Observation, logic, folklore and presuppositions

[Eugene I.]

Or, maybe not. Maybe you don't know that even highly dogmatic anthroposophists can talk about errors and one-sideness in Steiner's work.

Well, the only anthroposophist I met so far is Cleric and Ashvin, and I can see that they are quite dogmatic and I haven't seen them so far admitting that they or Steiner are or have ever been wrong in anything. It seems like they already know all the answers and they are here only to teach us. I also read that paper written by Waldorf teacher also giving testaments about dogmatism among the modern anthroposophists. Of course that does not mean all anthroposophists and Steiner himself were like that. And you also seem to hold a different position with which I agree. Some time ago I asked the same question: "can we study PoF without forming a sect around it", meaning without taking it dogmatically as an unquestionable truth? It's probably like in many other groups of people sharing similar beliefs: some people take the beliefs dogmatically and basically form a "cult", but other people take different stake without taking them dogmatically but still subscribing to the worldview in general. You can see the same phenomenon in traditional religions or any other social groups based on certain set of views. So, it's not fair to call the whole group a "cult" even if many members take the beliefs dogmatically, but certain members and sub-groups can still be qualified as such.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Surprise, surprise, Eugene couldn't quit the addiction after all ... Time to call an AA meeting?

[Eugene I.]

Surprise, surprise, Eugene couldn't quit the addiction after all ... Time to call an AA meeting?

I'm getting asked certain questions about what I wrote before that I feel obliged to answer. If there are no more questions from me, then there will be no more posts.

[AshvinP]

Surprise, surprise, Eugene couldn't quit the addiction after all ... Time to call an AA meeting?

I will use this opportunity to try and make something clear - the reason it seems we are never "admitting that they or Steiner are or have ever been wrong in anything" is simple, if one simply tries to understand without prejudice. If one were to picture the prevalent view of collective human knowledge right now as a tank filling with water, it would look like the tank is 99% full and there is only little room left for more water. This is practically how many people feel about the state of knowledge, regardless of ontology. Even with idealism, the tank has been filled halfway by the simple concept of "Consciousness", another 49% with modern science, and that last 1% is the room for new knowledge to evolve. I know most people won't explicitly agree this is their view (because it is clearly presumptuous and prideful), but that is how the prevalent view functions in our thought when approaching ideas which are new to us. So now someone like me comes along and I am presenting ideas to others as a teacher and never admitting I am wrong when those ideas are challenged.

With the above view, it is clear why this will be distasteful and, actually, would be pretty absurd. How can this one guy claim to have completely filled the rest of tank? Not only that, but I have removed water from the tank (representing many interpretations of modern science and assumptions of abstract metaphysics) and refilled it with 'my' ideas. If we simply shift perspective in humility and see that, from where we are now, the tank is barely .01% full with widepsread collective human knowledge, this whole objection evaporates into thin air. Many other people make this same claim in other ways and it is readily accepted by idealist thinkers - Donald Hoffman, for ex. He says that, since the inception of modern science, we have only been studying the outer dynamics of the perceptual interface, which tells us almost nothing about what gives rise to that interface. The reason why this is acceptable is because he doesn't frame the claim in the language of soul or spirit, and that is the real distasteful thing for most people in our age (for many reasons discussed here).

So the ideas I present over and over again are just various ways of trying to clarify the .01% I have discovered in addition to the previous .01%, which are generally not being understood. Most of my essays and posts are exploring that same .01% in somewhat different ways. Some people clearly assume they have understood, but that is immediately undermined by thier comments here which show they have not been understood. And, if someone like Cleric comes along, then things get much worse, because we are assuming a 3-dimensional spatial tank of knowledge when we should be imagining something more like a 4-D hypercube which incorporates imaginative Time-consciousness, which he has only filled .01% with his wellspring of knowledge (I am just throwing out small percentages here to illustrate the point). And, in many ways, this humble perspective on collective knowledge is the entire basis of our various arguments, which is that we are not complete beings and have unimaginably vast amounts of cognitive evolution to undergo before we get anywhere close to filling the tanks. I may turn this into a short-form essay soon and expand some more, so I will stop there.

PS - there is also the Kant-Schop view of abstract intellectual reasoning as max capacity of human cognition but unable to fill the tank at all, so then once again our approach is distasteful and misunderstood, because we are claiming to fill a tank with water-ideas when it is assumed the tank simply cannot be filled!

[Soul_of_Shu]

I'm getting asked certain questions about what I wrote before that I feel obliged to answer. If there are no more questions from me, then there will be no more posts.

As dear old dad used to say: Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.

[findingblanks]

Eugene, you responded to my comments by saying:

"Well, the only anthroposophist I met so far is Cleric and Ashvin..."

So you've only come across two Anthroposophists (and that is online) and you've based your generalized claims about the movement being a cult on those two online personalities? Yikes. I'm feeling more and more relieved that I started asking you about your reasoning for all of this. Thanks for responding. My only suggestion is that IF your intention is to be an honest communicator regarding this subject, you've really need to justify your claims a little bit. As you know, I don't think it would be hard for you to show all kinds of problems with Steienr's claims on various things, but calling him a racist without saying what you mean by that, and then linking to one paper that goes out of its way to NOT call him a racist and another that equivicates...that's bad form. And that's why I'm not sure you are really interested in the complicated truth as much as being a social activist. Nothing wrong with the latter, but you can do it honestly and with a regard for the details. Plus, it would help more of the more pathologically inclined dogmatists actually give your argument a chance. The real zealots will never listen. On either side.

[Soul_of_Shu]

The obvious irony in all this is that in considering the view that some races are in any way spiritually lagging behind, what are we to make of it when one of the forum members, who quotes Steiner's PoF frequently as an example of how thinking can be spiritually transfigured, would be, according to some anachronistic non-transfigured ethos, considered to belong in the former category. It's all so incongruous that we're still trying to have some coherent dialogos that can in some way reconcile the inherent non sequitur upon which it's based, while not breaking out in laughter. Surely thinking has at least reached a point that it can see the absurdity in this?

[Ben Iscatus]

Surely thinking has at least reached a point that it can see the absurdity in this?

Yes, I've noted in quite a few NDEs how humour applies when looking "from above".

It's Abbot's old Flatland thing - you can never sensibly conceptualize what you can't experience. I think this is why BK is so dead set against abstraction in modern philosophy, you're just spiralling up your own backside. And only certain highly unusual folk would ever want to follow you up there.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Surely thinking has at least reached a point that it can see the absurdity in this?

Yes, I've noted in quite a few NDEs how humour applies when looking "from above".

Not really in need of an NDE in this case

Think [sic] about it ... Ashvin in promoting PoF as an example of how to attain transfigured thinking, is now supposedly a member of an Anthroposophy cult that 100 years ago, or even less, or maybe even now, would dismiss him as incapable of attaining such levels of thinking, and thus excluded from membership in the club. And Eugene, so he claims, is now quitting the forum ostensibly because it's condoning a cult that promotes racism ... it's a fookin' hoot!

[AshvinP]

The obvious irony in all this is that in considering the view that some races are in any way spiritually lagging behind, what are we to make of it when one of the forum members, who quotes Steiner's PoF frequently as an example of how thinking can be spiritually transfigured, would be, according to some anachronistic non-transfigured ethos, considered to belong in the former category. It's all so incongruous that we're still trying to have some coherent dialogos that can in some way reconcile the inherent non sequitur upon which it's based, while not breaking out in laughter. Surely thinking has at least reached a point that it can see the absurdity in this?

True indeed. The fact is, skin color is never mentioned as a cause of spiritual lagging by Steiner and in his framework, as Elyosha expressed, all is responsible for all. Every new wave of evolution becomes responsible for self-sacrificial redemption of still newer waves. Barfield called this the "one truly noble human sentiment" and I agree. It is when races, nations, cultures, etc. are implicitly reified into fixed, non-evolving, non-integrating categories, which the "error" and "racism" accusers here and in society at large are doing without even realizing it, that a truly prejudicial mindset develops and is imposed on the world.