today.
Thank you for your scholarship and service.
in unity,
Joshua