1 School of Spiritual Science Goetheanum Section for the Social Sciences Section Communications Summer 2009 We are the Revolution! The Challenges of Globalization On the Future of Human Dignity Family Workplace Warmth in Organizational Enterprise Section Work in Various Countries Events 2009 - 2010
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School of Spiritual Science
Goetheanum
Section for the Social Sciences
S e c t i o n C o m m u n i c a t i o n s
Summer 2009
We are the Revolution!
The Challenges of Globalization
On the Future of Human Dignity
Family Workplace
Warmth in Organizational Enterprise
Section Work in Various Countries
Events 2009 - 2010
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Greetings 3Section Work We are the Revolution! 4 Walter Kugler, Professor in Oxford 13 Congratulations to Gerald Häfner 14
Event Review and Workgroups The Challenges of Globalization 15 Movement and Perception 16 Thinking the Developing Human Being 17 On the Future of Human Dignity 18 Family Workplace 19 Cultivating Family Life 22 Colloquium on Conflict Research 25 Warmth in Organizational Enterprise 27 Lecture Series on Financial Crisis 29
Section Work in Various Countries Egypt: Sekem – A Social Art 30 Brazil: Monte Azul Workshop for Humanity 32 India: Sadhana Village 34 India: Update on the Demeter Movement 35 India: Gateway-Branch in Mumbai 37 Prague: The Soul of Europe 38
Events Preview Coming into Conversation 41Events 2009 - 2010 43
Impressum 44
C o n t e n t s
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Dear Section Member,
We are pleased that we can
send you this report on our
section activities in 2008 and
2009.
We convey our cordial thanks
to Helen Lubin, who translated
many of the articles in this
report.
This new form of the Section
Communications was created
with the help of Benjamin
Kohlhase-Zöllner, whom we
thank very much for this.
Concepts, projects and initial
results shall be presented and
discussed with the Section
members all over the world.
We hope that this new form of
the Section Communications
the conversation among the
G r e e t i n g
members of the Section will
intensify.
If you would like to write a
contribution dealing with the
Section‘s themes for the next
Section report (end of the year
2009), please send your text to
our office before Christmas.
With best wishes,
Paul Mackay and Ulrich Rösch
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We are the Revolution! (Joseph Beuys)
Individuality as the Nucleus of Social Transformation
by Ulrich Rösch
Nowadays when people hear the
word revolution they often feel a little
uncomfortable. And perhaps this is
justified, because in the past, revolutions
have brought a lot of suffering to innocent
people. However, revolutions are caused
by the fact that necessary changes did
not happen at the right time. In nature,
something is always born out of something
similar to itself. Stagnation or resistance
to change, blocks these necessary
developments from evolving as they need
to. This creates a situation in which a leap
needs to be made – this has often resulted
in a violent revolution. If we look at any
organism we can see what happens when
there is congestion, the organism must
resist it otherwise it will die. In this way
Beuys looks at the social organism which
needs urgent changes, so that it does not
completely collapse.
With his multiple „La rivoluzzione siamo
Noi“ (We are the revolution) Beuys points
out, that real transformation must evolve
from the human being. Only man can be
the source for transformation in human
dimension. But it needs also a „we“, an
agreement with others. In modern times the
Section Work
individual being has to connect with others
in agreement. Such a Revolution would be
the solid base for a healthy way of living
together.
Our social life has come into a deep crisis.
The financial crisis is only an outside
phenomenon. Everything calls for a change.
However, in the world today it is hard to
act quickly and as the saying goes people
are more comfortable with „the devil they
know“. Where are the models for the future?
We first need to find new imaginations of
what our future could look like. We need
visions. These new imaginations must arise
from clear, deepened thinking that requires
our will – thinking that is an activity, which
touches upon the true essence of what we
are searching for.
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The concepts and ideas that form a basis
for our visions of new social processes and
organizations must not be made arbitrarily.
First each individual needs to consciously and
actively touch upon what wants to emerge
from the phenomena itself. This is an
indispensable condition to make our world a
better place. Although this is already difficult
enough to carry out, it is not sufficient. We
also need a large enough group of people,
to come into communication and action, so
that the new vision can become effective.
We have two requirements for each
individual working in the social realm. The
first is that through thinking each of us has
to find the essence – or the archetype of
the phenomena and the second is that we
have to become artists. A Goethean scientist
observes a plant, from here he can see the
eternal and natural laws within the plant,
which allows him to imagine new plants
that haven’t existed before but obey to the
eternal laws. An artist then makes a new,
unique piece of art out of the archetype
they have touched upon. This is the process
we must also follow in the social realm. In
doing so we move from social science to
social art, that is we work with not only the
scientist within us but also the artist. Therein
we can become ‚experimenters‘ out of the
concepts of Beuys. In my opinion Beuys is the
most important social artists of our time. As
I have already touched upon it is important
to realize that this social artistic process
cannot be carried out by only one human
being – it needs a community, a faculty, an
association of free individuals. It is here
that a social sculpture can and must grow,
as a renewed and in Beuys‘ terms extended
art process.
Thus we come to the social art: where
human relations and organizations are the
materials that the social artist works with
and whose inner laws he seeks to know
organically. The ‚beautiful‘ artistic social
form has to be created. The social abilities
we develop and acquire are like the crafts of
the social artist. The idea, out of which we
work, rises from the inner laws of the social
organism. It requires from us the artistic
intuition, to act with other human beings at
the right time and in the right way. So the
social organism or parts of it can appear as a
work of art coming out of the cooperation of
free individuals. This does not mean creating
a ‚Utopia‘ but instead it means to transform
the world in such a way that in Schiller‘s
words it creates the appearance of ‚the
beautiful‘ of a real human society.
It is in this way that one can find the first
political actions of Beuys in complete
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agreement with the democratic and
threefold impulse, particularly in his
exhibition at the ‘Dokumenta’ 1972 in
Kassel. There Beuys exhibited his office
for Direct Democracy for 100 days and
discussed with thousands of visitors
patiently the threefold social organism
and the impulse of Social Sculpture. It is
here that you see the connection with the
new threefold movement in Germany the
most clearly.
Joseph Beuys was inspired to meet Wilhelm
Schmundt after attending meetings with
active groups advocating threefolding.
Schmundt was one of the most important
Goethean scientists of that time and was
also a member of the School of Spiritual
Science of the Goetheanum. After studying
Schmundt’s books, Beuys then met him
personally at a yearly congress in Achberg
organized by Wilfried Heidt. Schmundt
investigated and conducted independent
research on the reality of the social
organism. He was obviously a Platonist, who
lived completely in his experienced ideas.
Phenomenology instead of ideology was
his principle. His primary publication „The
Social Organism in its Shape of Freedom“
was published by Herbert Witzenmann (the
leader of the Section for Social Science at
the Goetheanum) as study material for
people connected to the Goetheanum.
Many faithful anthroposophical social
scientists found Schmundts work too
independent and not compatible with their
own studies.
Beuys felt completely different, he
understood Schmundt’s meaning of
Goetheanistic social scientific work from
the start. Beuys admired him greatly as „our
great teacher“ and in a letter to „the dear,
admired Wilhelm Schmundt“, Beuys ends
with „in undiminishing love to you and your
work, truly yours, Joseph Beuys.“ In order
to understand Beuys’ work it is important to
take into consideration this crucial meeting
with Schmundt.
The social organism is always developing,
changing and going through a constant
metamorphosis, sometimes it moves slowly
and at other times it leaps quickly. It is in
this way our economic system has also
developed. The bartering economy evolved
into a money economy and then now into an
economy of faculties (abilities). Production is
based on human abilities and on working
in broad, comprehensive collaborations. As
Eugen Loebl has said, our economic life has
developed into an „integral system“.
Eugen Loebl was a very interesting individual.
He became a communist when he was a
young man. Due to the fact he was Jewish
he was persecuted. He flew to England and
became member of the Czechoslovakian
exile government in London. After 1945 he
went back to Czechoslovakia, this talented
economist was rewarded with a position as
First Deputy Minister of Commerce. But in
1948 he was accused, along with Rudolf
Slansky. The Slansky trial eviscerated the old
Czech communist officials. Loebl and two
of his companions were ‘only’ sentenced to
life imprisonment whilst the other eleven,
including Mr. Slansky were hanged after
a show trial. Loebl served eleven years in
prison, five years he was kept in solitary
confinement.
He found it very difficult to understand what
had happened to him and so he started
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having imaginary discussions with Karl
Marx. He would say to Marx „Come on, we
followed all your concepts and proposals but
we did not create a better human society, in
fact the opposite has happened we created
a system that is even more inhumane and
cruel. What did we do wrong, or where do
you think we went wrong? Or what did you
think wrong?“ He was only allowed to have
the books of Marx and Lenin in prison. And
paragraph after paragraph he studied the
main works of Karl Marx – including „The
Capital“. Remember he was condemned to
a life in prison, so he had enough time! One
of the problems he faced in doing this study
was that he could not write his results on
paper because if the guard had found them,
it would have increased his sentence and
the conditions of his imprisonment were
changed for the worse. So he memorized
all of his ideas and concepts from his studies
by heart. After eleven years Loebl fell ill and
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he was pardoned and released from prison.
He immediately wrote down what he had
discovered in his imaginary discussions with
Karl Marx. The manuscript was smuggled
to Vienna and printed as a book. The result
of his research was also the title of his
book: „Spiritual work as the true source of
common wealth“.
Eugen Loebl was a communist and a
materialist, through being grounded
in reality, he came to a deep spiritual
knowledge of the social realm. Fifteen years
later when he came to know that Rudolf
Steiner had come to similar results through
his occult research he was very astonished.
Loebl became president of the state bank in
Bratislava and was one of the promoters of
the Prague Spring in 1968, where they tried
to shape a new human society. Because
the leaders of the Soviet Republic did not
want a socialist society based on freedom
and democracy, the Russian tanks stopped
this Czechoslovakian experiment. So Eugen
Loebl had to go into exile again, this time he
became a professor at the Vasar College in
New York. He died in Manhattan on August
8, 1987, 80 years old.
In 1974 Löbl became a research fellow at
the Institute for Social Research in Achberg
where he also collaborated with Joseph
Beuys and Ota Sik the former Czech
secretary of state (minister for economy)
and where I worked as a research assistant
in the mid seventies. As Loebl stated the
modern economic system is an ‘integral
system’.
In the economic realm we only deal
with goods and services, and the flow
of economic values. This social realm of
economy stands in polarity to the realm
of spirituality which includes all aspects of
human faculties and skills. Between these
two we have a third, the realm of the
rights, and law. In the spiritual or cultural
realm each human is treated individually.
In the economic realm it is always about
groups, communities, joining and working
together. In the rights realm, we have the
rights that are the same for each human
being, so we could say it is the ‘generally
human sphere’. It is in this sphere that
human dignity can and has to be saved.
When money is given to a worker or an
employee from an enterprise it means the
worker is obligated to give his skills to the
work in this enterprise. These processes
and agreements that come out of the
rights life are physically manifested
in money, which then guide economic
processes. But today the realms are mixed
and the boundaries are blurry. Money has
in its essence no economic value; it is
drawn from the central bank system
in a free and independent act. This free
drawn money is given, based on credit to
the entrepreneur. Such short-term credit is
financing the production of enterprises. In
the hands of the entrepreneur the money
then becomes the money of the enterprise.
There it is used to give an income to all the
co-workers including the entrepreneur. In
the hand of the co-workers the money is
transformed into the right to purchase
the produced goods and services in
the market. The circulation of money is
similar to the circulation of our blood. It is
a closed system with growing and withering
processes. So the bank system has to
take care that the money that has been
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dispatched finally comes back to the central
bank. The circulation has to be closed after
a certain time. These few aspects make it
clear that in the modern economy, money
has metamorphosized into a paper
representing a rights document.
Everywhere where money gets stuck in the
sphere of goods and services within the
economy hinders healthy social processes
– it obstructs and destroys. „We need only
recall the fact that money, by becoming
a real object in economic transactions,
deludes men as to its true nature and by
producing this imaginary effect, at the same
time tyrannizes over them.“ (Rudolf Steiner:
The Social Future, New York, 1972, P. 38).
The third social area, the rights life, thus
contains everything that has to do directly
with the human individuality and not with
the circulation of the economic values. This
concerns each human being in the same
way, therefore this is the realm where
humanity can and must be restored.
One can see from unprejudiced study of
the phenomena that the social organism
has developed in the more recent times in
a three-fold way: First of all we have the
sphere, which has to do with the abilities of
humans, which is bound to the expression
of each individuality. The faculties of
each human being are the source for the
spiritual and cultural life. What each
particular person brings from his or her
personal fate down to earth, can only be
recognized and judged from an individual
consciousness. Only freedom can be the
base of this sphere.
The other sphere is the area of social
initiatives. A producer offers goods or
services and then a group of consumers
judge the value of these. Rudolf Steiner refers
to these relationships as associations. People
working together create the economic
values, which are always directed toward
the needs of other human beings. Herein
the principle of the fraternity realizes
itself in an objective way. Between them we
have a third sphere, the rights sphere. This
is the sphere of agreement, obligation and
entitlement. Out of the principle of freedom,
we must also grant freedom to every human
being. Every human being is equally entitled
to freedom therefore the social principle
we must work with in this third sphere is
equality.
There are three false concepts that strongly
influence our economy today. The first false
concept is private property in the production
sphere. Here we need a new concept
of ownership of enterprises, so that the
entrepreneur can realize his free initiative
and his creativity. To be able to do this he
needs the appropriate means of production.
He has to be free to do with the means of
production what he feels to be right within
the framework that the associations have
assigned. The means of production should
not be sold or inherited arbitrarily. The
concept of private ownership falls away – it
makes no sense in a modern economy.
The second false concept is profit as a driving
force of the economy. Just because a surplus
can be made in an enterprise does not give
the entrepreneur the right to dictate the use
of economic values. Making profit cannot
be the only aim of an enterprise. We need
to replace the material incentive, with an
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incentive that comes out of the interest in
the other, our incentive therefore becomes
meeting the needs of other human beings.
This requires an insight into the general
context of social conditions around the
world – which includes every human being
on earth.
The third false concept is paid labor. It’s a
concept from the bartering economy of the
middle ages. Most of the social conflicts and
problems in industrial society have evolved
from this false concept. The demand by Karl
Marx ‘work cannot become a commodity’,
results from his reaction against this false
concept. The modern human being feels
that his integrity is diminished by selling
his skills. In reality giving an income to the
co-workers and the entrepreneur is not an
economic fact but a matter of the rights
life. Paying for labor is not in line with the
modern economy. The question is to give to
all co-workers in accordance with the whole,
a fair and just income. So the procedure of
giving an income must be taken out of the
economic sphere into the rights sphere. Each
human being has a right to an income, so
that they can live with dignity and integrity.
Only if each human being is given such
an income can they share their skills and
abilities with their fellow human beings.
You can see that if we transform our view
on capital that tremendous change could
happen in the social realm. I would like to
point out again that I am not interested in
making any suggestions for how one could
arrange the world in a better way. I have
just tried to think and describe the reality of
the social processes – the social essence. We
often handle these social processes in the
modern world, but we do not always have
the appropriate depth of understanding.
Beuys had this understanding and deep
insights. He was able to think these
new concepts of capital and money and
he used this understanding for a brought
movement for social renewal.
Beuys exhibiting a photograph of
Rudolf Steiner
I believe that Beuys has achieved the
strongest movement for threefolding and
social sculpture after Rudolf Steiner. If a
large enough number of people start to
shape the world out of these new spiritual
insights it will be possible to make our social
conditions healthier. The aim will not be to
create a new paradise but to delete the
illnesses of our modern society, so that the
social organism can follow its inner being
and laws and develop in a healthy way. All
people who are collaborating in this task are
partners in creating this social sculpture.
In this way ‘we are the revolution!’
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The blackboard sketch “Kunst = Kapital” is exhibited in Beuys‘s installation “Das Kapital Raum
1970 – 1977” in ‚Hallen für neue Kunst‘ in Schaffhausen / Switzerland.
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Appendix
Beuys’ concept of money can be clearly
understood through the sketches he made
on the blackboard (see figure). What
stands out especially on the blackboard is
the circulation of money, on top of which
is written: Kunst = Kapital (art is
capital).
In the diagram „Art = Capital“, one sees
the money circuit in a widened context.
Under this title, Beuys has drawn an arrow
from Art to Economy and underneeth
another arrow which runs counter to the
first, representing mutual dependence.
Above this, he clarifies by writing „Art
– Creativity = labour, work“. This explains
Beuys’ concept of work. Work has its
source in the potential of human creativity.
It becomes active in enterprises where
nature is transformed into a consumable
commodity.
A very essential point of view contained in
this diagram is that the democratic central
bank is depicted as the heart (middle/left).
Beuys links this with a new physiological
perspective that has been established in
Goethean science which sees the heart as
a harmonizing organ and by no means, as
a pump. The central bank is, therefore, not
to be looked upon as a hierarchical organ
that pumps money into the economy at
it’s discretion, but as a regulating and
harmonizing social organ.
The creation of money is determined by the
initiative of people. Next to „enterprises“
(Unternehmungen, on the right), Beuys
writes that the „abilities“ of people are
credited. They are also called „production
capital“, as written on the blackboard.
In this picture we can see both the
production and consumption sides,
marked by a horizontal line. „Documents for
rights“ („Rechtsdokumente“) is written on
the left under Central Bank. Money is not
an economic value anymore, instead it has
become an element of rights life. On the
production side, Beuys lists the various forms
of enterprises, characterized by geometric
figures and below this „Nature“ in its manifold
forms. People, by working together collectively
in production, transform nature through their
skills into consumer goods. The expression
hired labor („Lohn-Arbeit“) is indicated by a
bold „X“; this is the past. In today’s world it
is „Separation of work and income“. One is
activity in the economic realm and the other is
in the legal rights sphere.
On the right hand side, at the bottom of the
diagram, Beuys mentions the Czechoslovakian
economist, Eugen „Loebl“ who was the
President of the National Bank of Bratislava for
some time (in 1968) and who, in his research
said that today the entire production side has,
developed into an integral system („Integrales
System“).
Consumer goods manufactured by enterprises
flow into the market (right/top „Schwelle“ or
threshold under capital „M“= market). All the
money which is given out to the enterprises
within the domain of currency must be taken
into consideration when calculating the prices
(„Preise“) of the product. At the threshold of
the market, all produced goods are taken o
the economic circuit and the money flows
back to the enterprises. One has to now ensure
that the money, as put by Beuys „without
connection to any economic value“ (middle/
top), comes back to the democratic central
bank system. Above the heart of the modern
money circuit, Beuys has written the name of
the Goethean scientist Wilhelm „Schmundt“
whom he reveres as „our great teacher“.
12 13
In March of this year, Dr Walter Kugler, longtime director of the Rudolf Steiner Archives in Dornach, was appointed Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford Brookes University. A communication from the university states that his broad range of experience in the fields of science and art were pivotal to his nomination.
Following studies in music, philosophy, education and political science, and subsequent teaching at the University of Cologne and the Waldorf School in Kassel, Walter Kugel came to Dornach in 1982, where he first worked as a scientific scholar within the framework of Rudolf Steiner’s collected works, editing and processing lectures on social science and rendering Steiner’s life and work accessible through the publication of numerous subject-specific documentation-publications. At the same time, he was being published by acclaimed publishing houses (DuMont, Fischer), and in the ’90’s was actively involved in art exhibitions focusing on Steiner’s blackboard drawings, which brought him as a guest curator to Tokyo, Berkeley, Helsinki, Buenos Aires and many other places. At the same time he authored several contributions to exhibition catalogues, including articles on Belyj, Beuys, Federle, Steiner and Wittgenstein for, among others, the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen near Basel, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Bunkler Sztuki Museum in Krakow, Moscow’s Belyj Museum and the National Gallery in Melbourne.
At Oxford Brookes University, Walter Kugler will work with students of music and art on interdisciplinary creative strategies, as well
Walter Kugler, director of Rudolf Steiner Archives, is offered appointment at Oxfordby Vera Koppehel
as oversee doctoral candidates and develop, accompany and document projects within the Social Sculpture Research Unit. – With characteristic intensity, he will continue his work with Rudolf Steiner Archives, albeit with a reduced workload.
Congratulations to our friend Gerald Häfner of Munich on being voted into the European Parliament. Following various legislative periods in the German Parliament, this is now a new development for him.
We are already looking forward to the reports that he will give in the Section on his work as a member of the European Parliament.
Hopefully this will be possible soon – alongside the strenuous meeting times in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Section Work
14 15
The Challenges of Globalizationby Katharina Offenborn
Short report on conference of March 13-15
in Rudolf Steiner House, Stuttgart
In the middle of March a weekend
conference took place in Stuttgart on the
theme ‘Challenges of Globalization’, put
on by the Section for Social Sciences at the
Goetheanum in Dornach and the Social
Science Research Society, Inc. in Stuttgart.
Anthroposophical speakers such as Prof.
Götz Werner, Thomas Jorberg, Paul Mackay,
Ulrich Rösch, Gerald Häfner, Dr. Dietrich
Spitta and Dr. Christoph Strawe created for
some 350 people a many-facetted picture of
economic connections in an era of global
financial crisis and global economic crisis.
The speakers were in agreement on one
point: It’s time for a change of paradigm
in the economy and for new consciousness
that is open to solutions oriented toward
the future. Competition, wage labor and
antiquated structures which have thrown
us into crisis worldwide need to be replaced
by joint economic activity. This joint activity
has to deal with the heretofore insufficiently
recognized fact that the diverse economic
interests of producers, merchants and
consumers need to be balanced through
contractual collaboration. We MUST come
into conversation with each other; we must
increasingly come together in economic
alliances – in associations – and come to
agreements in which no one is the loser.
Economic life of the future has to be built
on ‘fraternal’ cooperation and not on
competition.
The times are over in which politicians and
economic experts alone can decide how
things should be. In the face of a crisis
in which there is by far no telling what
the consequences will be, co-shaping the
social sculpture (Beuys) that we ARE is more
relevant than ever. It is high time to actually
BECOME the populace from which all public
authority originates (German Constitution,
article 20).
On the whole, the contributions offered
a balanced mixture of thoughts directed
to the future and approaches already in
practice. What remains is a strong impulse
„to come together in one movement“, as
Gerald Häfner expressed this.
You will soon be able to find more on this
in a collection of all of the lectures, soon
to be published by Johannes M. Mayer
Publishers, as well as in an essay by Dietrich
Spitta, Cooperation Instead of Competition
– Autonomy of the Economic Life as an
Answer to the Global Economic Crisis in the
March 2009 issue of Die Drei.
Event Review and Work Groups
16 17
«When we get along we meet in the Rights Sphere»The Association for the Promotion of the General Arts and Social Plastic invited interested parties for the second time to the Study Days ‹Social Sculpture› in Achberg (Germany). 16 participants attended from10th to 13th January, 2008 and worked with social sculpture presented by Ulrich Rösch – and on dance and rod fighting with Miriam Lenz.
Since October 2007 Ulrich Rösch of the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum has been known as <guide> within the realm of social sculpture, leading participants deeper into the essence of social sculpture. The perception and realisation of social laws stood at the centre of this year’s work. Ulrich Rösch says: «When we get along we meet in the rights sphere» But how do we know that it is so? How do I reach this conclusion? How do I know that I am not again being taken in by the ingenious net of an ideology?
Phenomenology instead of ideology is Rösch’s basic approach. An analysis of what is given, the laws, the creative force, recognising the essence of the appearance; this method of perception is what the social scientist attempts to bring to the participants as a tool with which self examination is possible.
«The crux of human dignity, the free development of the individual, is only possible within modern society, if a democratically shaped rights sphere and an economic life based on mutual cooperation can deliver the necessary conditions», says Rösch. To enable this ideal of being-in-the-world is the task of social art today.
Germany: „Social Sculpture“ Study Days : Movement and Perception
by Edda DietrichTearing down old Patterns
Miriam Lenz from Stuttgart (Germany) offered a continuation to the work on ‹theoretical› foundations. She introduced participants to the practical side of rod fighting and dance. But what does rod fighting have to do with social sculpture? Lenz:«It is important to me that we dare to break down old patterns. With rod fighting I can practice this with unfamiliar movements » Rod fighting and dance became a form of non-verbal dialogue with the own self, but also with the self of the other. The first unfamiliar movements grew more familiar and new ‹dialogues› developed within the group leading to a cooperatively created sculpture. Sociale Sculpture without a mention of the work of Joseph Beuys is hard to imagine and therefore the group travelled to Schaffhausen to the Halls for New Art where they studied the Beuys exhibit ‹Das Kapital. Raum 1970 – 1977›. Whilst some took in Rösch’s observations and comments, other explored the work in their own way. This was virtually an impossible task within the short time available but it is a beginning to understand social art in its rudiments.
Small Aspects
It was one of the ‹high arts› of this conference to recognise that the essence of social sculpture is more likely to be expressed in small aspects than in the whole. In its changeability and its capaciousness it appears to be an ongoing process of learning and grasping. As in this case, the art is to learn to trust that the knowledge that we gradually develop and that we already carry within us the essence of becoming a new humanity is slowly unfolding.
Event Review and Work Groups
16 17
Germany: „Social Sculpture“ Study Days: Thinking the Developing Human Being
by Edda Dietrich
The December 18–21 Study Days, held at Humboldt House in Achberg, focused on the question: Can we understand money anew, and use it differently? The fifteen participants from Germany and Austria heard this realm of consciousness discussed by the speakers (Ulrich Rösch, Christian Felber, and Rainer Rappmann).
Sensitized by the current financial crisis, the participants worked with Ulrich Rösch to seek a closer look at the reality of processes in the economic sphere, and to understand the laws inherent in a social activity founded on the dignity of the human being. In this respect, the meeting differed from one of those meetings where an attempt is made to salvage the „capital“ that remains. Here the question was: How would an economy have to be organized to serve the human being?
Referring to Wilhelm Schmundt, Ulrich Rösch developed the picture of a circulation of money that encourages freedom — a river feeding a living social organism where human beings can use their capacities to become creative and meet the needs of other human beings. In this image of a society with human dimensions, money is not a commodity but a legal document that regulates the relationship among individual rights and responsibilities within the community, laws that can always be reformulated through a democratic vote. That is the knowledge side. But: „Knowledge untempered by the senses can never produce a truth that is not harmful“ (Leonardo da Vinci).
Vigilance and Trust
Christian Felber opened up a space for approaching this kind of knowledge. In a fluid movement from the theoretical to the artistic, his contact improvisations stimulated the sensory perceptions of the participants: Where am I? Where is my neighbor? Where are we joined? Every moment produced a nonverbal communication which gradually enabled the I (in orbit around itself) to find its way into a shared dance with its opposite number. These unfamiliar exercises in vigilance and trust soon brought a transition to the question: Do we still need money at all? How would it be to think of a world without money, one based on trust, vigilance, and sympathy?It may be a dumb question, but certainly one permitted here since we are „on a quest for the dumbest“ (Joseph Beuys). This utopia soon appeared on the blackboard next to the picture of monetary circulation according to Schmundt — a careful drawing by Christian Felber. His sketch gave the participants quite a bit to think about and quickly brought us to the limit of capitalism’s untested assumptions. Without money? How would that work? How, then, will the productive labor of the one be balanced against that of another? Who would still work? There was a embarrassed silence; then creative ideas began to flow. Like a kind of mandala, the delicate blackboard drawing invited us to think of the developing human being; it quietly delineated a world based not on competition but on cooperation among all people in accord with the principle of humanity. www.fiu-verlag.com
Brief report on the conference.On Warmth and on Life after Death (with 16th Class lesson)
Childhood: a kind of „heavenly echo“; family: a „school for social community“.Seeing family in this way means including other dimensions – dimensions that extend beyond – or even change – the daily, sometimes tiring, run of things. What is needed is quality in encounters: feeling as though one were the other person, living into the other, understanding through the other.
This can be practiced, and one can fail at it. Is one not closest to oneself? Really entering into what is ‘other’ requires a capacity of seeing conditions from the periphery and of discerning experiences.
Perspectives and experiential dimensions in regard to these issues are sounded in the substance of the 16th Class lesson. Paul Mackay gave a free rendering of this lesson on Friday evening.
Andreas Worel presented in-depth considerations on warmth. Warmth always has something to do with one’s own state of being and that of the surrounding: warmth in us and around us as a dimension that grants earthly-cosmic life; warmth as enthusiasm, as a ‘burning’ for what is ‘other’; warmth as a source of one’s very own, deepest morality, from the inside out; warmth as an all-pervading force.
Doing eurythmy together with Gioia Falk allowed us to experience, in calm practice-
Cultivating Family Life
by Anneka Lohn
sequences, the forces of attentiveness that can be mobilized if, at the same time, there is openness to receiving – „awaken – create – entreat/invite“.
Brief sketches of ideas from Paul Mackay, Urs Pohlman and Franziska Schmidt von Nell demonstrated, in very different ways, areas of experience in which the after-death world unfolds its relationship to here and now. Just as sleep can be seen as the little brother of death, so can one’s awareness – when directed toward waking and sleeping – allow one to sense was it means to exist in ‘the air [atmosphere] of the threshold’.
If one extends one’s considerations to the question of how after-death perspectives are sounded in life here and now, this can be illumined by biographical studies, for example.
It is also clear that giving up habits of thinking, feeling and will can accompany the process of „conscious dying“. Consciously forming one’s soul forces makes it possible to come to responsibility for oneself out of the periphery.
This attitude, as was shown in the ensuing conversation, is the foundation for openness toward the children and toward everything – an openness that needs to be achieved anew every day.
The next gathering within the context of the School for Spiritual Science on the theme of cultivating the family will take place on January 22-23, 2010. It will be based on the 17th Class lesson.
Event Review and Work Groups
22 23
What is between you and me?
by Reinald and Rotraut Eichholz
Conference Impressions
Whoever brings to mind the wedding feast
at Cana will recall that this title expresses
an archetypal image of encounter. This
is what the conference of the Section for
Social Sciences from November 21 to 23,
2008 in Dornach was about. The subtitle,
‘Rights-Sensibility and Ability to Handle
Conflict’ conveys, however, that we are
able to approach this archetypal image
only in a concerted effort. The trade-off for
our growing self-reliance in the age of the
consciousness soul is that we live a life of
differences. This gives its stamp to judicial
practice as well as to the workaday life of
conflict counseling. What specialists of both
kinds work with is something known to
everyone in everyday life, be it in partnership,
family, school and other institutions, right up
to the enormous conflicts in world events. It
is obvious in such situations that capacities
for dealing with conflict need to be
developed – but how? And why is there also
the need for a sensibility for rights? These
questions engaged the nearly 60 conference
participants in in-depth considerations.
In the context of the overall theme, we
attempted to have the direct, interpersonal
encounter-quality of the conference
objectives become the determining
element. For this reason, there was an open
conversation at the beginning, rather than
a lecture. Peter Lüdemann-Ravit spoke out
of his experience with conflict resolution,
Reinald Eichholz out of many years of
working toward a broadened understanding
of the rights sphere through anthroposophy.
Lüdemann-Ravit made it clear that people
who are in the midst of a conflict are not
brought one step forward by abstract ideas
about how things are supposed to be. Only
when a person feels recognized and taken
seriously in his/her needs and feelings, does
the opportunity open up for a common
solution. When we feel attacked, we are
not in a position to have an eye-to-eye
conversation if there is not a process of
‘de-angsting’.
From the rights-perspective, Reinald Eichholz
described that this kind of starting point for
conflict resolution is deeply connected with
a sensibility for the area of rights, even if this
Events Preview 2009 – 2010200908.-11. August Inner Transformation and Social Renewal
Conference, with Art and Science ExhibitionSponsored by Threefold Educational Center and The Center for Social and Environmental Responsibility at Hawthorne ValleyThe Social Sciences Section of North America
11.-12. August Meeting of the Members of the Social Science Section in North Americaat the Threefold Community, Spring Valley, N.Y. with contributions from Bernie Wolf, Meg Gorman, Shawn Sullivan and Ulrich Rösch
04.-05. September Sustainable Development as a Destiny Question – Confronting EvilValues & More (Alexandra Traun) and the Goetheanum
05. September Spiritual Culture of Mothers and FathersWork day of the group Family Culture
10.-11.September Tempo in Organizational Enterprise2nd Interdisciplinary Economic Forum at the GoetheanumPerspectives for persons carrying responsibility in the economy and in cultural life Christine Blanke
12. September Religion – Activity of Freedom and LoveContinuing Education in Self-Development through Family Life Claudia Stockmann
20.-21. September Economics – Methodology and Concepts in the Economics Course of Rudolf Steiner Their Connection to Current Economic Practices Introduction by Paul Mackay, Prof. Dr. Marcelo da Veiga and Ulrich Rösch
24.-27. September Community Building in the Light of MichaelMichaelmas Conference The General Anthroposophical Section
08.-11. October Darwin and the Social Organism (Colloquium)The Natural Science Section and the Section for Social Sciences (by invitation only)
23.-24. October Colloquium on Conflict Research (by invitation only)
13.-14. November Nervousness and Self-AwarenessContinuing Education on Self-Development through Family LifeRudy Vandercruysse
26.-27. November Conversation about the Challenges of our Times(by invitation only)
27.-29. November Coming into Conversation – Encouraging Social CommitmentOpen Section Conference The Section for Social Sciences and the Youth Section
Events Preview
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201022.-23. January School for Spiritual Science: Conference on Family Culture
17th Class lesson
05.-07. March With Differences – In Cooperation: The Struggle for the Middle Public Conference about the Rights Life
16.-17. April Colloquium on Conflict Research (by invitation only)
10. October Meeting on Working with Elders
29.-30. October Colloquium on Conflict Research (by invitation only)
Tickets online at: www.goetheanum.org
More information about us: www.goetheanum.org/59.html
ImpressumEditor and Copyright: School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum - Section for Social SciencesEditors: Ulrich Rösch, Hanna KoskinenLayout and Design: Kohlhase Publishing and Consulting www.kohlhase-consulting.comLegal Notice: All articles are copyrighted. The texts do not necessarily reflect the view of the Section.