Editor's Page
Captain Olshevski's Aura by Frank Thomas Smith
The room is a cube with no windows and no pictures on
its stark white walls. A triple-tubed neon light on the ceiling makes
the white even whiter. We are seated on three sides of a square
table. Leroy Little and I have two stripes on our sleeves, we are
corporals; the third, George Abrahamian, a private-first-class, has
one stripe. George and I are studying pieces of paper held in our
rubber-gloved hands through magnifying glasses. Leroy is dozing with
a another piece of odorous paper in his hand. We are, or are supposed
to be, Intelligence Analysts.
"Listen to this shit, Frank," George says.
"Don't have to," I say. "I can smell
it."
That was the scene from Mondays to Fridays during the
year 1954. Our three heroes are members of the 7982nd European
Liaison Group during the Korean War, but far from Korea, because it
was also during the Cold War, fought (sort of) in Germany –
East and West. The 7982nd was an Army Intelligence Unit, thus its
exotically meaningless name, based in Frankfurt on the Main, in the
West, as opposed to Frankfurt on the Oder, in the East...
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Current Events
The
Summer of Love and the Winter of National Insecurity by Ira Chernus
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. What
better place to celebrate than that fabled era’s epicenter, San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Park, where the DeYoung Museum has mounted a dazzling exhibition,
chock full of rock music, light shows, posters, and fashions from the
mind-bending summer of 1967? If you tour the exhibit, you might come away thinking that
the political concerns of the time were no more than parenthetical bookends to
that summer’s real action, its psychedelic counterculture. Only the first and
last rooms of the large show are explicitly devoted to political memorabilia.
The main body of the exhibit seems devoid of them, which fits well with the
story told in so many history books. The hippies of that era, so it’s often
claimed, paid scant attention to political matters...
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Features
Lifestyle Changes, not a Magic Pill, Can Reverse Alzheimer's by Clayton Dalton
Last summer, a research group
from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) quietly
published the results of a new approach in
the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. What they found was
striking. Although the size of the study was small, every participant
demonstrated such marked improvement that almost all were found to be
in the normal range on testing for memory and cognition by the
study’s end. Functionally, this amounts to a cure. These
are important findings, not only because Alzheimer’s disease is
projected to become ever more common as the population ages, but
because current treatment options offer minimal improvement at best...
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Dementia - Anthroposophical perspectives by Judith von Halle
Judith von Halle is mostly known for her books and lectures about the life and meaning of Jesus Christ. In this book she concentrates on a medical phenomenon which today has taken on the characteristics of a plague. Senility, involving short term memory loss and the general weakening of mental faculties associated with old age, has been known for centuries, but the illness we now call dementia or, in its more extreme stages, Alzheimer’s disease, has become more and more prevalent in modern society. Not only the aged are affected, but symptoms have been detected increasingly in the middle-aged, even in children. Before going further,
it should be noted that there is a difference between “normal” old age
forgetfulness and the illness which can lead to the affected persons becoming
little more than living vegetables. The former is benign, the latter
devastating... Continue reading
Faith,
Artificial Intelligence and Singularity by Beth Singler
My stomach sank the
moment the young man stood up. I’d observed him from afar
during the coffee breaks, and I knew the word ‘Theologian’
was scrawled on the delegate badge pinned to his lapel, as if he’d
been a last-minute addition the conference. He cleared his throat and
asked the panel on stage how they’d solve the problem of
selecting which moral codes we ought to program into artificially
intelligent machines (AI). ‘For example, masturbation is
against my religious beliefs,’ he said. ‘So I wonder how
we’d go about choosing which of our morals are important?’ The audience
of philosophers, technologists, ‘transhumanists’ and AI
fans erupted into laughter. Many of them were well-acquainted with
the so-called ‘alignment problem’, the knotty
philosophical question of how we should bring the goals and
objectives of our AI creations into harmony
with human values...
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Fiction
The
Jesus Singularity by Zoltan
Istvan
Paul Shuman's
phone rang. He struggled to open his eyes. 'Who the hell is calling
me in the middle of the night?' he thought. He rolled out of bed and
walked naked to his desk to see. His phone showed it was his
secretary.
"What is
it?" he sharply asked on speaker phone."Dr.
Shuman, there's been an accident. The President has been killed—in
a helicopter crash. Somehow the weapons on his helicopter
self-exploded. Experts are saying it was an assassination. But maybe
it was just the computers going haywire. " There was a
pause, a dozen things trying to compute in Shuman's mind. It forced
his brain fully awake. He took a step back away from his desk. After
a long silence, only one question mattered—a dangerous question
that involved the fate of human civilization...
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Tango by Luisa Valenzuela
I was told:
in this dance hall you have to sit close to the bar, on the left near the cash register; order a glass of wine, nothing stronger because it's not becoming for women, don't drink beer because beer makes you want to piss and pissing isn't for ladies either. They talk about a kid from this neighborhood who ditched his girlfriend when he caught her leaving the ladies room: I thought she was pure spirit, a fairy, it seems the kid said. The girlfriend was left flat, which in this neighborhood still has connotations of loneliness and spinsterhood, something frowned upon. For women, that is. So I was told...
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Me dijeron:
En este salón te tenés que sentar cerca del mostrador, a la izquierda, no lejos de la caja registradora; tomate un vinito, no pidás algo más fuerte porque no se estila en las mujeres, no tomés cerveza porque la cerveza da ganas de hacer pis y el pis no es una cosa de damas, se sabe del muchacho de este barrio que abandonó a su novia al verla salir del baño: yo creí que ella era puro espíritu, un hada, parece que alegó el muchacho. La novia quedó para vestir santos, frase que en este barrio todavía tiene connotaciones de soledad y soltería, algo muy mal visto. En la mujer, se entiende. Me dijeron.
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Miryam - Part Three by Luise Rinser
Why then couldn’t I be so unreservedly happy
like the others? The mustard seed grew too quickly in me. Trees that
shoot up too quickly have soft wood. And what a short time ago it was
that the people had shouted: Crucify him, the criminal! And what a
short time before that they had called out: Hoshiana! However, my
worries seemed unjustified. Everything continued to go well, for a
long while. That was when that Councilor Gamaliel, who had
spoken in favor of both accused, came to me as leader of one of the
groups we called communities. I seemed to him competent to answer his
question and he came right to the point: You were Rabbi Yeshua’s
companion and are initiated in his teaching, and knew him from close
up. Tell me: Who was he? Continue reading
Children's Corner
Nature Spirits by Frank Thomas Smith
Nicolás
and Carolina
were lost in the woods and didn't know which way to turn. Whichever way they
went they seemed to get more lost. They sat down on the roots of a tree and Carolina began to cry.
Her brother told her not to cry, that they would find their way out eventually,
but the truth was that he felt like crying too. Suddenly, they heard a faint sound
of someone moaning: "Oh, oh! help me! oh, oh!" They held their breath and waited. It happened
again: "Oh, oh!" Maybe it's only the wind," Nicolás said."No, it's someone crying for
help," Carolina objected. "What should we do?" Nicolás thought for a moment. He was
older so he had to make the decisions. "Let's go to where the sound is
coming from. If it's only the wind we won't find anything. If someone needs
help we'll help them if we can..."
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Education
La Historia de una Escuela Waldorf by Frank Thomas Smith
En
el año 1996 llegó a mi oficina de Buenos Aires una
señora de Traslasierra (Provincia de Córdoba) en representación de un grupo de
familias de ese lugar interesadas en fundar una escuela
“alternativa”. Una amiga le había dado
mi nombre ya que, en ese entonces, yo era uno de los fundadores, coordinadores y profesores del Seminario Pedagógico Waldorf de Buenos Aires. La
señora quería saber cómo podrían hacer
para aprender la pedagogía Waldorf. Le expliqué que
tendrían que enviar a uno o dos maestros para cursar los dos
años del Seminario en Buenos Aires. Ella me dijo que eso les
resultaría imposible. Yo conocía un poco la zona de
Traslasierra ya que había ido allí de vacaciones con mi
familia, pero nunca me había encontrado con ninguna de
personas interesadas en la pedagogía Waldorf. Continuar
Anthroposophy
Marxism and the Threefold Society by Rudolf Steiner
It is impossible to be free of
the social chaos in which Europe is mired if certain long-standing
social demands are made with a distorting lack of clarity. Such a demand, one that prevails
in many circles, is contained in Friedrich Engel's book The
Evolution of Socialism from Utopia to Science, in which he
writes: “Instead of controlling people, controlling
products and production processes must prevail.” Many proletarian leaders, as well
as the proletarian masses, adhere to this viewpoint. In a certain
sense it is correct. The human relations which have developed in
modern states have formed administrative bodies that not only
control products and production processes, but also the people
engaged in these processes. Economics consists of
the management of products and the various production processes.
In modern times, this has taken on forms which makes it necessary
that this management no longer includes controlling people as
well.
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The Gospel of John - 2 - The Doctrine of the Logos by Rudolf Steiner
Our
lectures upon the Gospel of St. John will have a double purpose.
One will be the deepening of the concepts of Spiritual Science
themselves and their expansion in many directions, and the other
will be to make this great document itself comprehensible by
means of the thoughts that will arise in our souls in consequence
of these deepened and expanded concepts. I beg you to hold
clearly in mind that it is the intention of these lectures to
proceed in these two directions. It should not be simply a
question of explanations of this
Gospel, but rather that by means of the latter we shall penetrate
into the deep mysteries of existence and we should hold very
clearly in mind how the perceptive method of Spiritual Science
must be developed when we are dealing with any of the great
historical records handed down to us by the different religions
of the world...
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The Ring - A Summer Fairy Tale by Rudolf Steiner (translated and with an Afterword by David W. Wood
S. turned with his confidant Z. into
the animated Schottengasse in the city of V. Both walked silently for a while,
side-by-side. You could see from their faces that the two of them were preoccupied
with something extremely close to their hearts. Z.’s face, however, serenely
radiated joy, whereas S.’s traits became progressively sombre and serious. Z. then
spoke the following words: “You can scarcely imagine how happy you’ve made me
today, on account of your good mood and the cheerfulness that you have displayed
the whole day; I never thought that I could occasion this kind of mood in you. You
have also never been so unreservedly in agreement with one of my actions.” S.
appeared not to have heard a single word, for he did not reply. In order to
coax an answer out of him, Z. directly posed a question: “Do you think I should
tell my close friend in my distant homeland about my current experiences?” S.
still seemed as though he were absent. “Why are you so quiet all of a sudden,
especially after having been so sincerely happy the entire day?” Continue reading
"Apologia" concerning the publication of the the First Class Lessons: English /
Español
Poetry
Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In
Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A
stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery...
Continue
Words and Music
Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland
Somewhere
over the rainbow, way up high
There's a land that I've heard of
once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
And
the dreams that you dare to dream,
Really do come true.
Someday I'll wish upon a star
And
wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt
like lemon drops,
High above the chimney tops,
That's where
you'll find me.
Somewhere
over the rainbow, blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why
then, oh why can't I?...
Continue.
You can find us under the
Southern Cross in the Traslasierra Valley, Province of Córdoba, Argentina. Visitors always welcome. Just follow the sign that reads: La Cruz del Sur.
Frank Thomas Smith, Editor
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