2010
Humanity's Choice as Foreseen by Rudolf Steiner
by Richard C Cook
richardccook.com (August 04 2010)
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian philosopher and esotericist and founder of one of the key modern spiritual movements in the West. He is best known for his books and lectures before and after World War One, when he founded the Anthroposophical Society with its present-day headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland. After World War One, Steiner and his work were criticized viciously by right-wing nationalists in Germany, which caused him to give up his residence in Berlin. Among the critics was Adolf Hitler, who attacked him in print as a traitor to Germany for his efforts to promote peace.
The work of prophetic thinkers like Rudolf Steiner makes clear that the history of humanity proceeds through the evolution of consciousness, where changes take place in the psyche of people well in advance of their outward manifestations. Thus an understanding of what is happening before our eyes is never simple, nor can it be taken at face value. Discernment requires a level of knowledge that can only be achieved through study and insight.
But only an approach that penetrates deeply into human nature allows us to see the real inner causes of events. Such causes can be positive or negative, constructive or destructive. It is the genius and dilemma of man that we can choose which influences we serve. As Steiner prophesied almost a century ago, we appear today to be at a pivotal point where how we make such choices can determine the fate of the world.
It is perfectly clear that we are living in an era of technological achievement that, historically speaking, began just a short time ago. Steiner said what today is accepted as a truism: that the present era arose from discoveries in the fifteenth century that marked the beginning of the Renaissance, when the intellect of Western man became able systematically to apply the scientific method to phenomena of motion and matter.
The invention that made all else possible was operational by the 1450s: the printing press, first made practical by Johannes Gutenberg of Germany. Over the next four-and-a-half centuries, until the dawn of the twentieth, technology surged in every field, but exploded with the near-simultaneous harnessing of electricity and the widespread exploitation of fossil fuels.
The latest phase took place long after Steiner's death: the use of electrical impulses for high-speed data processing, such that computers are rapidly taking over the human workload. With only slight exaggeration, it can be said that humans are needed less all the time, except to program the computers and keep them humming or to carry out the leftover menial labor that machines cannot yet perform.
The unsolved problem lies in the fact that no one knows how, with declining need for employment, to continue to deliver purchasing power to the jobless masses that businesses require for them to purchase the products which machines can increasingly manufacture on their own. Until now, such purchasing power was delivered through debt-based money creation - consumer lending, mortgages against inflated home prices, et cetera. The collapse of this system is the cause of the current global recession and has set the stage for the huge disruptions that may come next.
Not all nations have been equal participants in the forging of the modern world that is now in crisis. The best at it have been the British and Americans, whose hegemony was established through several centuries of ruthless empire-building, followed by two world wars during which their Eurasian rivals - mainly Germany, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire - were smashed.
The Anglo-American combination, now with America supplying the muscle, is intertwined with a powerful Zionist element centered in the state of Israel but aligned with dominant domestic influences. What can accurately be called the Anglo-American-Zionist Empire is reaching today for total global domination.
The Asian nations of Japan, India, and even the somewhat restless China, have largely been incorporated into the imperial order. Latin America has long been within the American sphere of influence, and Africa is being re-colonized commercially. The Islamic world has been under imperial attack since Britain and France dismembered the Ottoman Empire after 1918.
Only the enigmatic Russians seem to stand today on the outside looking in, their nation oddly still alive and increasingly powerful after the furious financial assault from the West, leading to the "collapse" of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. This took place when a fall in world oil prices was engineered, causing the Soviet Union to lose access to hard currency.
How have the Anglo-American-Zionists come so far in what is historically such a short period of time? Two features stand out.
The first is state violence: the absolute lack of restraint in the use of weapons of destruction against non-English-speaking peoples, including the ships of war natural to seafarers and genius in the invention and utilization of guns, bombs, airplanes, and missiles. They also pioneered nuclear weapons, which only they have used against a live enemy.
The second is financialization: their ability to generate vast amounts of money through a banking system unrestrained by law, custom, or conscience, one that exercises the power to capitalize phenomenal economic and institutional growth. The basis for this power is a symbiotic relationship between big banking and big government, whereby the former can create money literally out of nothing and charge interest for its use, while loaning the latter sufficient funds to wage its wars and keep the domestic population docile and dependent through spending on social welfare programs.
The impetus for the US government to spend huge amounts of fiat money for financial system bailouts, economic stimuli, et cetera, skyrocketed after the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 and 2008. The collapse led to the ongoing worldwide recession which is not and cannot be overcome through conventional means such as Keynesian deficit spending.
The rest of the world has failed to keep up with Anglo-American-Zionist proficiency and were overthrown in the wars cited above. The primary regions that might have challenged the Empire were continental Europe, with its strong historical investment in the rules and procedures of law and government, and Asia, with its spiritual traditions unsuited to unbridled commerce and warfare.
The Anglo-American-Zionists have had no such constraints, ever since King Henry VIII's epochal break with the Roman Catholic Church in the first half of the sixteenth century for reasons related to his six successive marriages.
This eliminated the chief obstacle in the Western world - a unified Catholic Europe - to the elevation of greed for gain to the status of a socially-approved imperative for action. The title of the celebrated book published in 1904 by German sociologist Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - documented the link, if not the identical psychological sources, of the two ideologies.
The Reformation came at a key moment of history, when the technological age was receiving its formative definition. With the Reformation having a geographic base in Great Britain and Northern Europe, the rulers in those regions were able to form lasting alliances with powerful banking families who now were entirely free of the traditional Catholic opposition to usury.
Oddly, Martin Luther also was strongly against usury and other predatory trade practices but did not prevail. With the Reformation, religion as a factor in defining the morality of economics was swept away. The symbol of what now transpired was the Bank of England, established in 1694 with the aid of bankers who had come over from the Netherlands with William of Orange at the time of the Glorious Revolution.
Thus did trade and commerce backed by military might take over the world, with Great Britain at the helm. The industrial revolution made that nation a manufacturing powerhouse as well. When Britain's power declined, the US was able to step in by rescuing the "Mother Country" from destruction during World Wars One and Two.
After World War Two, especially with the creation of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank assuring the replacement of the pound with the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the US maneuvered itself into the driver's seat. But it was the same Empire, with the same aims and characteristics.
Rudolf Steiner wrote extensively about the three major elements of human life that throughout history have contributed to a balanced and sane existence whenever it could be found. His core idea was known as the Threefold Social Order.
The first element is the economic, defined as the production and distribution of commodities, which obviously prevails today as the controlling force for most societal action.
The second is the legal/governmental, where, says Steiner, the rule of law should have as its first priority the protection of human rights and of fairness and competition in manufacturing and trade.
The third is the spiritual/intellectual/cultural, allowing for the free development of individual human capabilities.
Each of these elements, said Steiner, should function independently within their own spheres. The economic sector should not try to control the government or spiritual institutions, government should not operate businesses, and the spiritual/intellectual/cultural sector, including education at all levels, should be free to propose principles and ideals for the economy and government to implement.
Unfortunately, this model has failed to be observed or even noticed by the vested interests that profit from social paralysis and breakdown.
People today are seeing their rights disappear, not only among nations over which the Anglo-American-Zionists rule politically or commercially, but even among their own domestic populations. The alliance between big banking and the government leaderships it controls throttles the legislatures and the courts where human rights should be defined and protected. Documents like the Magna Carta, the US Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights have been shredded. The legal profession, which should be the social guardian of human rights, sells itself to the highest bidder or acts as the prosecutor for the corporate-owned imperial state.
In the area of spiritual/intellectual/cultural life, we see the increasing standardization of government-run school systems and the suppression of all non-collectivist ideas. We see domination of higher education by corporate-sponsored foundations and think tanks, the co-optation of churches by political players who support the Empire's wars, and the push for Zionist interests in every policy area. The dumbing-down of the population by financier-owned media have turned the population into the "sheeple". Such half-human, frightened, and heavily-medicated creatures are fit only for zombie-like obedience to the imperatives of consumerism and militarism.
The importance to human life of efficient economic development, especially given the current world population, cannot and should not be denied. But the problem is not economic development per se. The machine is here to stay. Nor need we be too sentimentally concerned about the rate of consumption, as economic output is naturally self-limiting based on resource availability.
Waste and abuse have their own built-in consequences if people are ignorant enough to brush them aside, and we all have choices in this regard. Perhaps of greater concern should be engineered scarcity, where corporations limit availability of goods and services to root out competition and fix prices.
Even more serious, Steiner wrote, is the lack of balance among the three major aspects of human endeavor, causing the destruction of human dignity and decency everywhere. If anything, conditions have gotten worse since Steiner's day.
It is the lack of balance that is pathological. It invites control of society by people completely unsuited to exercise it, due to their level of immaturity and lack of truly human qualities. In fact, many of those in charge of the Anglo-American-Zionist Empire seem anti-human in character and have been that way for a very long time. One could even hypothesize, as did Steiner, that many of them are sociopathic or even demonically-possessed.
Steiner pointed out in lectures from the early 1920s that in Great Britain and America these possessed people were managing affairs from behind the scenes through secret societies. From this observation we recognize such organizations contemporary with Steiner as the Round Table and the Society of the Elect, founded in Great Britain by Cecil Rhodes and Lord Nathan Rothschild, and the Council on Foreign Relations, established in the US after World War One by Colonel Edward M House using Morgan and Rockefeller money. House, we recall, was the power behind the throne during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, practically becoming Wilson's "familiar spirit".
The trajectory the Empire embarked upon almost a century ago has not changed. Today the denouement is at hand. The present situation, unless sufficient numbers of people wake up to the way in which they must act immediately to ensure a balanced social order, including at least some of the controllers themselves, can end only in catastrophe, which Steiner in his writings foresaw.
In my opinion, there are four ways this possible catastrophe could come about–alone or in combination.
One is a third world war, where Russia, China, Iran, and/or other nations would make a stand against the obliteration of what remains of world culture by the Empire.
The second could be a violent worldwide revolution of the masses against all forms of economic injustice.
The third would involve a comprehensive enslavement of mankind by the imperial controllers, using advanced technological means to suppress all remaining vestiges of free thought and independent action.
The fourth may be a widespread collapse resulting in breakdown of economic systems, social anarchy, disintegration of infrastructure, and return to primitive conditions.
The elite of the Empire clearly prefer the third option and are rapidly moving toward it. But they are also well-advanced in preparing for numbers one and two. Number four is more problematical. We see those with available resources now stockpiling supplies, purchasing country property, creating arsenals of weapons, et cetera. Big business and big government have drawn up elaborate contingency plans, with the military prepared to institute martial law.
Many people, including so-called progressives, make the mistake of believing a fifth option lies in more control of economic, legal, and cultural matters, including education, by government. This puts them at odds with so-called conservatives, who want to reduce government funding for programs that benefit the lower- and middle-income sectors, while augmenting spending on the police and military.
Rudolf Steiner was an opponent of socialism, which as an economic system has been thoroughly discredited. It should also be clear that government involvement in any economic activity means more entrenched bureaucracy, standardization, taxes, court action, accounting overhead, forms, paperwork, police power, and stifling of innovation and initiative.
These are complicated issues, but my own view is that looking to government to rescue us is a historical dead-end and is often just an excuse for the controllers to extend their power. Many believe this is the hidden meaning of the Barack Obama phenomenon.
How else to explain how this unknown Chicago politician with a murky background came out of nowhere to attain the heights of power by repeating a one-word slogan: "Change"? Much of his campaign funding came from the financial sector that benefited when he continued Bush administration programs to bail them out after the crisis of October 2008.
The one major area where I believe government should do an about-face would be to break the monopoly held by big finance on the creation of money out of thin air which they then exploit by lending at interest. This government-chartered privilege is the bedrock of elite control.
I have written about the ways this system should be reformed, including facilitation of mutual credit clearing exchanges and acceptance of local currencies in payment of taxes. But the best way for governments to combine greater human freedom with concrete economic benefits may be through an international basic income guarantee as a means of promoting human dignity while introducing much-needed consumer purchasing power.
Fortunately for humanity, the hellish materialistic ideology that the Empire espouses, from which the tragedies of the twentieth and early 21st centuries have proceeded, may be peaking. Today, increasing numbers of people have grown to feel that their being consists of more than their physical bodies or than the mere sum of their lives, in Steiner's words, "between birth and death".
The masses worldwide increasingly do not want war and oppose economic exploitation. It may therefore be hoped that what is now unfolding is close to the last wave of the horrible disturbances that take place between epochs.
Thus my own view is that a sixth option exists, which is divine revelation arising in a universe where the loving Creator in which a majority of mankind believes does not abandon His children. It would appear, from many indications, that the revelation Steiner forecast is already in progress. But for individuals to benefit, they must seek and find it, as it does not announce itself on billboards or in infomercials.
Steiner spoke of this revelation as a Second Coming of Christ in the Etheric. I believe this revelation is reflected in the proliferation of teachings and movements that focus on individuals entering within themselves through prayer or meditation in search of inner peace or consolation.
This new revelation may be working its way in the world in very practical ways, but always starting with changes in the psyche. Gradually a new attitude can come alive to displace a viewpoint where people worship the idols of their imagination - money, houses, bodily adornment, the people they want to posses - rather than observe the holy injunctions central to all religions to love God and to love their neighbor as themselves.
The new revelation shows up wherever people are aspiring to assure that what is produced in the area of economics does not belong just to the money-masters but to all people.
It would show itself when the world of law and government minds its own business except to assure equal rights for all, along with fairness and competition in the marketplace.
It manifests through spiritual, intellectual, and cultural striving, where the highest goal is unfettered individual expression of Self- and God-consciousness.
Again, according to Steiner, it is the spiritual sector that should give guidance to the economic and legal ones. Someday it will. A sign this is happening is the rapid growth of instantaneous communication through the internet. Whether spiritual revelation can prevent more disasters from taking place remains to be seen and may depend on how many individuals eschew despair and choose to respond to the signs of the times in new and positive ways.
The world is indeed changing, in ways different from what the imperialists have planned. They may try to wreck the world to prevent these changes, but it won't work. As Steiner and other prophetic thinkers made clear, at-one-ment is here and now. Nothing else in fact has ever really existed.
_____
Richard C Cook is a former federal government analyst who writes on public policy issues. His website is www.richardccook.com. His latest book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (2009). He is preparing major article two-part article to appear this fall in New Dawn magazine on "Esoteric Christianity and the World Crisis".
http://www.richardccook.com/2010/08/04/2010-humanitys-choice-as-foreseen-by-rudolf-steiner/
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
by Richard C Cook
richardccook.com (August 04 2010)
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian philosopher and esotericist and founder of one of the key modern spiritual movements in the West. He is best known for his books and lectures before and after World War One, when he founded the Anthroposophical Society with its present-day headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland. After World War One, Steiner and his work were criticized viciously by right-wing nationalists in Germany, which caused him to give up his residence in Berlin. Among the critics was Adolf Hitler, who attacked him in print as a traitor to Germany for his efforts to promote peace.
The work of prophetic thinkers like Rudolf Steiner makes clear that the history of humanity proceeds through the evolution of consciousness, where changes take place in the psyche of people well in advance of their outward manifestations. Thus an understanding of what is happening before our eyes is never simple, nor can it be taken at face value. Discernment requires a level of knowledge that can only be achieved through study and insight.
But only an approach that penetrates deeply into human nature allows us to see the real inner causes of events. Such causes can be positive or negative, constructive or destructive. It is the genius and dilemma of man that we can choose which influences we serve. As Steiner prophesied almost a century ago, we appear today to be at a pivotal point where how we make such choices can determine the fate of the world.
It is perfectly clear that we are living in an era of technological achievement that, historically speaking, began just a short time ago. Steiner said what today is accepted as a truism: that the present era arose from discoveries in the fifteenth century that marked the beginning of the Renaissance, when the intellect of Western man became able systematically to apply the scientific method to phenomena of motion and matter.
The invention that made all else possible was operational by the 1450s: the printing press, first made practical by Johannes Gutenberg of Germany. Over the next four-and-a-half centuries, until the dawn of the twentieth, technology surged in every field, but exploded with the near-simultaneous harnessing of electricity and the widespread exploitation of fossil fuels.
The latest phase took place long after Steiner's death: the use of electrical impulses for high-speed data processing, such that computers are rapidly taking over the human workload. With only slight exaggeration, it can be said that humans are needed less all the time, except to program the computers and keep them humming or to carry out the leftover menial labor that machines cannot yet perform.
The unsolved problem lies in the fact that no one knows how, with declining need for employment, to continue to deliver purchasing power to the jobless masses that businesses require for them to purchase the products which machines can increasingly manufacture on their own. Until now, such purchasing power was delivered through debt-based money creation - consumer lending, mortgages against inflated home prices, et cetera. The collapse of this system is the cause of the current global recession and has set the stage for the huge disruptions that may come next.
Not all nations have been equal participants in the forging of the modern world that is now in crisis. The best at it have been the British and Americans, whose hegemony was established through several centuries of ruthless empire-building, followed by two world wars during which their Eurasian rivals - mainly Germany, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire - were smashed.
The Anglo-American combination, now with America supplying the muscle, is intertwined with a powerful Zionist element centered in the state of Israel but aligned with dominant domestic influences. What can accurately be called the Anglo-American-Zionist Empire is reaching today for total global domination.
The Asian nations of Japan, India, and even the somewhat restless China, have largely been incorporated into the imperial order. Latin America has long been within the American sphere of influence, and Africa is being re-colonized commercially. The Islamic world has been under imperial attack since Britain and France dismembered the Ottoman Empire after 1918.
Only the enigmatic Russians seem to stand today on the outside looking in, their nation oddly still alive and increasingly powerful after the furious financial assault from the West, leading to the "collapse" of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. This took place when a fall in world oil prices was engineered, causing the Soviet Union to lose access to hard currency.
How have the Anglo-American-Zionists come so far in what is historically such a short period of time? Two features stand out.
The first is state violence: the absolute lack of restraint in the use of weapons of destruction against non-English-speaking peoples, including the ships of war natural to seafarers and genius in the invention and utilization of guns, bombs, airplanes, and missiles. They also pioneered nuclear weapons, which only they have used against a live enemy.
The second is financialization: their ability to generate vast amounts of money through a banking system unrestrained by law, custom, or conscience, one that exercises the power to capitalize phenomenal economic and institutional growth. The basis for this power is a symbiotic relationship between big banking and big government, whereby the former can create money literally out of nothing and charge interest for its use, while loaning the latter sufficient funds to wage its wars and keep the domestic population docile and dependent through spending on social welfare programs.
The impetus for the US government to spend huge amounts of fiat money for financial system bailouts, economic stimuli, et cetera, skyrocketed after the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 and 2008. The collapse led to the ongoing worldwide recession which is not and cannot be overcome through conventional means such as Keynesian deficit spending.
The rest of the world has failed to keep up with Anglo-American-Zionist proficiency and were overthrown in the wars cited above. The primary regions that might have challenged the Empire were continental Europe, with its strong historical investment in the rules and procedures of law and government, and Asia, with its spiritual traditions unsuited to unbridled commerce and warfare.
The Anglo-American-Zionists have had no such constraints, ever since King Henry VIII's epochal break with the Roman Catholic Church in the first half of the sixteenth century for reasons related to his six successive marriages.
This eliminated the chief obstacle in the Western world - a unified Catholic Europe - to the elevation of greed for gain to the status of a socially-approved imperative for action. The title of the celebrated book published in 1904 by German sociologist Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - documented the link, if not the identical psychological sources, of the two ideologies.
The Reformation came at a key moment of history, when the technological age was receiving its formative definition. With the Reformation having a geographic base in Great Britain and Northern Europe, the rulers in those regions were able to form lasting alliances with powerful banking families who now were entirely free of the traditional Catholic opposition to usury.
Oddly, Martin Luther also was strongly against usury and other predatory trade practices but did not prevail. With the Reformation, religion as a factor in defining the morality of economics was swept away. The symbol of what now transpired was the Bank of England, established in 1694 with the aid of bankers who had come over from the Netherlands with William of Orange at the time of the Glorious Revolution.
Thus did trade and commerce backed by military might take over the world, with Great Britain at the helm. The industrial revolution made that nation a manufacturing powerhouse as well. When Britain's power declined, the US was able to step in by rescuing the "Mother Country" from destruction during World Wars One and Two.
After World War Two, especially with the creation of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank assuring the replacement of the pound with the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the US maneuvered itself into the driver's seat. But it was the same Empire, with the same aims and characteristics.
Rudolf Steiner wrote extensively about the three major elements of human life that throughout history have contributed to a balanced and sane existence whenever it could be found. His core idea was known as the Threefold Social Order.
The first element is the economic, defined as the production and distribution of commodities, which obviously prevails today as the controlling force for most societal action.
The second is the legal/governmental, where, says Steiner, the rule of law should have as its first priority the protection of human rights and of fairness and competition in manufacturing and trade.
The third is the spiritual/intellectual/cultural, allowing for the free development of individual human capabilities.
Each of these elements, said Steiner, should function independently within their own spheres. The economic sector should not try to control the government or spiritual institutions, government should not operate businesses, and the spiritual/intellectual/cultural sector, including education at all levels, should be free to propose principles and ideals for the economy and government to implement.
Unfortunately, this model has failed to be observed or even noticed by the vested interests that profit from social paralysis and breakdown.
People today are seeing their rights disappear, not only among nations over which the Anglo-American-Zionists rule politically or commercially, but even among their own domestic populations. The alliance between big banking and the government leaderships it controls throttles the legislatures and the courts where human rights should be defined and protected. Documents like the Magna Carta, the US Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights have been shredded. The legal profession, which should be the social guardian of human rights, sells itself to the highest bidder or acts as the prosecutor for the corporate-owned imperial state.
In the area of spiritual/intellectual/cultural life, we see the increasing standardization of government-run school systems and the suppression of all non-collectivist ideas. We see domination of higher education by corporate-sponsored foundations and think tanks, the co-optation of churches by political players who support the Empire's wars, and the push for Zionist interests in every policy area. The dumbing-down of the population by financier-owned media have turned the population into the "sheeple". Such half-human, frightened, and heavily-medicated creatures are fit only for zombie-like obedience to the imperatives of consumerism and militarism.
The importance to human life of efficient economic development, especially given the current world population, cannot and should not be denied. But the problem is not economic development per se. The machine is here to stay. Nor need we be too sentimentally concerned about the rate of consumption, as economic output is naturally self-limiting based on resource availability.
Waste and abuse have their own built-in consequences if people are ignorant enough to brush them aside, and we all have choices in this regard. Perhaps of greater concern should be engineered scarcity, where corporations limit availability of goods and services to root out competition and fix prices.
Even more serious, Steiner wrote, is the lack of balance among the three major aspects of human endeavor, causing the destruction of human dignity and decency everywhere. If anything, conditions have gotten worse since Steiner's day.
It is the lack of balance that is pathological. It invites control of society by people completely unsuited to exercise it, due to their level of immaturity and lack of truly human qualities. In fact, many of those in charge of the Anglo-American-Zionist Empire seem anti-human in character and have been that way for a very long time. One could even hypothesize, as did Steiner, that many of them are sociopathic or even demonically-possessed.
Steiner pointed out in lectures from the early 1920s that in Great Britain and America these possessed people were managing affairs from behind the scenes through secret societies. From this observation we recognize such organizations contemporary with Steiner as the Round Table and the Society of the Elect, founded in Great Britain by Cecil Rhodes and Lord Nathan Rothschild, and the Council on Foreign Relations, established in the US after World War One by Colonel Edward M House using Morgan and Rockefeller money. House, we recall, was the power behind the throne during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, practically becoming Wilson's "familiar spirit".
The trajectory the Empire embarked upon almost a century ago has not changed. Today the denouement is at hand. The present situation, unless sufficient numbers of people wake up to the way in which they must act immediately to ensure a balanced social order, including at least some of the controllers themselves, can end only in catastrophe, which Steiner in his writings foresaw.
In my opinion, there are four ways this possible catastrophe could come about–alone or in combination.
One is a third world war, where Russia, China, Iran, and/or other nations would make a stand against the obliteration of what remains of world culture by the Empire.
The second could be a violent worldwide revolution of the masses against all forms of economic injustice.
The third would involve a comprehensive enslavement of mankind by the imperial controllers, using advanced technological means to suppress all remaining vestiges of free thought and independent action.
The fourth may be a widespread collapse resulting in breakdown of economic systems, social anarchy, disintegration of infrastructure, and return to primitive conditions.
The elite of the Empire clearly prefer the third option and are rapidly moving toward it. But they are also well-advanced in preparing for numbers one and two. Number four is more problematical. We see those with available resources now stockpiling supplies, purchasing country property, creating arsenals of weapons, et cetera. Big business and big government have drawn up elaborate contingency plans, with the military prepared to institute martial law.
Many people, including so-called progressives, make the mistake of believing a fifth option lies in more control of economic, legal, and cultural matters, including education, by government. This puts them at odds with so-called conservatives, who want to reduce government funding for programs that benefit the lower- and middle-income sectors, while augmenting spending on the police and military.
Rudolf Steiner was an opponent of socialism, which as an economic system has been thoroughly discredited. It should also be clear that government involvement in any economic activity means more entrenched bureaucracy, standardization, taxes, court action, accounting overhead, forms, paperwork, police power, and stifling of innovation and initiative.
These are complicated issues, but my own view is that looking to government to rescue us is a historical dead-end and is often just an excuse for the controllers to extend their power. Many believe this is the hidden meaning of the Barack Obama phenomenon.
How else to explain how this unknown Chicago politician with a murky background came out of nowhere to attain the heights of power by repeating a one-word slogan: "Change"? Much of his campaign funding came from the financial sector that benefited when he continued Bush administration programs to bail them out after the crisis of October 2008.
The one major area where I believe government should do an about-face would be to break the monopoly held by big finance on the creation of money out of thin air which they then exploit by lending at interest. This government-chartered privilege is the bedrock of elite control.
I have written about the ways this system should be reformed, including facilitation of mutual credit clearing exchanges and acceptance of local currencies in payment of taxes. But the best way for governments to combine greater human freedom with concrete economic benefits may be through an international basic income guarantee as a means of promoting human dignity while introducing much-needed consumer purchasing power.
Fortunately for humanity, the hellish materialistic ideology that the Empire espouses, from which the tragedies of the twentieth and early 21st centuries have proceeded, may be peaking. Today, increasing numbers of people have grown to feel that their being consists of more than their physical bodies or than the mere sum of their lives, in Steiner's words, "between birth and death".
The masses worldwide increasingly do not want war and oppose economic exploitation. It may therefore be hoped that what is now unfolding is close to the last wave of the horrible disturbances that take place between epochs.
Thus my own view is that a sixth option exists, which is divine revelation arising in a universe where the loving Creator in which a majority of mankind believes does not abandon His children. It would appear, from many indications, that the revelation Steiner forecast is already in progress. But for individuals to benefit, they must seek and find it, as it does not announce itself on billboards or in infomercials.
Steiner spoke of this revelation as a Second Coming of Christ in the Etheric. I believe this revelation is reflected in the proliferation of teachings and movements that focus on individuals entering within themselves through prayer or meditation in search of inner peace or consolation.
This new revelation may be working its way in the world in very practical ways, but always starting with changes in the psyche. Gradually a new attitude can come alive to displace a viewpoint where people worship the idols of their imagination - money, houses, bodily adornment, the people they want to posses - rather than observe the holy injunctions central to all religions to love God and to love their neighbor as themselves.
The new revelation shows up wherever people are aspiring to assure that what is produced in the area of economics does not belong just to the money-masters but to all people.
It would show itself when the world of law and government minds its own business except to assure equal rights for all, along with fairness and competition in the marketplace.
It manifests through spiritual, intellectual, and cultural striving, where the highest goal is unfettered individual expression of Self- and God-consciousness.
Again, according to Steiner, it is the spiritual sector that should give guidance to the economic and legal ones. Someday it will. A sign this is happening is the rapid growth of instantaneous communication through the internet. Whether spiritual revelation can prevent more disasters from taking place remains to be seen and may depend on how many individuals eschew despair and choose to respond to the signs of the times in new and positive ways.
The world is indeed changing, in ways different from what the imperialists have planned. They may try to wreck the world to prevent these changes, but it won't work. As Steiner and other prophetic thinkers made clear, at-one-ment is here and now. Nothing else in fact has ever really existed.
_____
Richard C Cook is a former federal government analyst who writes on public policy issues. His website is www.richardccook.com. His latest book is We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform (2009). He is preparing major article two-part article to appear this fall in New Dawn magazine on "Esoteric Christianity and the World Crisis".
http://www.richardccook.com/2010/08/04/2010-humanitys-choice-as-foreseen-by-rudolf-steiner/
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/
posted by Bill Totten at
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