One of Rudolf Steiner's most valuable insights was that evil has an older Luciferic and a more modern Ahrimanic form.
Luciferic evil is instinctive, short termist, selfish and psychopathic - for example the lust which desires other people merely for sexual exploitation, or the sadism that desires torture, or the power that desires to humiliate and crush. This is the evil of Caligula or Nero, of Ghengis Khan, of the post-war African dictators such as Charles Taylor.
The Ahrimanic evil is more modern; it is the despair-inducing, soul-destroying, utterly-demotivating Iron Cage of totalitarian bureaucracy - where all is a single system and all Men are merely cogs to serve it. This is the evil of late Soviet communism, of The Borg, of the overpromoted-middle-manager, Head Girl Type (e.g. the-3-Ms - Merkel, May, Macron) that increasingly runs large organisations, corporations and Western nations.
These evils synergise - especially when Luciferic liberation - such as the middle sixties style sexual revolution feeds the vast arrays of spies, informers, officials, inquisitors and controllers that is the realm of modern sexuality - enforcing their inverted value system with bribes, threats and coercion.
The modern era emerged from what Steiner termed the era of the 'Intellectual Soul' - and example of which is the medieval world of Western Europe, with its institutions of religion, law, education and the like. These institutions were simple bureaucracies but with a 'light touch, and considerable space for individualism, eccentricity and indeed selfish psychopathy...
But when Christianity receded then was excluded, these institutions became compromises which pleased neither the Luciferic libertarians, nor the totalitarian Ahrimanic powers.
Think of the education system of the the first half of the twentieth century. It was regulated and hierarchical, it had rules and certificates and exclusion - but the period of education was relatively short, and there was space for considerable personal judgement and large variation in philosophy and practice between institutions.
Schools and colleges were regarded as suffocatingly oppressive and controlling by the little Lucifers of the sixties counter-culture. This began the destruction.
And then the Ahrimanic systemisers found more and more evidence of their bureaucratic incompleteness. Human judgement meant the possibility of individual corruption, variations meant that some institutions must be deficient or wrong. The pressure was irresistible to bring all institutions under a single 'true' ideology and to close off all loopholes, fill all the gaps in the systems...
Same applies to churches. They became a compromise that satisfied nobody. On the one hand they were institutions of patriarchal dictatorship; on the other hand they were economically and economically 'unaccountable' - what was going on in them? Nobody knew. Who controlled what they did, lost of mostly unidentified people, What were the details of their operations? Unrecorded...
The response was a massive programme of incremental monitoring and control of every aspect of decision-making - and the integration of this with the national (eventually multi-national) System.
There is no functional coherence to this pincer movement of institutional destruction - the only coherence is destruction. There is not coherence or direction to the end result of this crude mixture of psychopathic irresponsibility and totalitarian control - except the evil ethic of value-inversion.
But the end result is that nobody supports the actual compromise of any existing institution - always they want more Luciferic license, and/or more Ahrimanic 'accountability'.
Hence, all institutions, of every kind, have-been or are-being destroyed... With no end in sight, and no end possible even in principle - since in our secular, hedonic-despairing, God-eliminated society there is no higher value that might be able to transcend the destructive paradox.
Monday 25 November 2019
Sunday 24 November 2019
The metaphysical evil of modern environmentalism
Modern environmentalism is anti-human, its underlying assumption is that if it wasn't for the activities of man - then there would be no environmental problem.
This applies pretty much across the board, and goes back even to the early (1970s) environmentalism (or 'ecology' as it was called then) - when the emphasis was medievalism/ de-industrialisation, anti-consumption, self-sufficiency, voluntary simplicity. In general, Man was intrinsically a problem and therefore ought to tread-lightly (as possible, with as few feet as possible) on the earth.
More recently, with the Global-Warming-climate-change-emergency-revolution mob; this has become a kind of self-hatred combined with that generalised loathing of people that surfaces among even the most mainstream of environmentalists - such as Sir David Attenborough.
I mean that barely suppressed desire to clean the planet of all people - starting-with, but ultimately not-confined-to, climate-change deniers...
This assumption of Men versus The Environment is even accepted by the opponents of mainstream Green activists - but they simply take the opposite stance that Man is more important than the environment.
But the lesson of the philosophical understandings of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield is that Man co-creates the environment. The environment has no independent existence separate from Men's conceptualising of it. As Steiner summarised in Philosophy of Freedom, we know nothing of percepts without concepts, there is no objectivity without common concepts.
As Barfield said, in the Saving the Appearances (1957) - that which is unrepresented in unknown. The most we could know or say without Man is that there is something-else, but what that something might be?... Well, it would not be 'the environment' as we know it.
Without Man thinking, there would be no environment. If Men were destroyed, the environment would also be destroyed.
Therefore, mainstream environmentalism is incoherent - and always has been. Its motivational chronic anti-Man animus is revealed for the evil it is.
This applies pretty much across the board, and goes back even to the early (1970s) environmentalism (or 'ecology' as it was called then) - when the emphasis was medievalism/ de-industrialisation, anti-consumption, self-sufficiency, voluntary simplicity. In general, Man was intrinsically a problem and therefore ought to tread-lightly (as possible, with as few feet as possible) on the earth.
More recently, with the Global-Warming-climate-change-emergency-revolution mob; this has become a kind of self-hatred combined with that generalised loathing of people that surfaces among even the most mainstream of environmentalists - such as Sir David Attenborough.
I mean that barely suppressed desire to clean the planet of all people - starting-with, but ultimately not-confined-to, climate-change deniers...
This assumption of Men versus The Environment is even accepted by the opponents of mainstream Green activists - but they simply take the opposite stance that Man is more important than the environment.
But the lesson of the philosophical understandings of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield is that Man co-creates the environment. The environment has no independent existence separate from Men's conceptualising of it. As Steiner summarised in Philosophy of Freedom, we know nothing of percepts without concepts, there is no objectivity without common concepts.
As Barfield said, in the Saving the Appearances (1957) - that which is unrepresented in unknown. The most we could know or say without Man is that there is something-else, but what that something might be?... Well, it would not be 'the environment' as we know it.
Without Man thinking, there would be no environment. If Men were destroyed, the environment would also be destroyed.
Therefore, mainstream environmentalism is incoherent - and always has been. Its motivational chronic anti-Man animus is revealed for the evil it is.
Saturday 9 November 2019
Limitations of Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom
Rudolf Steiner's The Philosophy of Freedom (PoF; 1894) played a very important role in my personal development - indeed, it was perhaps vital. Nonetheless it is ultimately wrong and can cause serious problems if not (after understanding it) one fails to discard or transcend it. .
This is because PoF explains itself in terms of an abstract, simplified, and grossly incomplete model of human thinking. It is A Model (Percept + Concept = united by Thinking).
And any model is false - because simplified compared with complex reality; and false because abstract when reality is 'animistic' (about Beings and their Relationships).
The PoF is, in fact, Ahrimanic in structure: it divides the world into categories of percepts and concepts, and suggests that these are united in thinking. Yet the world is not really divided into percepts; not is thinking objectively divisible into concepts.
Therefore if we begin in Ahrimanic materialist alienation; if we then understand PoF which tells us how it works, and how to escape it...
But if we stop at that point; assume the validity of PoF and try to live by the model of PoF - then we will be stuck in just another kind of abstract materialism: we will loop back into the demonic traps of Ahriman.
We will just create yet-another bureaucratic religion - as happened with Rudolf Steiner's Anothroposophy: which consists merely in learning stuff (studying the scriptures of The Doctor) and doing Anthroposophic stuff (education, medicine, agriculture etc) according to the usual Ahrimanic vocabulary/ lexicon, blueprints, flow charts, recipes, rules and regulations...); as defined by the usual Ahrimanic hierarchy or authority and temple structure with sacred places and rituals...
The Philosophy of Freedom does not, therefore, in itself give us freedom, not even a little bit - unless it is seen as a first step; as a ladder that is ascended then discarded. We need an alternative to Ahriman, not merely a different kind of Ahriman; nor a reaction back to seek an impossible to Luciferic unconscious instinct - or Original Participation...
We need, in other words, to move forward to what Steiner called the Intuitive Soul and Barfield called Final Participation - and this entails something qualitatively different-from the analysis, theories and methods of Steiner's Anthroposophy, and different too from the philosophical abstractions of Barfield.
They are perhaps essential - at least for some people such as myself, but they are a starting-point merely.
This is because PoF explains itself in terms of an abstract, simplified, and grossly incomplete model of human thinking. It is A Model (Percept + Concept = united by Thinking).
And any model is false - because simplified compared with complex reality; and false because abstract when reality is 'animistic' (about Beings and their Relationships).
The PoF is, in fact, Ahrimanic in structure: it divides the world into categories of percepts and concepts, and suggests that these are united in thinking. Yet the world is not really divided into percepts; not is thinking objectively divisible into concepts.
Therefore if we begin in Ahrimanic materialist alienation; if we then understand PoF which tells us how it works, and how to escape it...
But if we stop at that point; assume the validity of PoF and try to live by the model of PoF - then we will be stuck in just another kind of abstract materialism: we will loop back into the demonic traps of Ahriman.
We will just create yet-another bureaucratic religion - as happened with Rudolf Steiner's Anothroposophy: which consists merely in learning stuff (studying the scriptures of The Doctor) and doing Anthroposophic stuff (education, medicine, agriculture etc) according to the usual Ahrimanic vocabulary/ lexicon, blueprints, flow charts, recipes, rules and regulations...); as defined by the usual Ahrimanic hierarchy or authority and temple structure with sacred places and rituals...
The Philosophy of Freedom does not, therefore, in itself give us freedom, not even a little bit - unless it is seen as a first step; as a ladder that is ascended then discarded. We need an alternative to Ahriman, not merely a different kind of Ahriman; nor a reaction back to seek an impossible to Luciferic unconscious instinct - or Original Participation...
We need, in other words, to move forward to what Steiner called the Intuitive Soul and Barfield called Final Participation - and this entails something qualitatively different-from the analysis, theories and methods of Steiner's Anthroposophy, and different too from the philosophical abstractions of Barfield.
They are perhaps essential - at least for some people such as myself, but they are a starting-point merely.
Friday 8 November 2019
Moving forward to the new synthesis
When beauty, truth and virtue become separated, they pretty soon die.
Indeed (as I have implied before, in my books on the corruption of science, and the decline of genius) - when there is a move from the unity of the traditional Christian religiousness (with residues of Original Participation) to a concentration of life-energies upon just-beauty (artistic romanticism), just-truth (science and the Wissenschaftlich factual-systematic academic subjects) or just-virtue (some types of Protestant) - then there is at first an enhanced achievement in that specialised field.
The exceptional productivity of first generation atheists (i.e. childhood traditional Christians, who become atheist and then channel their religious energies into 'their subject') provides a misleading, ultimately false, impression of a wonderful future of enhanced attainment from rejecting religion and specialising in some narrower aspect of Culture.
Thus, first-generation atheists who become commited artists, scientists and ethicists (such as 'fundamentalist' Protestants, or the existentialists) may achieve genius-level work, when they have been brought-up as traditionalists, and assimilated and retained a unified thought structure from that.
But with the next generation, brought-up as atheists, and without any coherent unity of world-view, the specialised art, science and religion withers and begins to die - because separate organs cannot live independently of the whole organism.
Art for arts sake, science-as-religion, purely ethical philosophy (or Christianity indifferent to beauty and truth) are all non-viable; and will sustain in-name-only, only by assimilating to mainstream secularity - bureaucracy and the mass media...
OK, but what then? Above all others, Owen Barfield pointed the way forward; perhaps because he was born in 1897; yet (ahead of his time, in this respect) he was brought-up in a thoroughly secular fashion - as an atheist, in an atheistic leftist radical household. Therefore Barfield could not revert to a childhood Original Participation religiousness; but in seeking to overcome the fragmentation and death of Life, he could only move forward.
Barfield was able to move forward, because he had extreme appreciation and ability in all three of the main specialised capacities (art, science, ethics). He had an intense appreciation of poetry and music and great ability as a writer; a brilliantly philosophical rigour; and an two-sided sensitivity to contemporary ethical collapse (he saw both the profound faults of the past, and the utter inadequacy of contemporary 'solutions').
Then, Barfield had the intellectual honesty to recognise that the prevalent situation was unacceptable and non-viable - it was, in a word, evil. The only possible answer to this gathering, unavoidable crisis and denied-decline into damnation, was that the separation of life into 'watertight compartments' must be overcome. A new synthesis was required.
Barfield had also the rare insight that going-back was simply not an option. Barfield argued that a reversion to earlier forms was undesirable, because it was precisely analogous to an adult trying to become a child; and for the same reason it was anyway impossible.
Since an atavistic reversion to past unity was not going to happen, and the present disunity was evil and unsustainable; we simply must move forward to a new kind of unity.
Barfield saw that the broken threads of Culture must be rewoven, if we personally and socially were to avoid an incremental descent into hell-on-earth; but rewoven in a new and unprecedented way. Specifically, re-woven in full consciousness and with full choice.
Past unity was essentially traditional, hence unconscious and unexamined; the future unity could only be freely chosen, and as such conscious.
Future unity - which he called Final Participation - was not something that would happen-to us, but something we must each make-happen. So, if we did not make that choice and effort, it will not happen. We must know what we are doing, and then do it.
Moving on to a new unity and synthesis of Good is - unavoidably - up to each of us, personally: starting now.
References: Owen Barfield's main books on this theme are are probably Romanticism Comes of Age, Saving the Appearances, World's Apart, and Unancestral Voice. All are equally good, although all take sustained effort to understand - each has a different character.
Indeed (as I have implied before, in my books on the corruption of science, and the decline of genius) - when there is a move from the unity of the traditional Christian religiousness (with residues of Original Participation) to a concentration of life-energies upon just-beauty (artistic romanticism), just-truth (science and the Wissenschaftlich factual-systematic academic subjects) or just-virtue (some types of Protestant) - then there is at first an enhanced achievement in that specialised field.
The exceptional productivity of first generation atheists (i.e. childhood traditional Christians, who become atheist and then channel their religious energies into 'their subject') provides a misleading, ultimately false, impression of a wonderful future of enhanced attainment from rejecting religion and specialising in some narrower aspect of Culture.
Thus, first-generation atheists who become commited artists, scientists and ethicists (such as 'fundamentalist' Protestants, or the existentialists) may achieve genius-level work, when they have been brought-up as traditionalists, and assimilated and retained a unified thought structure from that.
But with the next generation, brought-up as atheists, and without any coherent unity of world-view, the specialised art, science and religion withers and begins to die - because separate organs cannot live independently of the whole organism.
Art for arts sake, science-as-religion, purely ethical philosophy (or Christianity indifferent to beauty and truth) are all non-viable; and will sustain in-name-only, only by assimilating to mainstream secularity - bureaucracy and the mass media...
OK, but what then? Above all others, Owen Barfield pointed the way forward; perhaps because he was born in 1897; yet (ahead of his time, in this respect) he was brought-up in a thoroughly secular fashion - as an atheist, in an atheistic leftist radical household. Therefore Barfield could not revert to a childhood Original Participation religiousness; but in seeking to overcome the fragmentation and death of Life, he could only move forward.
Barfield was able to move forward, because he had extreme appreciation and ability in all three of the main specialised capacities (art, science, ethics). He had an intense appreciation of poetry and music and great ability as a writer; a brilliantly philosophical rigour; and an two-sided sensitivity to contemporary ethical collapse (he saw both the profound faults of the past, and the utter inadequacy of contemporary 'solutions').
Then, Barfield had the intellectual honesty to recognise that the prevalent situation was unacceptable and non-viable - it was, in a word, evil. The only possible answer to this gathering, unavoidable crisis and denied-decline into damnation, was that the separation of life into 'watertight compartments' must be overcome. A new synthesis was required.
Barfield had also the rare insight that going-back was simply not an option. Barfield argued that a reversion to earlier forms was undesirable, because it was precisely analogous to an adult trying to become a child; and for the same reason it was anyway impossible.
Since an atavistic reversion to past unity was not going to happen, and the present disunity was evil and unsustainable; we simply must move forward to a new kind of unity.
Barfield saw that the broken threads of Culture must be rewoven, if we personally and socially were to avoid an incremental descent into hell-on-earth; but rewoven in a new and unprecedented way. Specifically, re-woven in full consciousness and with full choice.
Past unity was essentially traditional, hence unconscious and unexamined; the future unity could only be freely chosen, and as such conscious.
Future unity - which he called Final Participation - was not something that would happen-to us, but something we must each make-happen. So, if we did not make that choice and effort, it will not happen. We must know what we are doing, and then do it.
Moving on to a new unity and synthesis of Good is - unavoidably - up to each of us, personally: starting now.
References: Owen Barfield's main books on this theme are are probably Romanticism Comes of Age, Saving the Appearances, World's Apart, and Unancestral Voice. All are equally good, although all take sustained effort to understand - each has a different character.
Wednesday 6 November 2019
Symbolism has broken down in Christianity; and the church is symbolism
I believe that symbolism has all-but broken down as a way of attaining the transcendental, especially the divine. I would see symbolism as including creeds, rituals, icons, scripture and all holy writings, spoken language (forms of words, in ceremony,blessing, prayer etc.), priesthood: the church itself (all churches that are regarded as having an essential role or authority in some aspect of Christianity).
Indeed, as soon as symbolism was understood, it was already breaking-down - because when symbolism really works (as it did up towards the end of the Middle Ages) it is regarded as reality, not symbolism.
The symbol is not seen 'literally' (that is a modern distortion) - rather the literal symbol and the transcendental reality are seen as inseparably one.
But when I was first a Christian, I sought the fullest kind of symbolic Christianity. And I was shocked and dismayed that there was no single church or denomination which took symbolism seriously and thoroughly - none at at all; not a single one.
Some were strict about ritual, but not about language; some about scripture but not about words of prayer or particular 'translations' of scripture; some about vestments but not about ceremony - none at all try to provide a thoroughly consistent symbolism.
As I say, at first I was dismayed and felt lost. Then I recognised that this was an implicit (albeit not self-aware) manifestation of the actual, objective, loss of the power and necessity of symbolism.
I now regard this as a consequence of the developmental-evolution of consciousness in Western Man, and part of the increase in self-consciousness and separation from The World; our sense of losing the spontaneous, unconscious sense of being 'in' the world, including 'in' the divine world.
(The complete loss of Original Participation and the advent of the Consciousness Soul.)
In a world without symbolism; the only possible replacement would seem to be the primacy of intuition and the necessity and possibility of direct and unmediated knowing - developing to the new situation of Final Participation: loving participation in the divine creation.
So, my argument is that the fact that no existing Western church will take symbolism seriously is evidence that symbolism has become impossible, ineffectual - and we are faced with either being stuck in our present alienation, or else (as I advocate in Romantic Christianity) moving forward to a different form of consciousness: intuitive direct knowing, Final Participation.
Indeed, as soon as symbolism was understood, it was already breaking-down - because when symbolism really works (as it did up towards the end of the Middle Ages) it is regarded as reality, not symbolism.
The symbol is not seen 'literally' (that is a modern distortion) - rather the literal symbol and the transcendental reality are seen as inseparably one.
But when I was first a Christian, I sought the fullest kind of symbolic Christianity. And I was shocked and dismayed that there was no single church or denomination which took symbolism seriously and thoroughly - none at at all; not a single one.
Some were strict about ritual, but not about language; some about scripture but not about words of prayer or particular 'translations' of scripture; some about vestments but not about ceremony - none at all try to provide a thoroughly consistent symbolism.
As I say, at first I was dismayed and felt lost. Then I recognised that this was an implicit (albeit not self-aware) manifestation of the actual, objective, loss of the power and necessity of symbolism.
I now regard this as a consequence of the developmental-evolution of consciousness in Western Man, and part of the increase in self-consciousness and separation from The World; our sense of losing the spontaneous, unconscious sense of being 'in' the world, including 'in' the divine world.
(The complete loss of Original Participation and the advent of the Consciousness Soul.)
In a world without symbolism; the only possible replacement would seem to be the primacy of intuition and the necessity and possibility of direct and unmediated knowing - developing to the new situation of Final Participation: loving participation in the divine creation.
So, my argument is that the fact that no existing Western church will take symbolism seriously is evidence that symbolism has become impossible, ineffectual - and we are faced with either being stuck in our present alienation, or else (as I advocate in Romantic Christianity) moving forward to a different form of consciousness: intuitive direct knowing, Final Participation.
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