Anthroposophy for Dummies

[AshvinP]

Ashvin: So yes, the physical structure of eyes, ears, etc. are partial images of ideal (mental) processes. However, if we ever want to get more detailed resolution on how those processes function in our immanent experience, then we must recognize that there is ideal structure to sense-observation, including thinking activity, which can be differentiated as well.

Where this quote leaves off, I am left with a few questions. The author does point the way by reference to the ideal structure of observation, which includes sensing and thinking. A further step would be to ask about the place of recognition here, which requires a synthesis of a sensory experience and a higher cognitive process to decide what it should be ‘seen’ as. This process, while above bare sensations, remains mostly unconscious but occasionally calls upon conscious thinking for help.

This is as far as I have gone, before going in search and finding the article linked below. Ashvin, or Cleric, I wonder if you’re familiar with it, or with R H Brady. It seems like a useful adjunct to this discussion, and I have even begun to read it. As a Husserl scholar of sorts, I am fascinated to learn more about the Steiner-Husserl parallels. I do know that both were serious students of the Scholastics. Edith Stein, Husserl’s student, was a Thomist scholar among other things.

How long could it be before Ashvin and Cleric are known as 'the new Scholastics'?

https://www.natureinstitute.org/s/RBrad ... teiner.pdf

I have been reading this paper and it is excellent, thanks for sharing! I may incorporate some aspects of it into my latest essay as well. It does a great job of going through Steiner's PoF and explicating the progression of his phenomenological method for anyone who has been reading it and finds themselves confused.

[dkpstarkey]

Yeah, so how is that different from a complement?

Ashvin, you're right, that was weak. It's really more like "agonizingly long-winded and far too fond of argumentation." But even so, it's growing on me, I guess.

By "what it should be ‘seen’ as", I mean the thing that it is recognized to be, like seeing a duck and then recognizing it's a decoy. So recognition is a fascinatingly complex activity that my readings of Husserl have allowed me to appreciate more fully.

[AshvinP]

Yeah, so how is that different from a complement?

Ashvin, you're right, that was weak. It's really more like "agonizingly long-winded and far too fond of argumentation." But even so, it's growing on me, I guess.

By "what it should be ‘seen’ as", I mean the thing that it is recognized to be, like seeing a duck and then recognizing it's a decoy. So recognition is a fascinatingly complex activity that my readings of Husserl have allowed me to appreciate more fully.

Again... adding adjectives to those words doesn't make it any less complementary to me. You need different qualities altogether. And I do get the irony of this argumentation with your "complement"

OK it sounds like you are speaking of intuition which remains entirely subconscious for most (but can be made more conscious). Steiner says the intuition is for the concept what basic observation is for the percept. It provides immediate information of what perceptions may be, but as long as it remains subconscious, that information will be vague, reflected by abstraction, and perhaps even counter-productive, if it convinces one that the current understanding of the intuited meaning is the full extent of the meaning.

[idlecuriosity]

https://www.natureinstitute.org/s/RBrad ... teiner.pdf

Reading that pdf, it's pretty interesting but funny too. It may just be the fact I'm heavily on the spectrum and have had the worst two years ever but none of those visual examples serve their intended purposes for me. The white of the triangle or rectangle does not seem whiter at all than the background and I do not perceive any transparent circles beneath the rectangle. The box is more convincing as it does appear to be angling slightly to the left but if you zoom in very closely, there's evidence that the horizontal background wire (and to a lesser extent also the foreground wire) are 'aliased' slightly to the left, as in over time there's enough grey noise in the pixelation if you zoom up which indicates it's not entirely horizontal (but close.) If you zoom in and scroll up slowly and measure the line's area to the bottom of the screen, the line will travel to the left. The writing's interesting and none of this takes away from the intentions of the examples, just felt like pointing out

[idlecuriosity]

The act of cognition makes the not-self intelligible and the self conscious. It is a free act, for to be
active in this manner the I must create the category of cognition through self-determination. Yet
consciousness must still grasp itself, and unless the I also grasps its own self-determination, its role as
creator of the idea of cognition remains hidden from it. A conscious self who does not know his or her
own freedom is no more free than a dreamer who dreams of confinement in prison. External objects are
what they are whether or not we grasp them, and the unconscious self is obviously beyond our grasp,
but the self-conscious self can only be what it can know of itself. The I must realize the idea of its own
cognitive activity in order to realize its freedom — to grasp that the “laws of logic” are its own
intentions, and knowledge its own creation.
But the passage above adds that ethics and metaphysics will have to investigate whether the I can
objectify ideas other than those of cognition. Now we must reflect that the I was not free because it
cognized — because it knew — but because it brought this about through self-determination. If the I
can objectify ideas other than those of cognition, this will also take place through self-determination,
for nothing in the world could demand it.
46
Those who are able to work through the idea of cognition to an observation of cognition discover
— if at first only fleetingly — that the task of thinking is not thrust upon us by an enigmatic universe,
but is our own free creation, and the manifest intelligibility of the world is a human product. Since this
is the case, all problems for cognition have been invented by cognition itself, and contain only those
determinations that arise out of our own world of ideas. Consider how well Steiner’s remarks about
moral freedom also fit cognition:
In such instances the law is not something given, lying outside the object in which the
event appears, but is the content of the object itself engaged in living activity. The object in
this case is our own I. If the I has really penetrated its deed with full insight, in conformity
with its nature, then it also feels itself to be master. (p.94)
Cognition is a task we give ourselves; in it we are free. It is this sense of freedom that, when
gained, must be our guide to ethical freedom. Here, the ideas we objectify determine the nature of the
personality, and therefore govern the actions of the personality in the world. “To know oneself as a
behaving personality” is to grasp what else, besides thinking, follows from the nature of this individual
“I”.
__________________________________________________

This is incredibly inspirational, that's singlehandedly making me seriously reevaluate my skepticism about the utility of idealism. I might put my nose in the books and commit to philosophy in earnest if more of it is this liberating. The idea that our idea of 'I' ensnares us because it adheres the idea that existence was presupposed before it became defined and how that's inaccurate to what we should allow 'I' to be, that is. I'm sure that disentangling abstractions in our brain from the matter we're poorly representing transposes to a far more broader scope of phenomenological propositions than just one that allows for greater self determination but it is a very liberating premise by itself too.

[idlecuriosity]

Someone here mentioned Machiavellian principles as spiritually insufficient but I actually ostensibly disagree with that. As a practitioner of the arts, martial or otherwise, I see a beauty that rivals that of the sun itself in tools that're tailor made for the weak to overcome the strong. One would ordinarily look at mixed martial arts as more of an expression of crass brutality than refinement but I see each distinct art, with their respective cultural customs and finely cultivated technical solidarity, as each offering respective tools and training methods to a tactician's playbook and allowing them to foster talents in isolation without putting the entirety of our body at risk going hard every time. When it is a real master such as Machida or Ryan Hall you can see the fidelity and repetition behind amassing certain signature moves of theirs just pour out in their attacks, be it the step in one two from an opponent's low kick or Hall's bizarre sublimation cum subversion of an imanari roll into heel hook. And I see ways of staying afloat socially at the sometimes sporadically warranted expense of our peers as a type of fighting tactic in a way that must be manned for the preservation of hopefully more altruistic intentions down the line and the beauty of such techniques also warrant this connotation. Robert Greene, Niccolo's own handbook, Baltasar Gracian, all of them

But I equate and tar all kinds of technique, even as far as storytelling ability, with the same presumption of beauty if only because I've never seen anything more aesthetically arresting than our ability to overcome our limits with honed trickery and not many exceptions to the rule. You could consider those 'dark arts' in a sense (perhaps a more literal one given the implications of doing 'whatever it takes') but if spirituality is predicated on finding common ground it's hard for me to disentangle it from my preferences since we're unified in our need for pragmatism and advice giving is the universal way people check each other's real life 'replays' so to speak, up to a therapists' patient's need for feedback but also their own peer reviews

I don't know if this constitutes a spiritual essence or principle that I can 'grasp' but I did come up with a personal system to evaluate choices under duress and it applies really well for almost any endeavour I've tried; I won't go into it here but the best coaches in any field I've seen adopt some variation of it, although many prodigious talents will by luck of the draw try other alternatives. I understand this is meant to be something like how maths represent a concept but by themselves don't have a materialistic representation; you have to grasp things like that? I'll at least say the concept of strategy is dependent on not allowing the base thoughts of others to affect you. The second you are perceived as strong you have submitted at least something to an adversary; the element of surprise, the energy and damage in succeeding your climb, the will to convince someone who will likely simply make excuses however you decide to beat them... Musashi said it best: beat your opponent entirely over and over or kill them, or else they will not accept it, or something

That said, he did say something that might be less tangential to the subject; he believed that everything we do, from poetry to art, comes out great when we don't 'think' about it or let anything taint our 'emptiness'. When we're born we're not dirtied by comparisons or greed or anything so all the ideas that came out of us were pure and therefore efficient. Close to the idea of unconsciousness.

[AshvinP]

That said, he did say something that might be less tangential to the subject; he believed that everything we do, from poetry to art, comes out great when we don't 'think' about it or let anything taint our 'emptiness'. When we're born we're not dirtied by comparisons or greed or anything so all the ideas that came out of us were pure and therefore efficient. Close to the idea of unconsciousness.

But can you remember any of those "pure and efficient" ideas from infancy? The reason you can't is because you were not thinking them through at the time. Fortunately, the ideas of the past can still be thought through in the present, but that will definitely require more than non-thinking 'emptiness'. Personally, I find the simplicity of what was just written aesthetically pleasing. It is pleasing to perceive how all that which conforms to the basic logic of our thinking experience does not need to be abandoned through intellectual rationalizations. Our own experience of infancy to adolescence to adulthood can shed a vast amount of light on the entire Cosmic evolutionary process, from Alpha to Omega. Likewise it is aesthetically pleasing to me when all the great morals and virtues that humanity has imagined and intuited over the epochs find their objective basis in the structure of our shared spiritual reality itself. None of that is possible for me to enjoy as long as I remain unconscious and asleep to my own true nature.

[idlecuriosity]

That said, he did say something that might be less tangential to the subject; he believed that everything we do, from poetry to art, comes out great when we don't 'think' about it or let anything taint our 'emptiness'. When we're born we're not dirtied by comparisons or greed or anything so all the ideas that came out of us were pure and therefore efficient. Close to the idea of unconsciousness.

But can you remember any of those "pure and efficient" ideas from infancy? The reason you can't is because you were not thinking them through at the time. Fortunately, the ideas of the past can still be thought through in the present, but that will definitely require more than non-thinking 'emptiness'. Personally, I find the simplicity of what was just written aesthetically pleasing. It is pleasing to perceive how all that which conforms to the basic logic of our thinking experience does not need to be abandoned through intellectual rationalizations. Our own experience of infancy to adolescence to adulthood can shed a vast amount of light on the entire Cosmic evolutionary process, from Alpha to Omega. Likewise it is aesthetically pleasing to me when all the great morals and virtues that humanity has imagined and intuited over the epochs find their objective basis in the structure of our shared spiritual reality itself. None of that is possible for me to enjoy as long as I remain unconscious and asleep to my own true nature.

I had a friend that remembers a faint light and a 'higher' purpose before he became conscious, such as something before the time a baby would be able to even speak a single word let alone think for himself. He did spent most of his life giving his all and doing whatever he could for the well being of others but in the end was an incredibly depressed, emotionally incontinent person who blew all his money on other people and had no idea about how to survive. It ultimately made him lash out at people and he became very disappointing to deal with. I doubt this serves as anything more than an anecdotal experience but it's one of a hundred dozen reasons I'll never subscribe to the idea that we will ever be 'one,' there may be a collective whole of an idea that all small ideas are derived from but not every person will have the with hereto to undertake that journey. If that were even loosely affiliated with who gets into heaven, it'll be a small crowd up there and there'd be no need for it to be big either

The concept of being fragmented or whole isn't continuous with BK's proposition we're whirlpools, which is an important aspect of us, but we're still comprised of water. And it seems the lines between two people are blurry; that isn't to say they should ever be entirely blurred. Most of this seems to be derived from humans living superfluous, easy lives, where they're allowed to play king in their head about how the bulk of people live as though that's of even dwindling relevance to the periphery of their own existence. It's generally unrelated to your views but it's kind of unsurprising to me that fascism on both sides is dressed up as the antithesis to the other side's presumed fascism when it comes to politics and that I find myself clamouring for the internet of 2005's yesteryear more and more everyday

[AshvinP]

That said, he did say something that might be less tangential to the subject; he believed that everything we do, from poetry to art, comes out great when we don't 'think' about it or let anything taint our 'emptiness'. When we're born we're not dirtied by comparisons or greed or anything so all the ideas that came out of us were pure and therefore efficient. Close to the idea of unconsciousness.

But can you remember any of those "pure and efficient" ideas from infancy? The reason you can't is because you were not thinking them through at the time. Fortunately, the ideas of the past can still be thought through in the present, but that will definitely require more than non-thinking 'emptiness'. Personally, I find the simplicity of what was just written aesthetically pleasing. It is pleasing to perceive how all that which conforms to the basic logic of our thinking experience does not need to be abandoned through intellectual rationalizations. Our own experience of infancy to adolescence to adulthood can shed a vast amount of light on the entire Cosmic evolutionary process, from Alpha to Omega. Likewise it is aesthetically pleasing to me when all the great morals and virtues that humanity has imagined and intuited over the epochs find their objective basis in the structure of our shared spiritual reality itself. None of that is possible for me to enjoy as long as I remain unconscious and asleep to my own true nature.

I had a friend that remembers a faint light and a 'higher' purpose before he became conscious, such as something before the time a baby would be able to even speak a single word let alone think for himself. He did spent most of his life giving his all and doing whatever he could for the well being of others but in the end was an incredibly depressed, emotionally incontinent person who blew all his money on other people and had no idea about how to survive. It ultimately made him lash out at people and he became very disappointing to deal with. I doubt this serves as anything more than an anecdotal experience but it's one of a hundred dozen reasons I'll never subscribe to the idea that we will ever be 'one,' there may be a collective whole of an idea that all small ideas are derived from but not every person will have the with hereto to undertake that journey. If that were even loosely affiliated with who gets into heaven, it'll be a small crowd up there and there'd be no need for it to be big either

The concept of being fragmented or whole isn't continuous with BK's proposition we're whirlpools, which is an important aspect of us, but we're still comprised of water. And it seems the lines between two people are blurry; that isn't to say they should ever be entirely blurred. Most of this seems to be derived from humans living superfluous, easy lives, where they're allowed to play king in their head about how the bulk of people live as though that's of even dwindling relevance to the periphery of their own existence. It's generally unrelated to your views but it's kind of unsurprising to me that fascism on both sides is dressed up as the antithesis to the other side's presumed fascism when it comes to politics and that I find myself clamouring for the internet of 2005's yesteryear more and more everyday

Well, as you say IC, there's not much relation between what I wrote and your response. That's fine. The bold part is important, though. I completely agree that the state of the world today, including how people perceive, feel, think, and act, is just atrocious. Of course there are great thoughts and actions too, but no logically reasoning mind can dispute that, as a whole, humanity is in a state of extreme fragmentation which leads to isolation, alienation, resentment, frustration, anxiety, depression, and pathologies of all sorts and all degrees. But what is really the source of these pathologies - what is it within each individual's heart which inevitably leads to this fragmentation? We can't expect the answer to this deepest of questions to fall into our laps... it will require much good will and careful contemplation. But, something to consider, and a theme I have written about a lot in my essays, is how much of it is self-inflicted wounds. The very attitude of "I will never subscribe to the idea..." is the first and last step in our journey to finding an answer, because we have arbitrarily cut ourselves off from any further questions. Is it possible that this questioning and contemplating process, which only bears fruit when we ourselves lend it the power to do so, is itself a cure to our modern illness?

[idlecuriosity]

"But what is really the source of these pathologies - what is it within each individual's heart which inevitably leads to this fragmentation? "

Probably ideologies like the ones you're espousing. Modern SJWs have controlled on tests that I think were cited by Gad Saad and others as having reconcilable genetics with historical radical Christians who themselves were the mother of witchhunt hive morality, to not even start on the conceptual descent of these ideals. (pre edit https://mindpumppodcast.com/1660-wokeis ... -gad-saad/ 1 hour 5 mins) It might be the case that this leaves modern day individualists and conservatives as being less emotionally disparate, insistent we have to all be 'one' and able to stand on their own two feet without exhibiting much guilt over their peers. Disregard this footnote as an anecdotal scree without the citation on hand and it's lack of relativity to the point, though about three or four credible sources over the years have lent their credibility (I lack it and am not pretentious enough to care) to that claim and I am just Malcolm in the Middle who remembers scant little of the specifics. It would entirely make sense though. A lot of them find it difficult to live without the idea of everyone being on the same page and control for neuroticism. For what little genetics add to a person's disposition if there IS a parallel then I'd probably turn out to have more similarities to them given where I started anyway. I'm a sensitive individual too. Just take this as a bad joke if it doesn't sound relevant or ask a mod to shoot me if it's inappropriate, I do often wonder if a huge portion of the 1st world is existentially beholden to repeating the miscarriages of our past though.

Genetics (and man, we don't even know how much that affects people's behaviour or if it extends to religion anyway) aside, they are very ideologically similar and I think culture goes hand in hand with temperament. People in Bloody Mary's time were profoundly afraid to say Catholicism was anything but the finest knee of a bee but be my guest if you get a time machine spare, flip the bird to christ in any hardcore village and you'll brighten up the shire from the seat of your pyre

I don't feel the problem is that we require less fragmentation, in terms of defeating what impedes people from 'thinking' it would be a start to have any fragmentation at all because we don't and only did for a very short space of history; we have harassment happy social media, the way our schools don't outfit their regimen in accordance with an individual's desired specializations or natural talent early on... We probably need to stop all that and also quit watching over what people do in their spare time 24/7, have some laws against every iota of online communication being compiled and archived for posterity. Probably some healthy state intervention preventing victims of 'cancel culture' from dealing with all of the downsides of Princess Diana's last 3 months of life with none of... Whatever upsides she had there. Workers rights would be a start; I don't expect them to have partial ownership of the business but to be able to weather public scrutiny as fragmented individuals without losing their job if they are competently skilled, because that's screwed up. Other people's lives should be less of your business and more of theirs, although for that to be a reality they'd have to have the same base prerequisite freedoms they did in the pre smartphone era... For about, 30-40 years? Maybe about double at most? Ever?

For every JP there are about ten of him that're just axed and have nowhere to go, he's an exception coasting by on merit but also an opportunistic twist of fate that he admits he was very brave to wield against these forces

Either way, you'll never get what you want through coercion and our current society is precipitated entirely on the notion; it has to be a journey undertook by each individual on their own merit and in strict accordance with their own whimsy. Granted, I think you agree with this but I maintain there is no value to any idea while our current Orwellian echo chamber is at hand because your idea may just be 'the best alternative' to what seems to be living in the apocalypse rather than alleviation of the conditions in question. There's a reason I prefer forums like this to places with upvotes/downvotes in play: People can look at a post and have to engage with it's distinct points and the people writing them aren't beholden to knowing the entire world including the person in charge of firing them are all scrutinizing what they write. Humans definitively can't manifest their 'actual' nature or behaviour with a gun to their head and will exude less individuality as a consequence. Remove the gun and bestow upon them true freedom of thought and then judge their 'behaviour'

You'll know if they are even interested in this journey you want them to undertake and perhaps from there it can get the respect it does or doesn't deserve

Humans aren't inherently good and I believe the enlightenment was too optimistic but just like I think Jon Jones should be banned for eyepokes despite outclassing his opponent, humanity's eyes too are being jabbed constantly. You give them a fair fight and then judge their skills; our own purveyance of human nature is correspondingly categorically inappropriate without a fair test, both yours and mine. And the forces controlling them are not a human behaviour thing entirely, it's... Or was... The behaviour of a very small group of ideological instigators at the top who themselves have their hands tied by a bunch of autonomous processes iterated upon and maintained by successive innovators taking the same positions; some will probably even have more AIs than humans at the other end. Alphabet agencies that act without accountability to deceive people and weaponize being literally the worst of the worst humanity has to offer on the basis it's a 'necessary evil' have indulged their fare and share of tomfoolery by obfuscating the discussion too.

I'm not predicating my theory on the idea that the only alternative is that all wings of thought, left or otherwise, just degenerate into a type of dollar store fascism when we follow the 'one = all' idea in material reality: that's objectively true but your claims don't concern materialistic reality and it'd be an even bigger strawman to attack a precedent without providing your own anyway so I will. My precedent is that I don't have to say 'real libertarianism' hasn't been tried before. My early life (90s to 2000s until smartphones) was characterized heavily by such fragmented liberty and it was fantastic. Socialist pillars that weren't corrupted by altruistic hubris in my country, constitutional rights and a booming economy that were respected by their direct inheritors in the US, etc. People were able to espouse any ideas and develop groups without scrutiny and maintain their freedoms in most situations, it was only bad if you were a crybaby commie or were really into being browbeaten with a bag of cuties by an autocratic insistence that 1984 (and conspiracy theories as a whole) were just too swell to stay fiction.

And speaking of those I'm not pulling a strawman here, bears reiterating; I don't think you want anything that would exacerbate a state of affairs that you seem incredibly fluent in the shortcomings of already. I also don't think your approach would be 'necessarily' unhealthy. I'd even go as far as to say a huge part of why it might not have as much traction as you'd like already is because of the aforementioned obstacles, but you'd have to err acquiescently on the side of live and let live if it turned out to not play to people's preferences in a way you'd have expected. You mentioned this being your objective so mission accomplished if this counts but I suppose it just stirred some fire in me; I do believe in each and all of us distinctly having a grand narrative but I don't think those truly reach their pinnacle if they operate with the assumption everyone else is a character in their storybook and must play by the beholder's rules

My favourite fictitious works are things like ASOIAF (Game of Thrones, at least when it was true to it...) that present people unadorned and 'as is' without setting the standard that they must abide by our moral expectations, must tastefully befit the expectation of their roles, have to be considered authoritatively. It's the difference between a flat and truly multi dimensional portrayal of a situation or dilemma. The minute you must speculate on a character's foundational values or motives, you begin a relationship with them that goes on for as long as it can make you ponder. They become real people. By this token, 'individuals' who become the predilection of someone else's consigned narrative necessity gradually present as more like characters. Our current society is, in it's 12/11/2021 true to life absurdist entirety, a caricature of fictitious characters that're drawn using real flesh and blood beings as ink and canvas to tell a tale that a lot of angry idiots and a few very powerful miscreants decided to write. We are left illustratively beleaguered by the damage to intelligent thought

The nightmares (the 'tyrannical weaklings') that kept Nietzsche up at night, that he extolled the deficits of, who probably look enough like the horse he was drove mad in front of that his deterioration suddenly makes more sense: They walk the earth now. In the riots of 2020, on twitter, among religious extremists and in the fabric of our elite (Epstein, alphabet agencies, etc), they walk the goddamn earth. Seen any of those screeching kids disavowing JP on campus? Nightmares.

All I'm saying is; You can only judge society when it is a society, not 'theater' for the consumption of... 'People...' Whether us converging as one is an acceptable inoculation from this or a necessary outcome for any variety of other reasons, I cannot say.

I must simply add that when you are defining a human's best option as the one you're given, that just veers eerily close to a theatrical narrative presupposition for me given it's insistent on a 'right answer for all' and the lack of falsifiable traits that prepackaged narratives must necessarily present with. The accused cannot even admit to spinning one, being that they themselves cannot see the folly behind their selfishness. However, if anything looked like one of those narratives, it's a 'right answer for all'. So here's hoping it's not despite sounding a lot like that.

If only communism was even that transparent about it...

All the best, from some irate reformed sinner who never wanted to start pointing hands at the miscarriages of others (not referring to you as an example at all here) for wont of hypocrisy but is just fed up of current society and it's superabundance of 'perfect solutions'