Mar 25, 2022·edited Mar 25, 2022Liked by Seth Jordan
I love the way eventually cultural-spiritual freedom turns out to be the direction to both public safety and medical freedom... This, to me, is a new and inspiring key to understand these confusing times - as I feel you have touched here an acupuncture point with regard to the whole situation. Both the scientist and the common individual are pressured and influenced in ways that can only breed trouble. On the other hand, we shall find social tensions significantly reducing - the more both of them tend towards freedom.
Yeah, great point. I think it also does matter what level of freedom people are ready for - with young children it often makes sense for them to accept something based on another's healthy authority. But to hold things back from adults and treat them like children - deciding what they can and cannot watch or read - seems like a recipe for disaster.
I think that's a law of parenting that crosses over with governance: when people are ready to take a step in their development, a higher level of personal responsibility, but you fail to let them, then it only creates rebellion. Wilhelm von Humboldt says something like this in "The Limits of State Action," as does Goethe: "Any great revolution is never the fault of the people, rather that of the government. Revolutions are altogether impossible as long as governments are continually just and continually vigilant, so that they anticipate them with timely reforms and don’t hold back until what is necessary is compelled from the bottom up."
Beautiful quote and point. It reminds me of a place where Steiner is talking about this trend towards the future - drawing an interesting correlation between our engagement with the Spirit and the way we regard authority. It doesn't mean, of course, that authority will disappear... But only that a different sphere will emerge, in the direction, I believe, of what you wrote in your second postscript remark. I feel already quite a big gap, in this sense, between older and younger generations. Between authority oriented materialistic views, and free dialogue oriented spiritual ones, that indeed regard matter, but only as one aspect among others.
POSTSCRIPT: There are a few small things I want to add to this article. One is that it is a question for me whether the government should be able to claim "emergency powers" and override fundamental rights (assembly, protest, speech, etc) in emergencies. Part of the government's task is protection and security, so how far should that extend? At this point, I can imagine such measures being appropriate in the most dire situations, but in that case I think complete transparency should be required, and people should be held responsible if the claiming of emergency powers wasn't actually warranted. The government is known to want to extend it's reach -- to wage war on all sorts of things like poverty and drugs, and to sacrifice things like privacy in the name of security. I think this needs to be rigorously guarded against, and the main antidote is a healthy, vibrant cultural life where people become educated enough to decide for themselves.
The second thing: I was asked about my thoughts on the current situation and what can be done RIGHT NOW about the incredibly divisive situation. I think the main thing that's needed is getting real about how much we actively dislike and disrespect each other even though we all claim to be working for the good of humanity. What if our response was not "You're brainwashed! You need to get vaccinated!" or "You're brainwashed! Vaccines and masks just harm people!" but instead, "Everyone's got different ways of looking at situations, so how can I accommodate yours and how can we work together to make sure everyone is safe and respected?" I would imagine such a feeling of actual respect and care would in turn lead us to a diversity of approaches, to finding the right channels so that everyone can have their needs met and people aren't ostracized and shamed. Yes, our responses and actions would have to be more complex, tailored to our actual community's needs, but it seems like the right approach and doable to me. And how much energy are we currently wasting on battling each other?
Lastly, I got a response to this article from a friend who is a doctor, and I thought it was a quite helpful picture so I wanted to share it:
"...I’ve often used the three legged stool model of medicine to replace the ivory tower model currently in place. In our current model only big studies, the best being meta analysis, are taken as a foundation to make medical decisions. We call this evidence based practice.
The three legged stool model gives a balance between evidence based practice, another leg made from patient autonomy, and another leg based on the individual clinician’s experience and expertise.
When we ignore the other two legs we see people alienated by the medical system, and we see massive physician burnout. Which we are seeing as probably the two big challenges of medicine today in the conventional world, stressed into the foreground by the pandemic.
It is indeed a polarized situation though I am starting to see some surprising things - such as the extreme views of mandates waking people up I would not have expected to question these things. So there is a strength and a light in striving for a sensible viewpoint in all of this as you are."
I love the way eventually cultural-spiritual freedom turns out to be the direction to both public safety and medical freedom... This, to me, is a new and inspiring key to understand these confusing times - as I feel you have touched here an acupuncture point with regard to the whole situation. Both the scientist and the common individual are pressured and influenced in ways that can only breed trouble. On the other hand, we shall find social tensions significantly reducing - the more both of them tend towards freedom.
Yeah, great point. I think it also does matter what level of freedom people are ready for - with young children it often makes sense for them to accept something based on another's healthy authority. But to hold things back from adults and treat them like children - deciding what they can and cannot watch or read - seems like a recipe for disaster.
I think that's a law of parenting that crosses over with governance: when people are ready to take a step in their development, a higher level of personal responsibility, but you fail to let them, then it only creates rebellion. Wilhelm von Humboldt says something like this in "The Limits of State Action," as does Goethe: "Any great revolution is never the fault of the people, rather that of the government. Revolutions are altogether impossible as long as governments are continually just and continually vigilant, so that they anticipate them with timely reforms and don’t hold back until what is necessary is compelled from the bottom up."
Beautiful quote and point. It reminds me of a place where Steiner is talking about this trend towards the future - drawing an interesting correlation between our engagement with the Spirit and the way we regard authority. It doesn't mean, of course, that authority will disappear... But only that a different sphere will emerge, in the direction, I believe, of what you wrote in your second postscript remark. I feel already quite a big gap, in this sense, between older and younger generations. Between authority oriented materialistic views, and free dialogue oriented spiritual ones, that indeed regard matter, but only as one aspect among others.
POSTSCRIPT: There are a few small things I want to add to this article. One is that it is a question for me whether the government should be able to claim "emergency powers" and override fundamental rights (assembly, protest, speech, etc) in emergencies. Part of the government's task is protection and security, so how far should that extend? At this point, I can imagine such measures being appropriate in the most dire situations, but in that case I think complete transparency should be required, and people should be held responsible if the claiming of emergency powers wasn't actually warranted. The government is known to want to extend it's reach -- to wage war on all sorts of things like poverty and drugs, and to sacrifice things like privacy in the name of security. I think this needs to be rigorously guarded against, and the main antidote is a healthy, vibrant cultural life where people become educated enough to decide for themselves.
The second thing: I was asked about my thoughts on the current situation and what can be done RIGHT NOW about the incredibly divisive situation. I think the main thing that's needed is getting real about how much we actively dislike and disrespect each other even though we all claim to be working for the good of humanity. What if our response was not "You're brainwashed! You need to get vaccinated!" or "You're brainwashed! Vaccines and masks just harm people!" but instead, "Everyone's got different ways of looking at situations, so how can I accommodate yours and how can we work together to make sure everyone is safe and respected?" I would imagine such a feeling of actual respect and care would in turn lead us to a diversity of approaches, to finding the right channels so that everyone can have their needs met and people aren't ostracized and shamed. Yes, our responses and actions would have to be more complex, tailored to our actual community's needs, but it seems like the right approach and doable to me. And how much energy are we currently wasting on battling each other?
Lastly, I got a response to this article from a friend who is a doctor, and I thought it was a quite helpful picture so I wanted to share it:
"...I’ve often used the three legged stool model of medicine to replace the ivory tower model currently in place. In our current model only big studies, the best being meta analysis, are taken as a foundation to make medical decisions. We call this evidence based practice.
The three legged stool model gives a balance between evidence based practice, another leg made from patient autonomy, and another leg based on the individual clinician’s experience and expertise.
When we ignore the other two legs we see people alienated by the medical system, and we see massive physician burnout. Which we are seeing as probably the two big challenges of medicine today in the conventional world, stressed into the foreground by the pandemic.
It is indeed a polarized situation though I am starting to see some surprising things - such as the extreme views of mandates waking people up I would not have expected to question these things. So there is a strength and a light in striving for a sensible viewpoint in all of this as you are."