another attempt at 7fold thinking
To all:
Many of you have read my previous posts on this
theme; I am assuming that most of you have, and
that I will not have to explain quite so much
this time. (Anyway, here are my major previous
posts:
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anthroposophy_now/message/1619>
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anthroposophy_now/message/1620>
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anthroposophy_now/message/1704>
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anthroposophy_now/message/2163>
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anthroposophy_now/message/2164>)
Quite some time has passed since my last
attempt, but I have not been entirely idle. As
usual, I have had little time to work, and even
less online. I still have a huge backlog of
unread reading, which I will likely never catch
up with. I have missed much of the discussions
on these e-lists. And, continuing my lifelong
trouble with *work*, I have wasted much of even
the little free time that I have had. But I did
resolve to make another attempt at 7fold
thinking, and I have been working on it, more or
less, since my last post on this theme. I did
take a little break to review Pfeifer's book,
but otherwise most of my outward Anthro efforts
have been directed to this recent attempt. The
main reason that it has taken so long is that I
was stymied for a good, long time.
The task that I set for myself was to try to
answer the question: what is the correct
(cosmically correct, objectively correct)
relation of the government (any government) to
abortion? -- That question, and ones surrounding
the same subject, had already been simmering in
my soul for many years previously, as, I
suppose, it has been (at least) simmering in
millions of other souls. As most of us know, it
has been a very vexed question in contemporary
public discourse. (I write from the USA, and I
have always been in the USA, but I gather that
this question is much discussed also in other
countries.)
Indeed, it is a question that (almost?) every
government in the world must face: abortion is
here; it is a fact of life, and every government
must come into *some* kind of relation to it.
Really, no government has much choice: abortion
is a fact in the existence of mankind upon the
earth, just as the land, the waters, and the air
are facts -- and governments must "deal with"
the fact of abortion, somehow.
Lots of people don't want to think about
abortion, much as lots of people don't want to
think about "how the sausage was made". But
abortion is here; it's real, and it's not going
to just go away. So, I thought that someone has
to think about it, and think about it in a way
so as to get at the objective truth, not merely
to emote and satisfy oneself. For there does
exist an objective truth about abortion and
about the right relation of the state to it,
just as there does exist an objective truth
about the relation of two-plus-two to four.
That objective truth exists whether we like it
or not, and one makes oneself unreal when one
seeks to satisfy one's subjective emotions
rather than to seek the objective truth. Of
course, sometimes "the truth hurts", but it is
still true nevertheless, and seeking to avoid
that pain is in the end futile, because of the
simple fact that the real, the true, is more
real than the unreal, the false, and will
outlast it. And of course, not many people will
admit to seeking subjective satisfaction over
real truth, but many people deceive themselves
and "know not what they do". Real truthfulness
requires self-awareness, and self-awareness
sometimes hurts like a bitch. There's no
getting around it: sometimes one must choose
reality over pleasantness, but that's only in
the short run; in the long run one finds in The
True a higher "pleasure" that is more fulfilling
than the evanescent pleasantness of avoiding
subjective pain.
And there's no getting around the fact that the
whole subject of abortion is inherently
unpleasant. It's fairly easy to see that most
people simply don't want to think about it, and
that's why politicians can give most people
double-talk which they will accept.
Nevertheless the fact remains: abortion is
real, it's here, and governments must deal with
it, one way or another. And whatever
governments do or don't do, pain will result;
there will be that pain of abortion, and/or
there will be the pain of unwanted pregnancy and
childbearing, and/or plenty of other kinds of
pain. And whatever anyone proposes to do about
abortion, it's obvious that plenty of people
will be offended and angry about that proposal.
It's a commonplace observation that the issue is
"divisive", and no one with any proposal can
please everyone; some people will be displeased
no matter what. -- So, there's no avoiding
unpleasantness about abortion; no matter what
one does or doesn't do, no matter what one says
or doesn't say, some kind of pain will follow;
again, there's just no getting around it. Ergo,
one would take the best course to seek the
objective truth of the matter; despite short-
term pain, in the long run that's the least
painful course.
Indeed, if one wants to "help", if one wants
people (and the whole of Creation) to be
"happy", one simply must be realistic; no real
happiness can come within an environment of
falsehood. Yes, the Truth might "hurt" in the
short run, but in the long run only Truth can
allow real "happiness". If one really wants to
"help", one is bound to seek the objective
Truth, however much it might "hurt". That's the
way it is.
-- Though I write from the USA, I am not
primarily concerned with peculiarities of this
public debate in the USA. The debate in this
country is rather uncharacteristic, given the
peculiarities of the polity here, of federalism
and the "judicial dictatorship". I will not
review here the tragicomedy of the judicial and
political wranglings around this problem in the
USA, since that particular story would likely
have little meaning for most readers in most
other countries, and since that story is not
essential for an answer to the general question.
I am considering the question more in general,
for *any* government, and I presume that the
question might have different answers for
different governments, polities, and societies
in different times and places. -- And again, I
am not *here* asking questions about the
morality or immorality of abortion in itself. I
hope that everyone understands exactly what
question I am asking: about the proper relation
of governments to abortion.
Early in my attempt I resolved not to try to
force my thinking into the 7fold template as
described by Bondarev. I resolved to try just
to think through and answer the question, and
then, afterwards, to evaluate my thinking to
find out whether and/or how much my thinking fit
the 7fold paradigm. But, inevitably, that 7fold
pattern was always at least in the back of my
mind, and I could not get it out. So, my
attempt could not be completely unprejudiced,
but I did try, somewhat, to let my thinking
follow the natural course of the problem-solving
itself.
My main concern, my primary goal, was to think
*objectively*, not to let any of my subjective
feelings and prejudices shape the outcome.
Easier said than done, for sure, but if one
really wants the truth of the matter, one must
at least make the attempt. And especially for
one who strives to be an Anthroposophist the
importance and the possibility of objective
thinking is more than a matter of vague
idealism. I believe that I already had some
experience of objective thinking (or, as Steiner
might have said, thinking that transcends the
distinction between the subjective and the
objective), however simple and sporadic most of
that experience might have been. Indeed, my
experience in this regard had mostly been only
with very simple thoughts, but even so, the real
distinction between objective thinking and
subjective (pseudo-) thinking was already a
matter of . . . well, experience. But now I was
trying to think, objectively, some very complex
thoughts, to solve a very complex problem.
Not surprisingly, Anthroposophical thoughts and
methods were by then part of my make-up. I
presumed that my attempt would somehow build
upon Steiner's insights, but the problem was (so
it seemed) that RS had been silent on this
subject. He had promulgated the concept of the
3fold commonwealth, but as far as I knew, in his
expositions of that concept he had said nothing
at all about abortion, even by implication. The
dreaded cloud, STEINER-LEFT-NO-INDICATIONS, hung
over my attempt, but that impediment also seemed
to give the attempt more urgency. So it seemed
to me: the world needs to have this question
answered, but, as far as I knew, "initiation
science" had not given the answer in public --
and therefore someone had to do it; even if only
one person out of the seven billion tries, at
least someONE should try.
"Initiation science" had indeed given out the
concept of the 3fold commonwealth; that concept
did not come from ordinary political discourse.
It could not have come from ordinary discourse,
for it could not have come from ordinary
consciousness. It came from the consciousness
of the True Initiate, as it could not have come
from anyone else, for only the True Initiate has
insight into the plans and thoughts of the Gods.
The Gods, through the True Initiate, injected
the 3fold concept into the Earthly political
discussion in response to the socio-political
crisis which came to expression in the First
World War. And that concept was given
exposition in terms that related most directly
to conditions of the socio-political crisis of
that time. But now, almost a century later, the
socio-political conditions have changed, not
least because the 3fold concept was not "taken
up" and is now at least a century overdue for
implementation.
One of those changes is the widespread
availability of the technique of abortion. And
the political response to that development was
at first largely suppression, which by now has
changed to permissiveness (or even enforced
implementation) over much or most of the
industrialized world. But this permissiveness
has aroused much opposition, which sees abortion
itself as a violation of the most basic of
"human rights", the "right to life". So, a
social tension does exist, a socio-political
question which needs to be answered. This
question hardly existed in Steiner's day, and,
as far as I know, he said nothing about it
directly. But this question is urgent in our
day: abortion exists, and governments, like it
or not, must come into some kind of relation to
it.
But governments, it seems, are unable to solve
this problem, even less than they are able to
resolve the social problems to which, a century
ago, Steiner gave them the solution on a silver
platter, as it were. -- Not a final solution,
but at least a healthful treatment; and thus the
question arises as to whether they are really
"unable" or rather "unwilling", but I will
bypass that question for now. As to the
impossibility of "final solutions" in the socio-
political realm, STEINER SAID:
". . . . the social organism is constantly
becoming and growing. It is not possible to ask
how something that grows should be organized in
order that this organization, which is thought
to be correct, be preserved into the future. One
can think in this way about something which
remains unchanged from its beginnings. But it is
not valid for the social organism. As a living
entity it is constantly changing whatever arises
within it. To attempt to give it a supposedly
best form, in which it is expected to remain, is
to undermine its vitality." [from *Basic Issues
of the Social Question*, Chapter Three; F.T.
Smith translation, at eLib.com]
Governments have, by and large, more or less,
lurched and staggered into some kinds of
relations to the problem of abortion, but the
real questions have never been answered, and, no
matter how much they are ignored or "denied",
they remain a source of unavoidable social
turmoil.
So, it seemed to me that the world needs a real
answer to this question, just as, almost a
century ago, Rudolf Steiner, from "initiation
science", gave the world a real answer to the
"social question" of his day. But the problem
was, again, that as far as I knew RS was silent
on this subject. So, it would seem that any
comparable answer to the present problem would
likewise have to come from "initiation science",
from the True Initiates of the present day. But
here again, as far as I know, no True Initiate
has spoken in public about this problem. Ergo
. . . so it seemed, finding the answer was up to
me. Problem is, I am not an Initiate and am not
likely to become one in this incarnation; I do
not see into the plans and thoughts of the Gods.
But . . . since I was trying to develop the
ability to think 7foldedly, and since I had
already made some little progress in that
direction (or at least so I allowed myself to
believe, or maybe wishfully conjecture) . . .
then, perhaps, I could solve this problem
through more 7fold thinking. And this
undertaking would not really be "esoteric"; it
would not require that I become an Initiate; it
would be merely "exoteric", the kind of
development of thinking that must come into the
general culture in the course of forward
evolution, as I understand Bondarev to say.
And so, I conjectured, if I could pursue this
7fold thinking as far as the "perception of the
(Platonic) Idea" of the matter, then the true
solution to the problem would naturally follow.
And this would be the *true* solution, not
merely the kind of wishful, prejudiced pseudo-
thinking that mostly fills the usual public
discourse on this subject. For 7fold thinking
is inherently objective, and the apprehension of
the True Idea, the Archetype, would naturally
lead to implications that would be above and
beyond the merely subjective.
Yet, as I found out before, and as I have
related in previous posts on this theme (and
hence need not repeat here in full), the higher
stages of the 7fold thinking process are given
only to the pure in heart, and I was still not
pure in heart. But even so, the pursuit of
7fold thinking was hardly even a choice for me
any longer; it had just about become my *raison
d'etre*. I *had* to go forward, and if that
entailed being "pure in heart", then I would
simply have to try, somehow, to be that,
whatever it might take. I had come to the point
in my life where I almost had no choice, if I
were to justify my presence upon the Earth.
As I said above, I was aware that my previous
attempt at 7fold thinking had been somewhat
artificial, in that I had the 7fold pattern as
described by Bondarev always in my mind, and
that I had probably therefore somewhat forced my
thinking to fit into that preconceived template.
I resolve to *try* not to do the same again,
this time; I was just going to follow the
thinking wherever it led in the pursuit of the
solution to this problem. But as time wore on,
and the longer I was stymied, and the more
frustrated I became, I did become desperate
enough that the solution to the problem itself
became more important and the 7fold template
less important. But, realistically, I must say
that the template never entirely disappeared
from my mind.
I will give in this post a report on my attempt,
first as a more-or-less sketchy and simplified
narration of my personal struggles and
experiences, then as an evaluation of my course
of experience, and then as a summary of the
whole.
***
NARRATION:
The problem as I first conceived it took the
form of the "antithesis" between the "right to
life" of the unborn child as opposed to the
limits on the rightful, socially healthy power
of the state. This form arose because my socio-
political thinking had been shaped by my
understanding of Steiner's concept of the 3fold
commonwealth. I conceived that, in the 3fold
commonwealth, the rule of the political "rights
state" would be limited by the authority of the
parents over the child, this authority being
granted under the "freedom" that holds sway in
the "cultural sphere". I understood that the
cultural sphere encompassed all child-rearing
and so forth, but I did not know whether this
parental authority was to be absolute and
unlimited, whether this authority might be
limited by some childrens' "rights" that might
be protected by the rights-state.
I also perceived another conflict in the long-
term trends of socio-political evolution: there
is the trend toward greater humane-ness,
"decency", and less cruelty -- and there is the
trend toward greater freedom in and control over
human sexuality and reproduction. These two
macro-trends collide in the socio-political
problem of abortion.
I further understood (from Steiner, I thought)
the futility, or worse, of working out ideal
schemes of socio-political betterment according
to "abstract" wishes or principles. The
realistic alternative, so I opined, was to
realize and work from the deeper truth of the
saying that "politics is the art of the
possible": the true social philosopher must
grasp that which is striving to come forth in
real society, in the real world, and to devise
practical ways of guiding those existing trends
in the right direction. (See, for example, the
lectures published in English as *The Challenge
of the Times* [GA 186; Nov.-Dec. 1918]) It
would be calamitous to try to force impossible
ideals upon any society; the failed, bloody
attempts at social engineering during the 20th
century surely proved that point.
I further gathered (again through Steiner, it
seemed) that only the High Gods Who guide human
and cosmic evolution really know what is
striving to come to fruition in human evolution
and what is therefore really possible to
accomplish therein. And more: that only the
True Initiates can discern those evolutionary
purposes and thoughts of the Gods and bring
those concepts into public discourse. Thus, to
reiterate, the concept of the 3fold commonwealth
came from "initiation science" and could not
have come from ordinary discourse.
And so: it would be impossible for a non-
initiate, such as myself, to divine the "proper"
course for a government to take in relation to
the abortion question; that course could be
delineated only by an Initiate. But, on the
other hand, it seemed that this question is
forced upon statesmen and legislators; they have
to set some kind of course for the governments
in relation to this question, simply because the
question is unavoidable. The legislator can't
afford to wait for the Initiate to speak.
Therefore, it seemed to me the dilemma was
inescapable: the solution to this question is
impossible; still it is necessary.
Yes, it was necessary; someone had to solve it.
As far as I knew, no one else was doing that, so
it was up to me. I was incompetent, but still I
had to work with whatever tools I had. -- I
tried to think objectively; I asked the
question: "What do the Thoughts Themselves say
about the question?" But I didn't get any real
reply, only this -- the Idea (from Steiner,
through my limited understanding) that the Gods
will to bring about the long-range evolution of
Man from near-animality to the status of Spirits
of Freedom and Love, that governments may be
necessary in the course of that evolution, that
political arrangements in various times and
places "should" be conducive to such evolution
-- but also that different political
arrangements might be conducive in different
times and places for different peoples . . . the
upshot being that there might be different
"correct" answers, for different times, and even
now for different places and peoples.
And I really didn't know the answers, and I knew
that I didn't know. I was really open to be
taught by the Objective Thoughts, but I didn't
hear any answers. I considered that, if, as RS
said, *Phantasie* (i.e. the faculty of creating
mental images) is the first channel of Divine
Teaching, I still didn't "see" anything. -- So,
my first tactic for approaching this problem was
to try to pictorialize the question, but I
didn't know how. How could I make a mental
picture of such complex social tensions? These
are not simple and observable like the growth of
a plant, are they?
I came to the opinion that, if I were to solve
this problem, I could not solve it in ordinary
consciousness; I had to move into a higher
consciousness. And I gathered that this higher
consciousness must be some kind of "picture
consciousness", but I didn't know how to "get"
the right pictures. I was floundering;
everything I tried seemed to fail. This failure
went on for days and weeks and months. I won't
try to recount here all the vicissitudes of my
"process" over all that time; that story would
take up too much space and time. I will say
that I made many attempts to change my
consciousness into an objective, universal,
visual consciousness, but that these attempts
always failed to answer my original question. I
did "get" some mental images; some of these
seemed useless; some of them seemed significant,
but I not could find enough meaning in even
these to solve the problem that I had set for
myself. As the weeks and months dragged on, I
sometimes became exasperated with myself for
having assigned myself an impossible problem, a
problem which could be solved only by an
Initiate. But again, I believed that the world
really needed a solution to this problem. If
the Initiates were silent (and they were, as far
as I knew), then ordinary people had to solve
the problem. It was impossible, but necessary.
Again and again: impossible, but necessary.
Impossible. Necessary. . . .
So I tried. The first thing that I had to do
was to stop my mind from running away. This was
something that I had always had to do for inner
Anthro work, and it had always been hard for me
to do. Probably I was a victim of what would
now be called *attention deficit disorder*; I
had always had trouble concentrating and
bringing my mind into focus, and of course these
are the very first things one has to do in order
to "meditate", and especially in order to
"think" as I now intended to do. -- In those
rare moments when I did concentrate, I tried to
bring my mind into an "expanded", non-
subjective, non-point-centered state, in which
the thoughts themselves did the thinking in an
objective, universal process. And sometimes,
when I did that, pictures came to me. Again:
usually these pictures were more or less
meaningless and useless, but sometimes they did
seems to be somewhat meaningful.
Some of the more meaningful pictures were these:
-- I was seeing something from ancient Greek
times, or related to them. I saw the ruins of
what appeared to be ancient Greek buildings,
especially the broken columns still standing.
Before these stood young, Classical Greek women,
wearing the flowing gown with the high, "Empire"
waistline, and with "done-up" hair behind the
head. The whole scene was pleasant, light, and
airy, with a perfect blue sky. I had the
thought: she, the foremost woman, is the Idea,
the Being, of the State. Then, the further
thought: RS says that the State is, or should
be, 3folded. And then that woman appeared to be
flanked by two other Classical Greek damsels, to
her sides and somewhat back. Then I had the
thought: but what is the relation of the State
to abortion? And there appeared a picture of a
bestial, semi-human female head, very jowly,
with greenish, blotchy skin, with fangs
protruding upward from the lower jaw, and with
long, platinum-blondish hair parted in the
middle. And the further thought: this is the
being of abortion; none of the picture-persons
"told" me their identities, but I got the
thoughts anyway. -- At that point I was getting
uncomfortable with the whole undertaking, and I
wanted to run away.
But I pressed onward. A few days later I got
back into that scene, or one very similar. The
Classical Greek damsels were still there, with
the background of the columns and the blue sky.
The abortion-being had morphed into a whole
woman, misshapen and running, or lurching, about
somewhere "below". I was still posing the
problem to myself: what is the right relation
of the state to abortion? . . . and trying to be
open and unprejudiced. Then there seemed to be
a light streaming down on the scene from above,
and I had the thought: all these beings that I
see get their "marching-orders" from above, from
the higher realms of the Gods and Their deep
purposes. But I still didn't have the answer to
my question.
More than a week later I was still at it. This
time I got a mental image of Classical youths,
garbed in white, bringing down a huge scroll and
starting to unwind it forward. And among these
youths were also the ancient Grecian damsels
from my earlier pictures. There was an ambient
atmosphere of holiness, of bringing something
down from the Gods. . . . This picture changed
into a scene of a gathering of more mature men,
bearded, in Classical robes, within an enclosure
with Classical columns; the gathering seemed to
be some kind of formal assembly, deciding
something. The men might have been conducting a
ceremony, or enacting legislation. And again
there was a feeling of sanctity, surely not of
today's political "business as usual", but a
feeling of consecration, of doing something in
concert with the Gods, or as a service for the
Gods. The assembly seemed to be a legislature
gathered in some kind of temple, and it was
implicit that these legislators understood that
they were trying to act in concert with the
Gods. And the legislators conducted themselves
accordingly, perhaps because they had been
educated in the Mysteries. The contrast with
the way that legislation is enacted today was a
"given". (A contrast exemplified, for instance,
by the fact that legislators now do not wear
cultic robes but *business suits*.) -- I had the
thought that maybe these scenes were to show the
echoes of a real "theocracy", when human rulers
acted in earnest holiness because they
understood that the Gods really rule. But still
I had no answer to my main question.
I continued to seek that answer, floundering.
Over a week later I was having thoughts such as
these: Suppose that in the contemporary world a
legislature were convened to re-form the
government according to the 3folding principles
as outlined by Rudolf Steiner? These
legislators would have been "educated" in the
modern analogue of the ancient Mysteries, i.e.
they would have imbibed the concepts of
Anthroposophy, and they would therefore
understand that their task is to form a polity
according to the holy plans and purposes of the
Gods. And suppose that this legislature did in
fact enact all the 3folding principles as given
explicitly by Steiner. And then, sometime,
these legislators would have to turn to the
question of the state's relation to abortion, if
for no other reason, because in the modern world
they had no choice. THEN WHAT would they do?
Steiner left no explicit indications on this
question, so what would they do?
I was back to my original question, and still I
had no answer. I wondered whether these
legislators would have to act according to the
principles of *PoF*, seeking "moral intuition"
"moral imagination". Then I pictured the
guiding angels or supra-angels of evolution, and
wondered whether the legislators would have to
ask these High Beings for the answer, or maybe
even ask Rudolf Steiner himself (carrying the
question to him while falling asleep, as Ernst
Katz suggested). In other words, I was still
groping, still floundering.
Over the next weeks and months I went down
several different roads in attempts to make
progress, all futile. I tried thinking the
question through conceptually, non-pictorially;
I tried asking "conscience"; I tried through
feeling, through the "sense of reality"; etc.,
etc. I tried just about everything except
standing on my head and blowing my innards out
my ears. All to no avail; I was stymied. More
than once the possibility crossed my mind that I
had "chattered" too much the last time that I
posted a narrative of my attempt at 7fold
thinking. (RS said somewhere that the esoteric
student who "chatters" about his personal, inner
experiences loses whatever incipient higher-
cognitive abilities he might be attaining.)
Sometimes I considered giving up this attempt
altogether and going on to something else. The
struggle dragged on and on: day after day, week
after week, month after month: failure,
failure, failure. At one time during those
months I was very sick and it seemed to me that
I might be dying. But I had the thought that I
was *not allowed* to die, for I still had things
to do in this world: for one thing, I had to
take care of my cat; for another, I had to solve
the problem of the right relation of the
government to abortion. This attempt really was
for me "vital"; it was a reason for living. --
Well, obviously, I did not die, but the solution
to the problem still eluded me.
Finally (during the Holy Nights, as it happened)
the logjam started to break. My thoughts took
this turn: I had been believing that the world
needs to have the solution to this problem, from
me or from someone else. But is this really
true: what would happen if no such solution be
promulgated? Then the muddled socio-political
mess that we have now would continue; and
abortions would continue as they do now, and
maybe more so. Then what would happen? Then,
the higher world-order would continue as it
always has: the Gods would adjust the outcomes
according to karma, and justice and mercy would
prevail. To assume that the world "needs" my
solution is to assume that the Gods created
badly and rule ineptly. But whether or not I
fail in this attempt, justice and mercy will
prevail nevertheless. -- I had further thoughts
in this vein and others, but mainly, something
had changed in my mood: the desperation had
abated, and a new serenity settled in.
I don't now recall exactly why, but I went back
to re-read Steiner's basic writings on the 3fold
social order. Maybe I was just ready at last to
go back and start all over again. Steiner wrote
about a century ago, when the most pressing
social problem, besides nationalism, was class
conflict, the unrest and the demands of the
emerging proletariat. It hit me what Steiner
was saying: that the real, driving force behind
these demands was not really economic *per se*,
but was the largely unconscious demand of the
proletariat for *human dignity*.
Of course! How could I have been so dim as not
to have seen it all along? The driving force
behind socio-political evolution is the "Idea",
the Divine Ideal, of *Man*, of *the Human
Being*. The Gods had implanted this
("Platonic", archetypal) Idea into primeval,
primitive people, and it has been working ever
since, striving to come to realization
throughout "history", into the present. This
active Idea has indeed been mostly subconscious
in most people (as STEINER SAID, mankind dreams
out its history), nevertheless it has been, and
still is, the most powerful force driving and
shaping socio-political evolution. Man on Earth
is evolving toward this Ideal, and usually some
kinds of socio-political arrangements are
requisite for the attainment of this Ideal.
These arrangements change according to the
circumstances and modes of human consciousness,
but the Ideal, the Idea, remains the same. It
is eternal; as STEINER SAID, Man is the religion
of the Gods. -- I had, perhaps semi-consciously,
been looking in the wrong direction for the next
stage in Bondarev's template of 7fold thinking:
the "perception of the Idea". I had been
assuming that the Idea that I needed was that of
"the state", or "society", or something similar.
But the Idea that I really needed, the Idea
behind all socio-political evolution, is that of
*MAN HIMSELF*. And Steiner had, long ago,
practically come out and said as much in his
basic writings on the 3fold commonwealth; so it
was not true the "Steiner left no indications"
about the question I was now asking. He had
indeed "left indications"; only I had been too
stupid to understand them.
After this breakthrough, further thoughts fairly
tumbled out: It would be useless, or worse, to
try to impose some thought-out model upon
society; the only useful and realistic course is
to try to help what is striving to come to
fruition actually come to be. Again, "politics
is the art of the possible". Steiner has given
us the concept of the 3fold commonwealth and
shown us why this pattern is what labors to come
to realization in modern socio-political
evolution. In the past century, the world has
mostly ignored his teachings, much to its
distress. But that concept still needs to be
put into practice, even if a century late. And
within such a 3folded polity, the question of
the state's relation to abortion would be worked
out in accordance with that which is striving to
come to fruition in human evolution: namely,
the Idea of Man, the ideal of human dignity.
I had been tied up with the question of whether
the treatment of children "should" be relegated
to the "cultural sphere" where freedom reigns or
to the "political sphere" where rights are
delineated and enforced. But, upon closer
inspection, I found that Steiner never meant to
exclude children entirely from "rights" enforced
by the political state; for instance, he
proposed that, in a 3folded commonwealth,
children be guaranteed the right to education:
"Only in a social organism of the kind described
here will the rights administration be able to
acquire the understanding necessary for a just
distribution of goods. . . . Rights in such an
organism will result from purely human
relations. Children will have the right to
education. . . . The right to education could be
arranged in that the economic organization's
administration, in accordance with the general
economic situation, calculates the amount of
educational income possible, while the rights-
state, in consultation with the spiritual
organization, determines the rights of the
individual in this respect." [*Basic Issues*;
Chapter Three]
As another for-instance, Wilhelm von Humboldt,
whom RS sometimes cited approvingly regarding
the limits on state power, apparently did not
mean to exclude children entirely from legal
protection or to allow parents absolute
authority over them. A relevant quotation:
"Now, it clearly belongs to the State to provide
for the security of the rights of children
against parental encroachment; and hence to
determine, first, a legal age of maturity. Now,
this must naturally differ . . . .[parents] must
be trusted not to neglect the discharge of a
duty which lies so near to their hearts; and
only in cases where actual neglect of this
responsibility has occurred, or where it may be
immediately apprehended, has the State any right
to intermeddle with these domestic relations."
[from *The Sphere and Duties of Government (The
Limits of State Action)* (1854 ed.) (1792);
translated by Joseph Coulthard]
So, I inferred that I need not have been tied up
with that question; the concept of the 3fold
commonwealth does not entail that children have
no legal-political rights whatsoever. The real
question is: what, in a healthy socio-political
polity, would be those rights, and how would
they be enforced?
I further pondered as to what course healthy
socio-political evolution would take in relation
to abortion, if the deep, driving force
underlying human development were to come to
fruition. If the Gods had implanted the Idea of
Man into the human subconscious, and if this
Idea worked out as the evolving demand for
"human dignity", then what? -- It seemed to me
fairly obvious that, if the human-hood of the
unborn child were generally recognized, then
abortion would be seen as a violation of that
child's human dignity, and therefore the "rights
sphere" would come to recognize the "right to
life" of unborn children and protect it.
Parental control over children within the
freedom of the "cultural sphere" would be
trumped by the more fundamental claim of the
unborn child to the "human dignity" of not being
summarily killed. The "catch" would be the
condition that the humanity, the human-ness, of
the unborn child be generally recognized; under
the cultural conditions now generally prevailing
(in the "advanced" countries) most people really
do not know "the facts of life". The prevailing
scientific-medical "climate of opinion" does not
say accurately what a human being really is, and
therefore cannot tell when human life "begins".
The resolution of this catch could come only if
and when spiritual-scientific knowledge became
much more widespread than it is now . . . and
such knowledge could become widespread only if
and when the "cultural sphere" were to become
much more free than it is now. -- And so, it
seemed to me, that a real resolution of the
abortion question could come in the socio-
political realm if and only if the polity were
first 3folded according to Steiner's
"indications", at least approximately.
I concluded that Steiner had indeed given the
answer to my original question, by implication:
The deep, unconscious wishes of mankind demand
social 3folding (at least in the "advanced"
world). Such 3folding is not only practical, it
is inevitable, in the long run anyway. Once the
polity is more or less 3folded, then the deep,
driving demand for "human dignity" will come to
realization in manifold ways. One way will be
that the human-hood of the unborn child will be
generally recognized, and thus will be protected
by the "political sphere" as a matter of
"rights". -- It all seems so simple once it is
understood that the fundamental force behind
"history" is the Idea-of-Man striving to come to
realization.
I had the nagging worry that not only does the
Idea of Man live in the mass human subconscious,
striving to come to fruition, but also that
there lurk in that mass subconscious many dark,
anti-human drives, inculcated there by the anti-
gods. Indeed, rather obviously, if the Idea-
Ideal of Man were the only force working in
human evolution, then "history" would have been
and still be a pleasant "walk in the park".
Again rather obviously, something else also is
at work. That "something else" must be the
explanation for the fact that no polity has been
3folded in the century since the concept was
given, and I worried that, even in a 3folded
polity, those dark drives might win over the
Divine Idea. I wondered whether any easy
optimism were justified. -- But I pondered such
Steiner-saids as this:
"To despair because one does not believe that a
sufficiently large number of people, even in the
present troubled circumstances, can find
understanding for such [social 3folding] ideas
even if sufficient energy is dedicated to their
dissemination, is to despair of human nature's
susceptivity to purposeful and health-giving
impulses.
"This question, whether one should despair or
not, should not be asked -- rather only this
other: How can ideas which instill confidence be
explained in the most effective possible way?"
[Steiner: *Basic Issues*; Chpt. Three]
Thus, I reasoned that one should try to have
faith in human nature, and that, as Manicheanism
teaches, the Good is primary, and the Evil has
only a secondary, derivative existence . . . and
that, in any case, despair is useless; that the
only useful course of action is to go forward
with positive work. As STEINER SAID:
"Spiritual insight that penetrates to the
essence of human-nature finds there motives for
action that are immediately good in the ethical
sense as well. The impulse toward evil arises in
us only because in our thoughts and feelings we
silence the depths of our own nature."
[*The Renewal of the Social Organism*: Social
Future 3: "Culture, Law and Economics"]
That's where I left this last question hanging.
***
EVALUATION:
I will now pose the question: how far, if at
all, did the attempt that I just narrated follow
the pattern of "7fold thinking"? And the
further question naturally follows: does, or
can, the overall result of my attempt solve the
problem in a way that fits the 7fold template?
According to Bondarev, the natural metamorphosis
of thinking has an archetypally sevenfold
structure:
1. thesis
2. antithesis
3. synthesis
4. beholding (*Anschauen*)
5. perception of the Idea
6. individualization of the Idea
7. unity of this individual and the general
1-2 [THESIS-ANTITHESIS]:
I did find and wrestle with a seemingly
unsolvable conflict, though I could, and still
can, hardly say which side of this conflict is
primary (thesis) and which side is secondary
(antithesis). This conflict is readily apparent
to an observer of social and political events in
the USA, and, I suppose, in much of the rest of
the world. I had already imbibed from Rudolf
Steiner -- somewhat, given my limitations -- the
concept and the correctness of the 3fold
commonwealth, and I had to consider this
conflict within that mental framework.
Therefore I formulated these socio-political
"antitheses" as the conflicts between "the
'right to life' of the unborn child as opposed
to the limits to the rightful, socially healthy
power of the state" -- and also between "the
trend toward greater humane-ness, 'decency', and
less cruelty" and "the trend toward greater
freedom in and control over human sexuality and
reproduction".
The first of these antitheses is more-or-less
conceptual, a difficulty in understanding the
implications of the concept of the 3fold
commonwealth. The second antithesis is a clash
within the long-term movement of socio-political
evolution; this clash is apparent even without
reference to the concept of the 3fold
commonwealth. I conceived, according to my
understanding of Steiner, that any real solution
to the conceptual conflict must be in harmony
with some real resolution of the socio-political
evolutionary conflict.
It now does seem to me that my attempt did
follow Bondarev's template, at least this far; a
real antithesis is brought to the fore of
consciousness, calling for a resolution.
3 [SYNTHESIS]:
Did I ever find a "synthesis" within the
ordinary (Hegelian) framework of dialectic? -- I
now don't think that I even tried very much; I
pretty much assumed all along that these
antitheses were irresolvable within ordinary
consciousness, and that any resolution could be
found only within a higher consciousness. To
me, as an observer of contemporary discourse, it
seemed that the debate over this question just
goes on and on, with no end in sight; for every
line of reasoning there is some equal counter-
reasoning. Something could always be said for
both of the conflicting "sides" of the argument,
and, I suppose, compromises could be made.
Indeed, as far as I know, some socio-political
compromises have been made, at least in
countries where the "democratic" political
process is allowed to work.
Regarding the conceptual antithesis, I did find
that there is no absolute exclusion of children
from the "rights" of the political realm of the
3fold commonwealth. And I still, now, believe
this conclusion to be correct. But it is
nonetheless, within ordinary consciousness, an
open question at to exactly how far those rights
might extend into the realm of parental
authority (within the "cultural sphere"), and as
to exactly how far those "cultural" limits might
stand around parental authority. -- That seems
to me to be about as much of a "synthesis" as
can be found within ordinary consciousness, and
that's not enough to answer my original
question.
Regarding the conflict in the long-term trends
of socio-political evolution, again, I don't see
any real synthesis. There might well be
compromises made, but it seems that such
compromises must remain inconsistent, temporary,
and fluctuating. I don't see any real solution
coming within the ordinary political process;
the conflict remains raw and bleeding, and it
won't go away -- however much some people might
wish to avoid the problem.
According to Bondarev, the "synthesis" brings
*einer Aussöhnung der Gegensätze*, literally "a
reconciliation of the antitheses" [from
"Rhythmisches Denken"]. *Reconciliation*
denotes some kind of settlement or harmonization
of differences. Can such a "settlement or
harmonization" be found in this case at this
stage of the dialectic? -- I don't think so;
that's exactly why this problem is so vexing,
and that was a big reason why I chose *this*
problem as a subject for 7fold thinking. The
problem seems to be insoluble within ordinary
consciousness, and a leap into higher
consciousness seems necessary.
4 [BEHOLDING]:
And this is the stage of 7fold thinking where
the crucial transition into a higher realm of
thinking is made. As I previously mentioned,
STEINER SAID that "in fantasy the force which
helps the spiritual world in all its aspects to
break through into the individual man"; here
*fantasy* means the faculty of creating mental
images. And, as I understand Bondarev, he means
by *beholding* (*Anschauen*) the perceiving of
mental images relating to the thought-stream
under consideration. Did my attempt reach this
stage of the 7fold process?
I think that it did. I did "get" mental images
which seemed to relate directly to the problem
under consideration. Especially there was the
picture of the three Classical Grecian damsels
who seemed to represent the threefold
government. And there was the picture of the
misshapen hag who seemed to represent abortion.
More, above these there was a light and the
angelic, god-like Beings overseeing this Earthly
scene. But to me these were mostly
representative pictures; I did not see in them
enough meaning to indicate a solution to the
question I was asking. As far as I could see in
these pictures, the "state" might ignore
abortion, or enjoin it, or prohibit it, or
whatever. Thus, these mental images did not
answer my question.
Some of the mental images seemed to point to the
*mood* in which the problem should be
approached, but still did not delineate a
specific solution. This mood was already
suggested in the pictures of the god-like
Beings, and came to the fore in some of the
further imagery. The pictures of the scroll
being "brought down" and of the "Classical"
legislators were imbued with a sense of
reverence and sanctity; the contrast with the
prevailing mood of the usual political process
was glaring. These pictures seem to "teach"
that a real solution to this vexing socio-
political problem could be found only by
statesmen who understood their work to be a holy
service to the Gods and for the objective good
of human-cosmic evolution, a work that could not
be done from the usual political attitude of
self-seeking and petty emotionalism. But still,
no specific answer was given as to the exact
solution of the problem at hand.
I think now that the answer to the immediate
question must be: Yes, I did reach the stage of
"beholding", but that "beholding" in itself is
not enough.
5 [PERCEPTION OF THE IDEA]:
This was the place where I was stuck for a long,
long time. I tried and tried to move forward,
and I couldn't. For weeks and months the
failure continued, but somehow I kept trying.
Finally, I went back to re-read Steiner's basic
work on the 3fold commonwealth. Of course I had
already read it years earlier, more than once,
but the continuing failure had made my attitude
fluid enough for me to go back and start over
again. While I was reading, it finally dawned
on me that Steiner was saying that the driving
force behind socio-political evolution is the
demand, largely unconscious, for "human
dignity". For example:
". . . . all the turmoil in the social organism
results from the feeling that existence is
unworthy of human dignity." [*Basic Issues of
the Social Question*, Chapter Two]
The examples could be multiplied. -- I probably
need not repeat hear all that I said above; I
quickly saw that that behind this demand lies,
deep in the human soul, the Idea-Ideal of *Man*,
of *the human being* as a creative archetype,
implanted long ago within the newly-created,
semi-animalistic human beings by the Gods. And
I quickly saw further that this Idea is primary
and that the Ideas of "the state" and so on are
derivative, flowing from the necessity of the
primary Idea coming to the fore over the long
haul of human evolution. Surely *this* Idea of
Man must be the Idea that I needed to perceive
(according to Bondarev's template) in order to
solve my chosen problem through 7fold thinking?
But, if so, then why didn't I "see" it somehow
in my meditative thinking; why did I have to
read about it in plain, prosaic text? -- I'm
guessing, but maybe the answer lies in what
Steiner said about the need to find out by
ordinary means what had already been discovered
in extraordinary consciousness; to quote:
". . . . in the spiritual world there is a
definite law, the significance of which we will
make clear by an example. Suppose that in a
certain year some properly trained clairvoyant
had perceived this or that in the spiritual
world. Now imagine that ten or twenty years
later, another equally trained clairvoyant could
see the same thing even if he had known nothing
whatever about the result obtained by the first
clairvoyant. If you were to believe that this
could happen, you would be making a great
mistake, for the truth is that a fact of the
spiritual world that has once been discovered by
a clairvoyant or by an occult school, cannot be
investigated a second time if the would-be
investigator has not first been informed that it
has already been discovered. . . . Therefore,
already known facts in the spiritual world can
be perceived only when their import has been
consciously grasped as communications already
made. This is the law that establishes for all
epochs the foundation of universal
brotherliness. It is impossible to penetrate
into any domain of the spiritual world without a
link having first been made with what has
already been fathomed by the Elder Brothers of
humanity. The spiritual world sees to it that
nobody can become a law unto himself, saying, 'I
am not concerned with what is already there. I
shall investigate only for myself.' None of the
facts communicated in spiritual science today
could be perceived by individuals, however
highly developed and advanced, if they had not
been previously known. Because a link must be
there with what has already been discovered, the
theosophical movement had also to be founded on
this basis." [*Rosicrucian Esotericism*, "Soul
in the World around Us"; 4th June, 1909;
Budapest; GA 109]
I was not trying to be "clairvoyant", but
perhaps what I was attempting was at least a
kind of semi-clairvoyance: to "perceive" a
Platonic Idea? The 7fold dialectic might well
be an exoteric process, but maybe it is similar
enough to esotericism that this principal
enunciated by Steiner works nevertheless?
Perhaps this is why I could not find the Idea
through my own efforts: because Rudolf Steiner
had already found that Idea and told us about it
by ordinary means? I had in fact read "about"
that Idea long ago, but I had failed to
understand the implications, so I had to read
about it again before I could "perceive" it?
Maybe. But in any case, I now believe that the
relevant Idea has come into my consciousness and
been named. Bondarev's fifth stage of the 7fold
dialectic has been reached.
6 [INDIVIDUALIZATION OF THE IDEA]:
If one allows that the basic, creative Idea
governing socio-political evolution is the
Archetype of Man Himself, then in the present
context the next question becomes: how does
this Idea affect the relation of the
"government" to abortion? -- I won't repeat all
that I already said about this; I will say that
I still believe those considerations to be
essentially valid: The Idea-Ideal of Man,
working within the mass human subconscious as
the driving force of "history", emerges into
politics as the demand for "human dignity".
This demand is gradually extended wider as the
essential human-hood of "other" people is
recognized: to "other" races, to the "other"
sex, and so on. When the human-hood of the
unborn child comes to be generally recognized,
then the demand for human dignity will be
extended also to another "other", the unborn
child.
(Further, as the facts of reincarnation become
more generally accepted, the recognition will
grow that the unborn child isn't really an
"other". It will become general knowledge that
we will all, each of us, sometime in the future,
become an "unborn child"; this "becoming" will
happen many times. Even from the first moment
of conception a body is growing into the form
which was prepared by the incarnating human
being. STEINER SAID:
("Although not yet in a physical body . . . .
the spiritual seed of the physical body which we
were preparing falls ever farther from us and
disappears. We are obliged to witness this: the
spiritual seed has fallen from us; it has gone
down into a physical mother and father, entering
into the forces of generation, into the stream
of generation upon the physical Earth. . . .
while we ourselves as soul and spiritual being
are left behind, feeling that we belong to what
has fallen from us, yet cannot unite with it
directly. . . . the spirit-seed of our physical
body has already fallen from us and is down
there on Earth, preparing the physical body in
the mother's womb . . . ." [*Man's Life on Earth
and in the Spiritual Worlds*; Lecture VI])
This political demand will, first of all,
include "the right to life", and in a (putative)
3folded polity be legislated and enforced by the
"rights state". The fact that the unborn
child's human-hood is not now generally
recognized is due to the general ignorance of
the real "facts of life", which include the
soul-spiritual facts as well as the material
facts. This ignorance is a failure of the
present mass "cultural" life, and that cultural
life could become stronger and healthier only
within a 3folded commonwealth, in which the
cultural life would be freed from economic and
political control. A truly free mass-cultural
life within society would eventually bring
spiritual-scientific information to the public,
and the public would eventually recognize
spiritual-scientific truths and put them into
practice in political ways. I say *eventually*
because this process would of course be long and
hard; the current prejudice toward materialism
runs deep, and the resistance to spiritual
science is strong. But the Truth would
eventually win out, because of Its own inherent
reality and power, and because It is in
accordance with the really deep, underlying
force working within socio-political evolution:
the emergence for "human dignity" deriving from
the Idea-Ideal of Man Himself. STEINER SAID:
"If the life of culture is a free one, evolved
only from those impulses that reside within
itself, then legal institutions will thrive to
the degree that people are educated
intelligently in the ordering of their legal
relations and rights; the basis of this
intelligence must be a living experience of the
spirit." [*Renewal of the Social Organism*;
Social Future 3; "Culture, Law and Economics"]
Thus, to my understanding, the legal
institutions (the "rights sphere") will become
healthy when and only when the cultural sphere
has already become free and healthy. (Or
perhaps in a concomitant development?) And, to
my understanding, a healthy legal regime will
recognize and protect the unborn child because
its human-hood and hence its "human dignity"
will be recognized by those who will determine
that legal rule: namely, "the people", who will
have been educated (in the broad sense) within a
free cultural life.
This -- again, to my understanding -- is what
the Idea-Ideal of Man Himself implies within
contemporary socio-political evolution regarding
the relation of the government to abortion.
7 [ALL-UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GENERAL]:
Bondarev says:
"The cycle is completed with the return of the
idea with which it began, to all-unity. . . .
This is the concluding, seventh element, or the
seventh stage."
"(7) *Wir erkennen die Einheit des
Erkenntniszyklus als all-eines Glied.* (We know
[recognize, cognize, perceive] the unity of the
cycle of knowledge [cognition, understanding,
perception] as [an] all-one member.)"
What does this "all-unity" mean in this case? I
take seventh, *all-unity* element to mean in
general an overall view, a summary, the "upshot"
of the whole 7folded thought-cycle. In this
case the "upshot" would seem to be some overall
explanation of how the driving force of socio-
political evolution (i.e. the Idea-Ideal of Man)
produces a 3folded commonwealth (a "polity") of
which the "rights sphere" (the law-giving and
law-enforcing branch) treats in some way the act
of abortion.
As I noted above, the concept of the 3fold
commonwealth did not come from ordinary
philosophizing consciousness, and could not
have. It came from "initiation science", for
only the True Initiate has the consciousness
with which to see the deep, underlying,
archetypal plans and trends of human evolution
(which is part, probably the main part, of
overall cosmic evolution, of which the same
point holds: only the True Initiate can see
it). And likewise, the recognition (in my
mind) of the Idea-Ideal of Man as the
underlying, driving force in the mass human sub-
consciousness came from the True Initiate. The
commonwealth develops toward 3foldness because
it (the commonwealth) is (or must become) a
reflection of the 3foldness of the archetype of
Man. (Or perhaps both are 3folded because of
some deeper reason?) STEINER SAID:
"Healthy thinking and feeling, healthy will and
aspirations with regard to the formation
of the social organism, can only develop when it
is clear, albeit more or less instinctively,
that in order for the social organism to
be healthy it must, like the natural organism,
have a threefold organization." [*Basic
Issues*; Chpt. Two]
So: what is the overall "upshot" of this
application of thinking? -- The original
question that I asked was this:
"What is the correct (cosmically correct,
objectively correct) relation of the government
(any government) to abortion?"
Has this question been answered? -- I think now
that it has been answered, in a way, at least
for governments of societies that are modern
enough to have reached the stage of socio-
political 3folding. The answer is not very
definite and specific, just as the concept of
the 3fold commonwealth is not definite and
specific, and not meant to be applied in exactly
the same way to all societies in all times and
places. Thus, the answer is only in terms of
very general, broad macro-trends in socio-
political evolution. And this answer rests upon
the fundamental insight that specific,
"abstract", ideological prescriptions for socio-
political applications are useless (or worse),
and that any real, beneficial socio-political
management must be flexible and suited to the
real practicalities of the situation:
"politics is the art of the possible".
But the further insight, coming from "initiation
science", is that the political "practicalities"
that are apparent to ordinary, short-sighted
vision are not usually really practical at all;
deeper insight, again from "initiation science",
is needed to show what is really practical, what
is required by the real, deep, mostly
subconscious forces working in socio-political
evolution. Thus, the implementation of the
concept of the 3fold commonwealth is really
practical for the modern world -- and perhaps,
hopefully, sometime in the not-too-distant
future, the increasingly disastrous failures of
ordinary political "practicalities" will lead
people to become desperate enough to accept this
fact before the disasters become too very
disastrous.
So, the next question arises: given that the
implementation of the 3fold commonwealth is
necessary, what follows from this fact in
relation to abortion? -- I have already stated
in my narrative how I saw the implications. I
still believe this view to be essentially
correct, and I don't want to be too repetitious
here. The essential thing is the striving of
the (largely unconscious) Idea-of-Man within the
human soul to come to expression in "the large".
At the present stage of evolution (in the
"advanced world" at least) "the large" includes
a polity which grows toward 3foldedness, as a
reflection of the 3foldness of the Human
Archetype; Rudolf Steiner has given, profusely,
the broad outlines of this 3folded commonwealth.
I "infer" (if that's the right word) from all
this that the continuing emergence of the Idea-
of-Man as reflected in the polity will naturally
bring about the political (legal) recognition of
the human-ness and hence the protection of the
human dignity of the unborn child; such legal
recognition will, as I would expect, entail at
least the broad restriction on the practice of
abortion.
Nevertheless, it is still rather obvious that
other macro-trends in social evolution oppose
such legal restrictions. Perhaps the strongest
of these tendencies are the "women's liberation"
movement and the "sexual revolution".
What is the upshot for the "women's rights"
movement? -- Right now, for that movement (or at
least the "liberal" wing of it) the legal right
to abortion is a fundamental tenet. But this
movement needs to see that the same long-tern
social force that brought about the movement's
success will also, eventually, bring about a
defeat of this fundamental tenet. The women's
rights movement succeeded (largely, in the
"advanced" world) because the full human-ness
and hence the human dignity of women had to be
legally and socially recognized; this
recognition was inevitable, given that the Idea-
Ideal of Man Himself had to be more fully
realized in the polity. But as this Idea-Ideal
becomes even more fully realized, so will the
human-ness and human dignity of unborn children
also become recognized and protected in the
polity; the growth of consciousness makes this
development inevitable. So, this "women's
movement" needs to do a lot of rethinking; it
needs to see that it is putting itself on "the
wrong side of history". At present, that
movement has the upper hand on this issue in
most of the "advanced" countries. But that
supremacy is largely due to the push for
abortion that comes from other, more sinister
"movements" behind power-politics, movements
which have their own reasons for wanting
abortions. This "wrong side of history" might
seem to have the power now, and that might well
be so; but in time this power will start to slip
away, and more-and-more desperate measures will
be needed to maintain that power. But
eventually, perhaps after a very long time, and
after much death and destruction, that power
structure will crack and fail, and the
inevitable will happen. The "establishment"
women's movement might become panicky and
frantic, but eventually it will have to
recognize reality, maybe only after the aging
and removal of the old guard and the emergence
of new leadership. And perhaps, hopefully, a
renewed women's movement will come to see that
this reality is not an enemy but a friend.
It could be said that the long-term trend toward
greater sexual and reproductive freedom takes
priority over the long-term trend that might
legally recognize the "human dignity" of the
unborn child. But the fact is that most
abortions are done precisely because the
involved sexual activity is *not* really free.
Legal and social freedom in sexuality are far
from being evolved into real, inner freedom over
sexuality. Most of the demand for abortion
arises because of pregnancies that are
"unplanned", that follow from sexual activity
that was compulsive and not freely chosen in
consciousness. Indeed, I suppose that no one
(save perhaps a relatively few Satanists and
suchlike) would consciously, knowingly undertake
sexual activity with the aim of abortion.
Therefore, in the long run the trend toward
greater consciousness and freedom in sexuality
should work against abortion rather that for it,
whenever that freedom evolves so as to become
inner rather than merely outer. That
development likely lies far, far in the future,
and for the short term "sexual freedom" will
likely continue to produce many unwanted
pregnancies and hence much demand for abortion.
But as consciousness grows, the consciousness of
the human-ness of the unborn child will
inevitably increase, and the demand for the
legal protection of the unborn child will
prevail over the demand for abortion. If a
really democratic process be allowed to work,
then, over time, ways could be found to protect
the unborn child while ameliorating the
difficulties resulting from unwanted
pregnancies. There might be more readily
available, easier, and more efficient means of
contraception; there might be more support of
"unwed mothers" (much as existed before the
general legalization of abortion) and easier,
more humane adoptions; there might be better,
more vigorous ways of chasing down runaway
fathers; etc., etc. The crucial point is that a
real democracy be allowed to work, and this can
happen only within a 3folded polity.
(Satanists and suchlike know very well that the
unborn child is human, and so they know that
abortion, even when unknowing, is a powerful
black-magickal "working" -- and therefore they
seek to bring about as many abortions as
possible. This is the source of much of the
"deep political" push for abortion, behind the
usual, "surface", political discourse. At
present, in most of the "democracies", the
political marketing of abortion comes in the
form of an appeal to "choice", to "freedom", but
if that push continues, this appeal will fade
away and the "right" to abortion will become the
duty of abortion. Indeed, in China this is
already happening as a reality.)
-- It might be further objected that legal
restrictions on abortion are unenforceable and
futile, that there will always be ways of
getting around the restrictions, and that as
technology advances those "ways" will become
easier and the restrictions more futile. But it
could also be said that even though such
restrictions will likely never be completely
enforceable, still they could be enforced
somewhat and that therefore some lives could be
saved -- and that saving any innocent human
lives is worthwhile, even though not all such
lives can be saved. The legal recognition of
the human-ness of unborn children would make the
effort to protect them mandatory, even if it
must remain unsuccessful to some extent.
Probably any real legal restrictions on abortion
would call into existence a vast criminal
underground in which illegal abortions would be
obtained. Indeed, in the USA, in the not-too-
distant past, during the general reign of strict
legal restrictions on abortion, disgust with the
corruption, danger, and cupidity of that
criminal underground drove much of the movement
for "liberalization" of those restrictions. One
might say that the mere existence of such an
underground will be harmful to society. But on
the other hand, one might reply that in any
decent society that's exactly where abortion
belongs: in the criminal underground with the
other murders.
And one might say that any attempt at real legal
restrictions on abortion would provoke a civil
war. But once more, on the other hand one might
counter that we're already in a civil war, and a
very bloody one at that: it's just that now one
side is doing (almost) all the killing, and the
other side is doing (almost) all the dying --
but most of that killing and dying is done out
of sight, so that most people can "live in
denial" of the existence of the ambient civil
war. Ergo, we have no choice as to whether we
will have a civil war; the only choices we have
are as to what form it will take and how it will
be fought.
It might be objected that the example of the
proletarian demand for human dignity does not
apply to this case, for the proletarian movement
is to promote the self-interest of the
proletarians themselves, while the unborn child
naturally cannot effect a political movement for
its own human dignity but must wait upon the
good will of others. But history shows that
there is ample precedent for political movements
that were not merely for the narrow self-
interest of the people in the movement. In the
USA, for instance, there is the historical
example of the White abolitionists, who were not
themselves suffering from slavery and were not
likely to have it inflicted upon them.
Nevertheless, out of altruism for the "human
dignity" of "others" (Afro-Americans), those
White abolitionists did carry out a movement for
the abolition of (Negro) slavery, and this
movement was in the end successful, even though
only through a bloody and destructive civil war.
-- Therefore, I don't think that it is
necessarily hopeless to expect a successful
political movement of some (those already born)
for the legal recognition and protection of the
"human dignity" of "others" (the unborn).
Successful altruism in politics is not entirely
unheard-of. (And again, growing knowledge of
reincarnation will bring the realization that
the unborn are not really so "other";
sometime[s] in the future we will all be
"unborn" children.)
But what creates the demand for abortion now? --
A large part comes from fear, from economic
insecurity. And "perfect fear casteth out all
love". The mother is afraid of poverty in some
way: that she is alone, that she cannot
"afford" a child, that her career will be
disrupted, etc. But in a 3folded commonwealth
much of such economic insecurity would be
eliminated. A child would not be an economic
liability but an asset; the child would be
"provided for" in the same way that all people
would be provided for: as a matter of "rights",
not dependent on wages. A legislature guided by
a concern for human dignity could take steps to
make runaway fathers be responsible, so that the
mother would not be left entirely "alone". (It
is possible that some people might try to
exploit such provisioning in a cynical,
sociopathic way, but an alert legislature, with
experience, should find ways to eliminate such
exploitation.) -- Another driving force behind
the demand for abortion is ignorance: many or
most people simply are not aware of the human-
ness of the unborn child. But again, in a
3folded society people would be educated within
a free cultural life, which would not be warped
by economic and political pressures.
Eventually, over the long haul, such an
"education" would bring knowledge of the soul-
spiritual "facts of life" to the people, and
most of these healthily educated people would be
able to recognize such knowledge. -- But still,
much of the demand for abortion derives from the
fact that a pregnancy is a health crisis for a
woman, sometimes a deadly crisis, and some women
just want to avoid that crisis. But is also a
fact, not now very well-known, that an abortion
is also a health crisis, sometimes in ways that
are not readily apparent. And again, a free
cultural life, not distorted by economic and
political forces, would educate women about the
whole health picture of pregnancy and abortion.
Indeed, a medicine within that free cultural
life would naturally become more "holistic" --
again, over the long haul.
What is the upshot for the present "pro-life"
movement? -- I suppose the main point is that
this movement needs to become more realistic and
practical, and I would also suppose that its
continued failure would make it eventually seek
new approaches to action. And eventually it
would see that it cannot succeed as a "single
issue advocacy" movement, that the problem of
abortion cannot be solved in isolation from the
other problems of society; this movement must
look at the whole socio-political situation.
And hopefully, perhaps after many long years of
frustration and failure, the movement might come
to see, as an "holistic" approach, the necessity
of overall socio-political 3folding.
Admittedly, that's not very likely now, but time
and growing desperation might bring needed
changes. Those in the movement might be
heartened to learn that "history is on their
side", that the essential, driving force in
history is the demand for human dignity, and
that this demand will eventually extend to
include the unborn child, whose human-ness will
come to be recognized. Then the movement would
see that the way to accomplish legal protection
for the unborn child is to create conditions in
the overall polity that will allow the real,
deep demands of mankind to work through to
realization. All this might well seem
impractical now, but long, continued failure
would perhaps induce people in this movement to
take a new view as to what is really
"practical".
But overriding all supposedly "practical"
considerations, there remains the deep,
underlying, irrepressible demand for "human
dignity". In the long run it is "impractical"
to ignore or suppress this demand, and as long
as laws exist an humane, a truly human polity
must eventually make a legal statement in
support of the "human dignity" of the unborn
child. In the long run, to express this demand
in real ways is the "practical" thing to do in
politics. The alternative is to continue with
"politics as usual", which entails the continued
slide toward general disaster, and how
"practical" is that?
In the end, the fact remains that the Idea of
Man is the most basic evolutionary force working
within the mass human psyche, and it will
therefore override any other, opposing forces.
These other forces will have to find ways to
live in harmony with the most basic, stronger
force, if they are to live at all, in the long
run. STEINER SAID:
"The questions of the present and the near
future are not of the kind that can be solved by
the intellect; they must be solved in a life-
process, and that life-process must first be
created. Modern humanity has only a first
inkling of the real nature of the social
question. It will assume its real form when the
structure of the social organism is such that
the three life forces underlying all human
existence can rise in their true form from a
vague instinct into conscious thought."
[*Renewal of the Social Organism*; 17: "The
Basis of the Threefold Social Order"]
-- I began this inquiry, within ordinary
consciousness, with the conflict, the
"antithesis", between the arguments for and
against legal restrictions on abortion. I
didn't really find, within ordinary
consciousness, any "synthesis" of these opposing
arguments. My transition to a higher
consciousness of this question began with some
mental images, which I took to represent the
(3folded) government, abortion, and the lofty
guidance of evolution. The imagery turned into
what seemed to be some kind of legislature which
was trying to implement the concept of the 3fold
commonwealth, in a mood of reverence and
sanctity, with an awareness of and a will to
bring the godly, righteous plans of the Higher
Beings into Earthly realization.
But the question naturally arises about this
fantasy: in the real world how could such a
reverent, 3folding legislature ever be convened?
-- It must be admitted that now the prospects
don't seem very bright. (I think that right
now, in the USA, a constitutional convention
would be catastrophic; the participants in such
a convention would be chosen by the same Powers-
That-Be that now determine ordinary legislation,
and any resulting constitution would therefore
embody the interests of TPTB. At least the
present Constitution, however it is twisted and
mangled, was not originally written for those
corrupt interests.) But "ever" is a long time.
Even now, in the "advanced" world, it's pretty
obvious that the wheels are coming off the wagon
of the socio-political-economic machinery.
Perhaps in the ensuing turmoil people will be
casting about for new ideas, and might thus
become ready for the social-3folding idea?
Maybe; but The Powers That Be have long planned
for a major macro-crisis and intend to use it
consolidate their own power, perhaps even to set
up the Earthly rule of the "Antichrist". And it
must be admitted that TPTB have been largely
successful with such efforts in previous macro-
crises. And it must be admitted even further
that the control of TPTB has grown to such an
extent and that the mass consciousness is so
dismal that the prospects for their continued
success seem very "good". Indeed, in the USA
for example, the present situation of political
consciousness is so preposterous that I doubt
that the founders of this republic could even
have imagined how bad things would get. As I
have noted before on these e-lists, the mass
Consciousness Soul is being suppressed to an
amazing extent, and "the people" are languishing
under mass mind-control.
Could this mass mind-control be broken, and
could the mass Consciousness Soul emerge in the
near future? -- I don't know the answer to this
question. But as I have already said, despair
is useless, and the only beneficial course of
action is to "keep trying". For an
Anthroposophist, I suppose that this means to
keep trying to bring people the Truth of
Anthroposophy, in the hope that this Truth will
indeed make people "free", in this case to be
"free" of mind-control and "free" to develop the
Consciousness Soul. The essential point about
the Consciousness Soul is that She appreciates
the objectivity of the Truth, and such
appreciation rests upon a healthy "sense of
reality". If the mass of people develop a real
sense of reality, then the seemingly impossible
will become possible. STEINER SAID:
"It is only this lack of a sense of reality that
stands in the way when one tries to bring
fruitful ideas to bear upon modern social
troubles." [*Renewal of the Social Organism*;
19: "Longing for New Thoughts"]
(And there are rumblings coming from behind the
scenes to indicate that The Powers That Be might
in fact be teetering. For instance:
<http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1026-financial-tyranny-final>
I don't know how much truth might be in such
rumblings, but I'm enough of an optimist to hope
that there might be real reason for such hope
for the near future. The optimism expressed at
the indicated link, for instance, does not rest
upon a belief in the mass awakening of the
Consciousness Soul, but once the power of TPTB
is broken, then maybe such an awakening will
follow?)
Anyway, the transition to the next stage of the
7fold dialectic did not come in a picture-
consciousness, at least not directly. But
perhaps it did come derivatively, from the
higher consciousness of Rudolf Steiner, when I
(finally) understood what he had said about the
real, deep driving forces behind socio-political
evolution. And in a flash (it seemed that) I
saw (understood) the relevant Archetypal
(Platonic) Idea and Its "implications" in the
present case. So, finally, now I am trying to
wrap it all up into the seventh stage of the
"dialectic"; the cycle is complete, and this,
thus, is my present attempt at 7fold thinking.
***
SUMMARY:
I began this effort with both personal motives
and altruistic ones. I wanted to learn how to
*do* the 7fold thinking that Bondarev told us
about; it seemed that my present incarnation was
culminating in this particular need for my own
development. And I wanted to solve the problem
of the right relation of the government to
abortion, both for my own curiosity (if that's
the right word) and because I wanted to "help";
it seemed to me that "the world" seriously
needed to have this question answered, *really*
answered. All these motives combined to push
the present attempt at 7fold thinking.
And, although the attempt was stymied for a long
time, was ragged, was messy -- still, somehow,
in the end, the question did actually get
answered . . . or, at least that's what I allow
myself to believe. Anyway, I don't believe that
I have seen or heard of a better answer, not
even in Anthro discussions. Admittedly, I don't
keep up with most Anthro discussions, not even
in English, much less in German, the primary
language of Anthroposophy. But even the little
that I had read in German, the little that I
could understand of it, wasn't very impressive,
to my mind. -- If anyone out there knows of any
discussions that maybe I should see, I'm willing
to be informed.
So . . . such is my second attempt at 7fold
thinking. As I said before, I think that we
need an army of 7fold thinkers, but I haven't
see one yet. Such an army would have to be
recruited from those who consciously resist many
of the influences of modern life. It does seem
that much of modernity conspires to keep people
from thinking: pollution of all kinds, chemical
and electromagnetic; manifold distractions,
iPhones, Facebook, TV, etc.; frantic hurrying,
the pressures of "making a living"; etc., etc.,
etc. (And here the word *conspire* is no mere
metaphor.) But for those who do manage to
*think* despite the resistance of the counter-
forces, the victory and the achievement will be
all the greater. Those people will form the
core of the little legion that will save
civilization and culture, if they are to be
saved at all.
Right now, I get the feeling that I'm hung out
here all alone with this "7fold thinking"
business. (Again, I'm willing to be informed
differently.) I would presume that Bondarev and
his cohorts are working in this vein, and
probably better than I am, but if so, they are
on the other side of the world and writing in
different languages; I'm pretty much stuck in
English, and I don't get online much anyway, so
I don't know what the Bondy party is doing.
Anyhow . . . again, as I said before, I believe
that if the culture is to progress, or even to
survive, it needs 7fold thinkers, and I'm hoping
that my example will provoke or inspire others
to join in the development of 7fold thinking.
That's a big reason why I'm exposing myself . .
. (um, ahem) in public the way that I am. Heck,
if even I can think 7foldedly, just limping
along with all that I have going against me,
then plenty of others could do it too, and
better.
-- Maybe the bigger question is: what does this
"answer" about the relation of the government to
abortion mean for the wider world? -- Probably,
I suppose, it won't mean much of anything if it
doesn't get to the people who might be able to
do something with it. And I'm not sure who
these people are; maybe some others within
e-earshot know and will get this info to the
place(s?) where it might have some effect? The
concept of the 3fold commonwealth hasn't gotten
very far in a century, and what I'm proposing is
a further development of it, or a further
necessity. I don't see the future; in the
coming crises maybe the right people will step
in at the right time and place in the not-too-
distant future, and give exactly the right push
to bring the 3folding concept into realization?
Or maybe Anthroposophy will have to survive "in
the catacombs" for centuries before the wider
civilization will be ready to accept the
3folding concept (if there still be any
civilization in a few centuries)?
(And if the polities in the "advanced" world
actually be 3folded, there might well follow the
extra added bonus of the dissemination of "free
energy" devices. I think that the main reason
that Steiner himself did not build a real
"Strader machine" was that, from his Initiation
knowledge, he decided that it would bring more
harm than good as long as social 3folding had
not become a reality. [See, for instance, the
lecture of Oct. 12, 1918; GA184; included in the
English edition of *Three Streams in Human
Evolution*.] This surely is not the main reason
for socio-political 3folding, but if that
concept does become a reality in the "outer"
world, then many surprising benefits could also
ensue.)
I don't know what will happen; but I still say
that despair is useless or worse; it doesn't
help anyone or anything. When socio-political
3folding does come into Earthly reality, and
when the legal recognition and protection of the
"human dignity" of the unborn child is
accomplished, those processes will likely be
long, contradictory, and disorderly -- simply
because that's how politics works in the real
world. (Having myself wrestled with the problem
of abortion, I can well appreciate that even
people of good will might be perplexed to the
point of helplessness by this problem.) But the
point is that politics can't really "work"
unless and until the polity be 3folded, more or
less. STEINER SAID:
". . . . real life breeds contradictions. He who
thinks realistically will seek to institute
facilities the contradictions of which are
compensated for by other facilities. He may not
believe that a facility which to his mind is
'ideally good' will, when put into practice, be
without contradictions." [Basic Issues*; Chpt.
Three]
And again, if there be a real hope of genuine,
beneficial socio-political reorganization, such
will require not only good intentions but true
understanding of the "object" to be reorganized.
In Anthro-speak, it requires "moral technique"
in the large. STEINER SAID:
". . . . effective moral activity depends on
knowledge of the particular world of phenomena
with which one is concerned. . . . Moral action,
then, presupposes, in addition to the faculty of
having moral ideas (moral intuition) and moral
imagination, the ability to transform the world
of percepts without violating the natural laws
by which these are connected . . . . This
ability is moral technique. It can be learnt in
the same sense in which any kind of knowledge
can be learnt. . . .
"In so far as knowledge of the objects within
our sphere of action is necessary for acting
morally, our action depends upon such knowledge.
What we are concerned with here are laws of
nature. We are dealing with natural science, not
ethics." [*PoF*: Reality of Freedom: Chapter
Twelve: "Moral Imagination"; GA4]
In this case the "natural laws" of which
knowledge is needed are the laws of socio-
political development. But these "laws" are not
to be found within ordinary consciousness;
exoteric philosophers have been floundering,
flubbing, and failing since forever to find
them. They can be found only within the higher
consciousness of "initiation science", and from
that science Rudolf Steiner has given us the
essential concepts. Not every political
reformer need be an Initiate, but a really
successful reformer needs at least to be
receptive to the teachings of the True Initiate.
Right now, to my eyes, the present situation in
this regard looks dim. At the founding of the
US republic the Founders, or at least enough of
them, had read their Montesquieu and been
educated by Freemasonry, before Masonry had
become too corrupt. Today, as far as I can see,
no comparable situation exists; most politicos
haven't even heard of the 3folding concept, much
less understood it and seen its necessity.
(Within the core of the dark political power
groups the situation might be a little
different; these people do know of
Anthroposophy, and they fear and hate it.) Yet
again, admittedly, I don't see very far, and I'm
willing to be better informed.
I'm trying not to sink into despair. I probably
will live long enough to see "the wheels come
off", and I would like to be fairly comfortable.
Perhaps we, most of us, will be denied comfort .
. . but what can we do? Give up or keep trying;
that's the choice. We can keep trying inwardly
and outwardly; we can do whatever one's personal
situation allows one to do. For some people the
"outward" might mean "spreading the word". But
whatever we might be able to do outwardly, we
can still remember and practice Steiner's
admonition about the "inner": inner work is
real work for the world. STEINER SAID:
"The student must work his way upward to the
realization that his thoughts and feelings are
as important for the world as his actions. . . .
by perfecting ourselves we accomplish something
not only for ourselves, but for the whole
world." [*KoHW*; Chpt. V]
Here's hoping,
Robert Mason
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