The Whole Social's 1st year

Some thoughts on a year of writing and what's to come

As of June 15th, 2022, The Whole Social (TWS) is a year old. When I first started writing it, I thought I’d try it for a year and see how it goes. So — how has it gone?

As a reader, it feels like you’re a board member of TWS, so I figured I’d give you a little report — some reflections and highlights, some stats, some new developments, and some ideas on where it’s going from here.

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Reflections and highlights

When readers first come to TWS they find a one-line description of its purpose:

A project to help us see society whole and make sense of the deeper dynamics behind current events, especially drawing on Rudolf Steiner’s insights into the threefold nature of society (often called “social threefolding”).

I think that’s a pretty uncommon mission statement — “A project to help us see society whole.” Is there anyone else even attempting such a thing? I can’t think of anyone, which begs the question, “What’s the point of trying to develop such a holistic perspective on society? Why bother?” Why? — Because without it we can’t actually heal our social ills.

It’s not that we all need to become sociologists (no thank you), but that we all need to take a certain responsibility for society and develop some basic understanding of its healthy functioning. Rudolf Steiner described this in his foundational book on threefolding, Towards Social Renewal:

“The present crisis of mankind is asking for certain feelings and sensibilities to arise in every single individual… The old social forms, which existed up to now without the conscious participation of human feeling, will no longer be effective in the future… From now on people will need to develop a healthy sense for the way in which the social organism should work if its forces are to be life-giving ones.”

So that’s what I’m trying to do — I’m trying to develop a sense for the whole social organism in myself, and to help others develop it as well.

But the work has been different than I expected. Before starting, I spent a couple years writing Transforming Society (a 12 lesson course on threefolding) so my basic idea was to use those insights to shine a light on the news. I thought, “People are interested in current events — let’s start there; let’s see how these principles can make sense of the world today.”

But I was surprised to find the opposite also happening: Instead of the principles just making sense of the phenomena, the phenomena also made sense of the principles. Every time I’d dig down into a story, I’d find that threefolding itself became a little more clear.

And that’s kind of a big deal for me. To have my understanding of threefolding deepen considerably as a result of the writing is exciting. If nothing else came from this work, this one result would make it worthwhile.

Fortunately, a bunch of other things have come from this work: I get regular emails from readers sharing their appreciation and thoughts; a bunch of great conversations have been sparked in the comments section of the articles; I’ve been in touch with various academics whose research I’ve mentioned in the articles; and I’ve connected with a number of threefolders from around the world who I didn’t know before I started writing… just to name a few. So the work has been incredibly rewarding in general.

And now for a few specific stats.

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Stats

In the last year I’ve published:

• 18 articles (I’ve covered critical race theory, the war in Ukraine, the New York Times using disinformation to fight disinformation, crypto, the idea of kid’s voting, and many, many other topics)

• 1 short story (here)

• 5 audio articles that have been downloaded over 730 times (here)

• and I’ve been interviewed on 2 podcasts (also here)

In addition, TWS started off with 0 and now has 315 readers! For a newsletter focused on seeing society whole, it’s pretty amazing that I’ve found a few hundred people who are interested. And the list keeps growing daily.

As you can see below, none of my readers are “paid subscribers” because I haven’t enabled a paying option. That said, I have added a donating option to my emails and a number of you have donated (thanks!). I’ll say more about this later.

One big stat is that 50%-60% of emails get opened (the normal average is usually around 20% for email marketing and newsletters) so the community is active. People are reading the articles and, if they miss them, many are listening to them later.

Also, the website is generally pretty busy and has gotten busier over time (which is to be expected, but is still gratifying to see :)

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New developments

Because the writing’s been so rewarding — because it’s helped grow the work in me — I’m opening up TWS to other writers who want to try to shed a light on current events from a whole society perspective. This has always been my goal, but I wanted to make sure I could sustain the writing before inviting others in. I don’t expect a huge influx of new writers over the next year, probably just one or two articles by others, but I think it’s time to open the door to anyone who wants to try.

TWS Article Proposal Guidelines

113KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The other new development is that I now have a better option for donating. Substack is great for writers with a lot of readers who can give $50 (which is the minimum) but I know a lot of people can’t afford that. So I’m keeping everything free and asking people to either make a one-off donation or a recurring donation on my ko-fi page (recurring donations are especially helpful because they create a steady monthly income). Ko-fi is a nice option for a couple reasons, one of which is that they don’t take a slice of every donation (instead I just pay them a low yearly fee).

Please support me on my ko-fi page

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Ideas on where it’s going from here

The work’s been great so far and I’m looking forward to what a second year will bring. I’m assuming it will be similar — writing articles on current events, connecting with people, growing this work… but also perhaps some different things.

For one, I’m working on an essay/pamphlet on social threefolding. I definitely want to stay focused on current events, but I also just need to bring threefolding directly (the closest so far was my article “Society’s open secret”), so I plan on doing a few such pamphlets in the next year or two.

With Covid easing back, I’m also starting to teach more in-person workshops again. I’ll be sending out an email about upcoming workshops (as well as a new online study group) sometime in the next month or two.

I’m also thinking about maybe switching up the format of the articles from time to time… and maybe doing some book reviews… and maybe doing some videos…. and maybe starting a Callin podcast (it’s like call-in radio, where I’d talk for a bit about a topic I’d written about and people would “call-in” and discuss it). That said, I’m not sure about any of those things… but maybe :)

I’ve got some other ideas simmering on the back burner too, but they’re even more speculative, so I’ll just share them when/if I decide to move on them.

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That’s it for now. If you have any thoughts about this work, feel free to reply back or share them in the comment section below. It’s always great to be in conversation.

And if you want to help get this work farther out into the world you can do so by 1) liking the posts, 2) rating the audio articles wherever you listen to them, 3) donating to my ko-fi page, and 4) sharing the articles with others. That’s all super, super helpful in growing this work.

The main thing though is just continuing to read — if a picture of the whole social organism can grow in you, then TWS is doing its job. Thanks so much for engaging with it.

All the best,

Seth