Dear Frank Thomas,
I love this! It is plain speak yet appealing to the merely curious, the keen novice and the well seasoned. How would you feel about me printing and sharing it with others? With you fully credited of course. I do prison outreach in Canada and when a prisoner requests info from us, this would be a great addition to our package.
thanks for your consideration,
Raun
Raun Griffiths, steward
Anthroposophical Prison Outreach Canada (APOC)
https://anthroposophy.ca/en/anthroposophical-prison-outreach-in-canada-2/
Dear Raun,
Of course! I would be honored if the article is used for such a good cause as yours obviously is.
Warm regards,
Frank
Many thanks !
I think a pamphlet format, staple in the middle, perhaps with a slightly heavier paper stock for a "cover". I've been wanting something just like this for a while now. Some inmates just don't have the literacy levels for getting through a Steiner lecture or book but will read shorter articles.
Raun
***
This is an excellent introductory summary to Steiner and Anthroposophy. I have been studying his works off and on for about 50 years but still consider myself a novice at best. The range of his works is immense and often difficult to grasp as he presents topics over time from several perspectives. I particularly liked your treatment of the threefold society and The Philosophy of Freedom.
Suzanne and Alan Klimek
Frank, Thank you for this wonderfully cogent and beautiful summary of the social issues of our time, what is pathological in them, and the possible remedies. If it is true that the Fundamental Social Law is, in the social realm, the equivalent of a natural law in nature, then it will be expressed. And violating it inevitably will have destructive and inhumane consequences.
I would love to see an article by you considering this topic in light of Polybius’ anacyclosis (social cycles). If there will always be individuals in any society who excel at accumulating wealth, and who quickly learn how to employ that wealth to control state entities (through economic forces) then where does one find practical possibilities (and social forces) necessary for change? Mondragon and Sekem come to mind.
Regards,
John Fuller
St. Paul, Minnesota
This is so beautiful and made me cry. How many times I have found solace in nature growing up. It is a special space to feel beauty, gratitude, comfort, love and hope. And a place to truly appreciate oneself.
I’ll be looking for that book.
Esther Grummel, MSW, LICSW, CDP
***
Every woman I have shared this with recognizes the truth in this.
I am almost 70 and it is as true to me today as it would have been 50 years ago.
Thank you.
Anna Jackson
Whereas I agree with most of the essay, I believe some nuance has been overlooked. Firstly, the characterisations of Darwinism as 'chance' or 'The Survival of the Fittest' are not accurate. They are half-truths.
They place all emphasis on one side of a bivalent theory. It is chance under constraint, an undirected activity in definite circumstances. In my view, this 2-value theory gives us the opportunity to lead out of mechanism. For example, a respiratory virus is confronted by the defences of the human immune system as soon as it touches the muscous of the mouth and nasal passages. If the virus manages to penetrate into a cell, and not be cleaned out before-hand, then it uses our bodies to reproduce itself. Chance may alter the form of the virus. In turn this change may induce a particular response by the wonderous immune system.
For the mechanist, what is to be seen is alternating mechanism. The only person I have seen penetrating to this is Geert Vanden Bossche, though his descriptions of the evolution of covid-19 are so technical as to be not understandable. He is as impenetrable as Hegel.
Because of the mechanistic atmosphere it was developed, in Darwinism might have died out. But genetics was seen as the salvation of Darwin's theory to mechanism. To this day, a medicinal or biological investigation has to be reduced to molecular mechanism or else it is just not 'scientific'. People who have worked on the Human Genome Project, such as Kevin McKernan, are beginning to see that a gene producing a trait is not always an adequate explanation and there has to be more.
But we've got to alternation. Alternation becomes music. Music becomes life and speech. Speech means a discussion, a colony of consciousness, a spiritual community. It is agonisingly slow but there is change.
Kindest Regards,
Maurice McCarthy
Thanks so much for publishing the article, “Roses Dressed in Black.” the amount of devastation, suffering, dying is almost too much to imagine. I live in a safe place, but I am horrified reading all that has happened in Gaza and in Israel-not just now, but for all of Israel’s history. It has to end. Gaza’s must have a place for their children, for themselves, free of Hamas, free of Israel.
I truly don’t understand Biden’s policies here. At this point, I will not vote for him. Who can come forward to make a peace work? Bush made a tremendous mistake by bombing the Middle East, now Biden has made the same mistake, as has Israel. These choices are not the path to peace. We are still in the mindset of destroy and conquer, kill or be killed. Military boys games. It must stop, not just for the Middle East, but for the world, the planet, the littlest baby, the oldest woman.
Barbara Fox
Cordial saludo, importante escrito del maestro Rudolf Steiner, claro en apreciaciones referente a la creación del dogma como la forma de justificar principios católicos y como desentraña la ideología que subyace para someter y tratar de negar y de opacar el avance de la ciencia.
Pregunto: ¿Cómo respondemos hoy desde el pensamiento Waldorf a la situación del mundo moderno?
Alonso Quiroz Q.
Entiendo y comparto la mayor parte de los conceptos de Vanda. Lo q no veo claro son los mecanismos p convertir esas ideas en una herramienta universal de cambio dentro de los tiempos de existencia humanos. Queremos vivir hoy, gozar de la vida hoy. Podemos invertir como ella dice tiempo y compasión p cambiar, pero suena como un sacrificio inacabable al paso q vamos. Y hay q considerar también las enormes asimetrías existentes en las diversas regiones y comunidades, en materia de desarrollo integral
Horacio Bessone