Observation, logic, folklore and presuppositions

[findingblanks]

Wait, Jim, you don't think Ashvin accurately captured your view!?! Color me shocked.

[Eugene I.]

Eugene, would you like to discuss anything about these topics or you simply wanted the 'truth' not to be censored?

Yes, I only wanted the truth not to be censored, so when Shu deleted my topic, and when after discussing it with him he refused to allow it and wrote to me "Yeah well, go whine to BK about it.", I felt morally obliged to write to Bernardo and other members of the forum about the situation. This is all I was planning to do. These papers are written by experts and there is nothing I can add to them. I'm sure you will give your arguments defending Steiner's views, but I will not participate and leave it up to the members to decide for themselves.

I'm also copypasting my relevant posts from the "Vote of confidence?" tread to this thread, as Shu suggested:

In my new topic I gave links to two academic papers exposing and discussing Steiner's racist views, and then noted that if anyone wishes to subscribe to anthroposophy and believes that Steiner indeed had clairvoyant abilities, then they would have to subscribe to his racist views as well. But if one wants to subscribe to anthroposophy but to question Steiner's clairvoyance, then they would also have to question most of Steiner's teachings (except may be for pure philosophical ones) as they all came from his clairvoyant experiences as he claimed. I had no plans to participate in the discussion, I just wanted people considering subscribing to anthroposophy to be informed about the whole package they are subscribing to, including the racist views. I do find such attempts to hide racist side of anthroposophy "under the carpet" to be rather concerning.
..........
The new material I attempted to bring to the attention of the participants was the racist views of Steiner and his anthroposophy that haven't been exposed and discussed before on this forum. The material was supported by two links to academic papers.
..........
My point/argument was: you cannot just "get past" Steiner's racist views and forget about them, because he claimed that all the higher-level cognitions and ideas that he got to know through his clairvoyance abilities belong to the level of the "Absolute Idea" and was true in a full sense (as opposed to our human "abstract intellectual ideas"), and that necessarily includes his racist views. You should ether admit that he was wrong with his racist views, and by such admission you would also automatically doubt his clairvoyance, or you should trust in his clairvoyance, but that means to unavoidably adopt his racist views in an explicit way and not try to hide them or keep believing them secretly as if they are no longer relevant to anthroposophy.

In simple words: if you believe and claim that Steiner was clairvoyant, then you are automatically a racist. So basically, the point of my topic was not only to inform people about Steiner's racist views, but mainly to expose a fundamental inconsistency/flaw in the anthroposophy's teachings.
......
I only want to make sure all posts I wrote in this tread are not deleted and will stay either in this thread or in the Clreic's thread. Thanks and bye now.

[findingblanks]

Eugene, I just want to point out that your claim of 'racism' doesn't seem very specified and since there are at least three very distinct ways that term is used, I'm not sure you could make a coherent argument regarding Steiner. Notice what I did not say: I didn't say his views were correct. I didn't say they weren't disturbing. I did not say that they might have horrid implications. But, nonetheless, I'm not sure you are making a coherent claims, but I may have missed how you are defining 'racism.'

I notice that a certain kind of criticism of Steiner plays an unconscious game of equivocation that can make it tricky. If you are going to take Steiner's words seriously in order to show that he is racist, you also have to take his words seriously that might show that he does not conform to your particular view of racism despite having opinions that we strongly object to in the context of evolution and skin and all the rest. As you know, I think Steiner's claim that non-white skin represents the inability to currently integrate with Christ is beyond wrong. But I don't think he was lying about his view and I'm not sure it can be considered racist by your view. Anyway, so it goes.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Yes, I only wanted the truth not to be censored, so when Shu deleted my topic, and when after discussing it with him he refused to allow it and wrote to me "Yeah well, go whine to BK about it.", I felt morally obliged to write to Bernardo and other members of the forum about the situation. This is all I was planning to do. These papers are written by experts and there is nothing I can add to them. I'm sure you will give your arguments defending Steiner's views, but I will not participate and leave it up to the members to decide for themselves.

For the record, here is the email (below) that Eugene sent to Bernardo, after which he continued in the forum accusing other participants of being members of a religious cult, which as far as I'm concerned crosses the line with respect to forum guidelines, and which is when I put him in pre-moderation mode after warning him that would be the next step if he continued with such accusations. For reasons already stated, given my doubts about Eugene's motivations, I dis-allowed the Steiner accusations, seeing then being made with the same questionable motivations. As such, if any of the 'cult member' accusations continue here, further steps will be taken.

Hi Bernardo,

I just wanted to inform you about some recent developments on your forum. I know that you are very busy and chose not to be involved in the forum activity. Over the recent year or so a few members of the forum that belong to the Anthroposophic organization decided to use your forum as a platform for their sect's propaganda. Since Anthroposophy is based on a philosophical foundation of Steiner's idealism, they saw your forum as a good platform for their proselitist activity. They figured that, since you are not involved in the forum, nobody is going to stop them. They flooded the forum with persistent topics and posts promoting their beliefs, views and occult practices and harassing other members with their sectarian twisted logic. The forum is no longer a place where people exploring idealist philosophy can freely discuss their opinions and learn about different versions of idealism. Moderator seems to be sympathetic or at least indifferent to the activity of the members of the sect. The IT admin Simon expressed to me his concern about the issue in a private message, but he does not have time and does not want to be involved with the issue. People who read your books often join the forum to ask their questions or to learn more about analytical idealism without realizing that they are getting to a place where they are going to be brainwashed by members of a religious cult who basically hijacked the forum. I'm leaving the forum but I just wanted you to be aware of what is happening there.

Sincerely,
Eugene

[AshvinP]

Wait, Jim, you don't think Ashvin accurately captured your view!?! Color me shocked.

FB,

You should understand by now ideation is not a personal activity. I am not attempting to represent any "personal view" becaus, by and large, those simply don't exist. No one here has developed a worldview which has not been explicated thoroughly by past thinkers who themselves drew on shared ideations of spiritual realms. If you have read Steiner or Barfield and agree with cognitive evolution, even in the broadest strokes, then this should be crystal clear to you. I was representing the view of abstract thinking as a whole. The individual cannot be reduced to anything generic, but abstract thought-systems most certainly can. In fact, the latter are used to reduce the individual and the Idea constantly, which is why they naturally lead to perpetual fragmentation, division, isolation, alienation, and ensuing bloody conflict at global scales. I know you feel as if none of our criticisms of this abstract thinking could apply to you, because, after all, you are enlightened enough to distinguish Steiner's "errors" from "racism", but that is simply a manifestation of keeping Thinking in the blind spot and funneling oneself into the same traps of the most basic metaphysical physicalism, dualism, and idealism post-Kant.

[Eugene I.]

Eugene, I just want to point out that your claim of 'racism' doesn't seem very specified and since there are at least three very distinct ways that term is used, I'm not sure you could make a coherent argument regarding Steiner. Notice what I did not say: I didn't say his views were correct. I didn't say they weren't disturbing. I did not say that they might have horrid implications. But, nonetheless, I'm not sure you are making a coherent claims, but I may have missed how you are defining 'racism.'

I notice that a certain kind of criticism of Steiner plays an unconscious game of equivocation that can make it tricky. If you are going to take Steiner's words seriously in order to show that he is racist, you also have to take his words seriously that might show that he does not conform to your particular view of racism despite having opinions that we strongly object to in the context of evolution and skin and all the rest. As you know, I think Steiner's claim that non-white skin represents the inability to currently integrate with Christ is beyond wrong. But I don't think he was lying about his view and I'm not sure it can be considered racist by your view. Anyway, so it goes.

I was not going to participate in the discussion, so answering reluctantly
We need to use word labels to point to certain facts, so I used the word "racism" but I agree that people use this word in many scenarios different from Steiner's views. In this case I was simply pointing exactly to what was described in the papers, whatever you want to call it.

But to your highlighted sentence - this is exactly my point: how could Steiner be wrong if he claimed that he acquired that knowledge of races and their developmental paths through his clairvoyance and not just through his intellectual speculations. So, if he was wrong then automatically he was not clairvoyant and all his other "high-level intuitions" were just similar products of his own imaginative intellect (which does not necessarily mean they were all wrong). It's the claim of his clairvoyance which is the foundation of the cult in the anthroposophy movement: since Steiner was clairvoyant, everything he said is the ultimate truth that nobody can even question, and this is how cults develop. Once this claim is debunked, then the anthroposophy is just a collection of Steiner's philosophy plus a bunch of his personal views, visions and opinions, and many of them are indeed beautiful and represent some facets of universal truths, while others are not so much. However, if he was not clairvoyant, then this also means that his occult practices for acquiring clairvoyance also have little value and are mostly self-deluding and self-hypnotizing meditative kind of practices (which I pointed to Cleric many times before). If they did not work for him then how would they work for others?

Here is a testament of a former Waldorf teacher (hopefully it will not be removed), where she says: I was told, “Rudolf Steiner was clairvoyant, and when you find the truth, there’s no improving on it.”

[findingblanks]

Hi Eugene. You asked:

"[H]ow could Steiner be wrong if he claimed that he acquired that knowledge of races and their developmental paths through his clairvoyance and not just through his intellectual speculations."

Because clairvoyance is a perceptional filter like any other except that it is vastly more open to distortion and misunderstanding that the typical conventional senses.

You said:

"So, if he was wrong then automatically he was not clairvoyant..."

You seem to be conflating the notion of clairvoyance with knowledge, especially with exact knowledge.

You then said:

"It's the claim of his clairvoyance which is the foundation of the cult in the anthroposophy movement: since Steiner was clairvoyant, everything he said is the ultimate truth that nobody can even question, and this is how cults develop."

Again, you seem to making at least a couple major conflations regarding even Steiner's notion of clairvoyance. Your use of 'cult' is much too wide and, therefore, open to many different equivocations. Actual cult leaders consciously use equivocation as a technique. But your use of 'cult' is just a result of the way that term has now come to be used in dozens of different ways, ranging from stuck systems to somewhat pathological communities to actual and literal cults. I don't think you could make a convincing argument that Steiner was running a cult at the time and certainly not that the 'movement' is a cult now. However, you could certainly point to pathological aspects of both time periods.

The "Anthroposophy and Ecofascism" paper you linked to falls exactly into the kind of equivocations I'm talking about. I understand that it makes some important points but it does not at all adequately define its terms and, therefore, it falls into some of the kinds of prejudicial patterns it is calling out. You might be comfortable with this because it conforms to your views, but it is a problem in terms of any claim to be willing to look objectively at the situation.

Also, to be clear, Staudenmaier goes out of his way to distinguish his conclusions from claims of racism. You might do the same. I think it would add more power to the legitimate punch you are throwing. Sorry for the aggressive metaphor.

Thanks for chiming in.

[AshvinP]

Yes, I only wanted the truth not to be censored, so when Shu deleted my topic, and when after discussing it with him he refused to allow it and wrote to me "Yeah well, go whine to BK about it.", I felt morally obliged to write to Bernardo and other members of the forum about the situation. This is all I was planning to do. These papers are written by experts and there is nothing I can add to them. I'm sure you will give your arguments defending Steiner's views, but I will not participate and leave it up to the members to decide for themselves.

For the record, here is the email (below) that Eugene sent to Bernardo, after which he continued in the forum accusing other participants of being members of a religious cult, which as far as I'm concerned crosses the line with respect to forum guidelines, and which is when I put him in pre-moderation mode after warning him that would be the next step if he continued with such accusations. For reasons already stated, given my doubts about Eugene's motivations, I dis-allowed the Steiner accusations, seeing then being made with the same questionable motivations. As such, if any of the 'cult member' accusations continue here, further steps will be taken.

:Thumbs Up: (I know there is no yellow symbol for this)

[Eugene I.]

Hi Eugene. You asked:

"[H]ow could Steiner be wrong if he claimed that he acquired that knowledge of races and their developmental paths through his clairvoyance and not just through his intellectual speculations."

Because clairvoyance is a perceptional filter like any other except that it is vastly more open to distortion and misunderstanding that the typical conventional senses.

You said:

"So, if he was wrong then automatically he was not clairvoyant..."

You seem to be conflating the notion of clairvoyance with knowledge, especially with exact knowledge.

You then said:

"It's the claim of his clairvoyance which is the foundation of the cult in the anthroposophy movement: since Steiner was clairvoyant, everything he said is the ultimate truth that nobody can even question, and this is how cults develop."

Again, you seem to making at least a couple major conflations regarding even Steiner's notion of clairvoyance. Your use of 'cult' is much too wide and, therefore, open to many different equivocations. Actual cult leaders consciously use equivocation as a technique. But your use of 'cult' is just a result of the way that term has now come to be used in dozens of different ways, ranging from stuck systems to somewhat pathological communities to actual and literal cults. I don't think you could make a convincing argument that Steiner was running a cult at the time and certainly not that the 'movement' is a cult now. However, you could certainly point to pathological aspects of both time periods.

The "Anthroposophy and Ecofascism" paper you linked to falls exactly into the kind of equivocations I'm talking about. I understand that it makes some important points but it does not at all adequately define its terms and, therefore, it falls into some of the kinds of prejudicial patterns it is calling out. You might be comfortable with this because it conforms to your views, but it is a problem in terms of any claim to be willing to look objectively at the situation.

Also, to be clear, Staudenmaier goes out of his way to distinguish his conclusions from claims of racism. You might do the same. I think it would add more power to the legitimate punch you are throwing. Sorry for the aggressive metaphor.

Thanks for chiming in.

Well, apparently according to that lady testament, this is not how clairvoyance is understood among anthroposophists: "I was told, “Rudolf Steiner was clairvoyant, and when you find the truth, there’s no improving on it.”

Also, people use the world "cult" implying different meanings, but my understanding is that a cult is formed when members of the group believe that their founder or leader possess(ed) the ultimate knowledge of the truth that cannot be questioned, changed or improved ("when you find the truth, there’s no improving on it"), although they often say that it can be further developed and more knowledge added without changing the fundamentals of the teaching. Because of such strong belief usually they are no longer interested in looking at other worldviews (because in their opinion they are simply wrong where they don't align with their teachings) and their activity is mostly focused on spreading their teachings and convincing other people. So, the term "cult" is simply pointing to a certain type of social groups and their group behavior, there is nothing derogatory in it.

[findingblanks]

Hi Eugene,

I'm not sure you'd be willing to apply this criteria to anybody you come across. The fact is that Steiner spoke over and over about the errors that clairvoyance can make at various stages. The fact that he overestimated his own research is very typical among scientists. Steiner certainly thought that he had fully explored a topic and felt that he never spoke openly about that topic until he was certain. Many of today's leading scientists also feel that they only speak publicly about the information they are certain of. They are open to the same criticism as Steiner but I highly doubt you claim those people believe they are infallible. And it doesn't seem fair to point to their fans and use them to define what the researcher's methods and claims were. I don't think you are being intentionally equivocal but you are not being clear in the claims you make. You goal may not be to be very clear but to act more as an activist because you see danger and simply want to rescue people from that danger. I still think you would do better to actually make arguments than simply make claims. In many ways you mirror the worst of Steiner and his worst students in taking that route.

And, again, your way of defining a cult is a problem. My hunch is that when I can show you easy examples of how even very dogmatic Anthroposophists can point to ways that Steiner was wrong or changed his mind or ways that he demonstrated other people needed to make core decisions about the movement, you'd simply say that none of them count. Or, maybe not. Maybe you don't know that even highly dogmatic anthroposophists can talk about errors and one-sideness in Steiner's work.

Either way, I'm simply noticing that you seem to have an activist streak more than a desire to speak accurately. Again, that might not be a bad thing but I'm just trying to see what you honestly believe or if it even matters in this context. Thanks again.