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- Herausgeber: Stratosverlag
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Crucial Questions Question 1 What has gone wrong in modern societies so that they cause more sickness and are 400 times more deadly than all the wars put together? Where do we find the systemic causes? Question 2 What has gone wrong, so that scandalous forms of work like forced labor or bullshit jobs occur to the extent that they do? What are the systemic causes? Where are the deeper roots to be found? Question 3 Only 10 percent of the worlds population own almost as much as the remaining 90 percent of the population all together. The accompanying imbalance of power has grave effects on democracy. These numbers mean a social disaster for millions of humans. Which systemic circumstances are at the core of such unequal distribution? Do we want to accept this, or can we change it? And if we can change it, how? Question 4 What systemic error leads to the fact that democracy does not prevent war, but rather more or less continues uninterruptedly to wage wars? In other words, how can democracy be developed so that it becomes an instrument of peace? Question 5 Why have we not been able to keep the oceans clean? Why do we keep depleting and even poisoning the soil and underground water? What is wrong with our political, economic, and cultural system, so that destruction comes first, and then the repair, which compared to prevention comes at a very dear price? Question 6 Where are the systemic causes for the erosion of principles of law and for the apathetic acceptance of this development in the broad population? Crucial radical questions arise. These are questions about how the three organic systems function and what their conditions for living are, so that they can do what they are meant to do with as little disruption as possible. These are the questions: What living conditions does spiritual-cultural life need to thrive, for example, research, education, and schooling. And what restricts spiritual-cultural life? What living conditions does economic life need to thrive, and what restricts it? What living conditions does legal life need to thrive, and what restricts it? And finally, there is the deciding question of how the organic systems work together: How do the three areas cooperate? Which form of cooperation is fruitful, and which is contra-productive and destructive? You will find the answers in the exiting book.
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Acknowledgment
This book was generously supported by the Association for the Promotion of Anthroposophical Initiatives in Zug (Switzerland).
This work was originally published in German 2022 under the title Titel «Dreigliederung. Eine aktuelle, allgemeinverständliche Einführung in Rudolf-Steiners Entdeckungen zu einer heilsamen Organisation der Weltgesellschaft. (Stratosverlag)
Contents
Preface
A. Preliminary thoughts
1 Seven questions
2 Radical questions
3 In one sentence
B. Discoveries
1 Education
2 Research
3 Medicine
4 Capital
5 Long-term effects
6 China
7 Profit
8 The liver-mentality
9 Self-interest and exploitation of others
10 Associations
11 Money
12 Democracy?
13 Democracy!
14 Work
15 Working hours
16 Summed up in eight pages
17 Last but not least
C. Questions about implementation
1. From normal to healthy
2 The best part
3 Will the threefold social organism be popular?
4 Does the threefold social organism require different human beings?
5 Is the threefold social organism a utopia?
6 Purpose and goal
Appendix
Literature
Gratitude
Endnotes
Preface
Dear Readers,
Why this book, and why now?
The answer is easy. First of all, because of what has recently been going on in the world: how can we understand more, and how can we figure out what to do? The stormy current events – pandemic, war, hunger – are like giant ocean waves. It is not enough to search for the origin of an upcoming wave in the wave that just preceded it. The origins of towering waves lie far out in the ocean’s depths.
Secondly, a good tree bears good fruit. If the fruit is bad, that is usually not because the tree is bad, but rather has to do with circumstances which have damaged the tree. The bad fruit is a symptom, and it does not really help to only address the symptom. The true causes lie much deeper. The wisdom of fairy tales tells of this. In the Grimms’ fairy tale of the Devil with the Three Golden Hairs, the boy raised by the miller and his wife ventures out on a quest to solve three dilemmas plaguing the kingdom. Why has the well, out of which wine used to flow, run dry? “Ha, if only you knew!” answered the Devil, knowing why indeed, because he had a finger in the pie. “A toad is sitting under a stone in the well. If you kill the toad, the wine will flow again.”
Why is the tree which has always borne golden apples not even sprouting leaves? “Ha, if only you knew! A mouse is nibbling at the roots. If you kill the mouse, the tree will bear golden apples again. But if the mouse keeps nibbling away, the tree will wither.” Why does the ferry man have to keep going back and forth, and no one ever comes to relieve him? “Ha, the simpleton! If someone comes and wants to cross over, all the ferry man has to do is hand over the rudder, and he is free.“[1]
These stories serve as sketches of the plan for this book. The point is to find the toad clogging the well and the mouse gnawing at the roots and remove them. The aim is to help the ferry man stop being a simpleton.
Rudolf Steiner (1864 – 1925), the founder of anthroposophy, achieved this one hundred years ago. He identified the toad and the mouse and the foolishness of the ferry man, and showed what can be done to remedy each problem. All this book does is to retrace Steiner’s most important discoveries. It then applies them to current events and brings them into a modern language.
Rudolf Steiner’s discoveries, which would enable a healthy new organization of modern society, have been named “the threefold social organism”, and sometimes the “threefold social order”. One also finds “the threefold ordering of the social system”. In German, the expression “Dreigliederung” is often used, which can be translated as “trinity”. This is a catchphrase which is used in the title of this book for lack of a better all-encompassing term.[2] However, summing up how world society can be organized in one term requires some explaining, if the thoughts behind it are to become clear. This book hopes to develop an overview without going into great detail, so it might contribute to putting recent worldwide protests in Canada, Sri Lanka, or Holland into perspective.
The thoughts on the threefold social organism, which Rudolf Steiner published in 1918 / 1919, are little known. Neither the broad public nor most professionals have ever even heard of it. A lot depends on this changing, the stakes are high. It would not take much: just a minimum of impartiality, a healthy dose of curiosity and enough shock tolerance, should the one or the other concept prove to be radically different from what you have thought up until now.
This book is for people whose insight and curiosity are larger than the unconscious desire to have their previous opinions confirmed. It is meant for people who are not put off by unaccustomed thoughts, and it is for people who do not already have rigid notions of what Rudolf Steiner is all about. There are innumerable such notions. To name a few:
1.
“Rudolf Steiner developed his ideas about the threefold social organism 100 years ago. The world has changed immensely since then. It is simply not possible that observations from 100 years ago could have answers to today’s questions.”
Whoever is adamant about this statement may wish to stop reading now. Whoever is open to impartially investigating Rudolf Steiner’s thoughts will come to another conclusion, because the opposite is true. These ideas, which were developed one hundred years ago, are so fundamental that they give crucial answers to the most pressing questions of our time. But this must be proven.
2
How can it be that one single human being should have a solution for the most difficult issues facing the world in such diverse areas like national and global economics, politics, democracy issues, law, education, and culture? There are innumerable prestigious professionals who would never presume to be able to make assertions about the whole of such a complexity as that of modern society. They confine themselves to their field of expertise. To target the whole is arrogant and destined to fail.”
This is understandable, but it remains a preconception. Keeping the whole and the interplay of its varying forces in view is precisely the strength of the threefold social organism. “The Great Reset” also targets the whole. Do we choose it? Or do we just resign ourselves to it? A healthy threefold social organism can stand up to something of that magnitude. And I really do suspect - only the threefold social organism.
3.
“There are plenty of clever proposals for solutions to the questions mentioned above. We don’t need Rudolf Steiner.”
I see that differently, or else I would not have written this book.
