I find this list of characters very helpful in fleshing out the 12 points of view, so I'm posting it here.
List of Characters
Submitted by Tom Last on Tue, 04/03/2007 - 9:39am.
I have a fantasy of putting on a stage production of the book with a Steiner type character conversing with 12 other characters. I worked through the book like that once and it can be presented that way.
I thought the characters could bring the words to life like the actors do with Shakespeare. Here is a list of characters. This is hard to do because the 12 views are modified in each chapter but here is an attempt.
Materialism: Scientist
Spiritism: Monk
Realism: Craftsman
Idealism: Scholar
Mathematism: Engineer
Rationalism: Lawyer
Psychism: Psychologist
Pneumatism: Psychic
Monadism: Philosopher
Dynamism: Artist
Phenomenalism: Researcher
Sensationalism: Pagan
Complex play!
Hi Lori,
I've noticed you often filter your ideas through these twelve character structures. It's only since joining this site that I've come accross this 'system' of analysing world-views. Do you know in which books Steiner explicitly developed this idea?
Characters
Hi, Simon
The book is Human and Cosmic Thought, and it can be found on the internet at http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/HuCoTh1991/HCT991_index.html. As far as the characters go, that's something Tom realized on his own, I believe. They were helpful to me, since abstract ideas just bounce off my head like rubber balls (and actually almost hurt!) and the characters brought them down out of the realm of abstraction into life. When I'm trying to inhabit a certain point of view it's almost like an actor playing a part. The characters provide the costumes, speaking style, histories, everything that helps me get into the role. I still don't agree with the 12th character being a Pagan, though. My idea is more like Alchemist or Magician. I like the Magician because he relies on sensations and creates the illusion of reality.
Pagan alchemy and magic
Here is a book review from a Pagan web site. Modern Paganism is an interesting very open minded group with a broad range of interests. The character I have in mind would include interests in astrology, alchemy, and magic.
Sounds like a quick reframe
Seems like, with a quick reframe of the word Pagan, you will be able to unite with this character afterall, Lori!
Modern Pagan
I get it now! I thought of "pagans" as anyone who wasn't a Christian before they did those mass conversions back in the Dark Ages. And, to tell the truth, when people describe themselves as Pagans these days I suspect that it's just a meaningless catch-all term. Maybe not so!
Magician
That is not to say the Magician wouldn't be a better character. The point of the characters is to get a quick feel for the thinking personality type represented by the 12 views. The term Pagan may not be well known enough to work. After more learning we may find better characters.
Sensationalists
After I saw the film Supersize Me I started thinking about how Sensationalists, Materialists and Mathematicists work together in the fast food industry. The Materialists, who are nutrition scientists, think food consists of interchangeable units of protein, carbohydrates and fat. The Sensationalists figure out how to trick the tastebuds into perceiving something that isn't there, like strawberries in a milkshake. The Mathematicists, who are engineers, figure out how to put it all together. The Sensationalists then sell the public the sensation of happiness!
Eating and sensationalism
Hi Lori,
As someone who has always felt themselves to have an incipient eating disorder which I don't actually act out I feel very much in touch with sensationalism and the urge towards it. As a young man growing up in a city with a large Asian population I became rather addicted to Indian food which really became an obsessive craving! Once I had understood the underlying emotional push I worked on weaning myself off a little. Sensationalism carries guaranties of satisfaction I suppose which is why it is so dominant. In Britain at present there is a big debate about the 'obesity' issue. I gather this is also the case in the States. I recently saw a T.V program (filmed in the U.S.) dealing with extreme cases of obesity where people eat compulsively until it, literally, kills them. I was more shocked by the lack of real insight into the phenomenon than the poor folk suffering from it.
Perhaps we need to see the twelve characters inside ourselves before we can understand others as if we were experiencing all potential human states in order to understand them the better.
The Sensation of Eating
Hi Simon
I'd never thought about that before, but it really is true in my experience that the craving for sensation is what drives people to overeat. It doesn't seem to be a materialistic phenomenon because once the physical need is filled, that ought to be enough for the materialist. So it's really a soul craving, at the expense of the body. Because the body is experienced as a hindrance, in that it won't allow us to keep experiencing the pleasure of eating pie or drinking coffee all day.
Alan Watts said somewhere that our modern culture is not materialistic, because we don't really respect the material world. Instead we crave the sensations it provides, and are willing to fool ourselves as to where those sensations come from. For me this means, I want to enjoy the sensation of wearing a brand new sweatshirt, so I go to the discount store and buy one for a very cheap price. After a few months the zipper breaks and I have to get a new one, but that again gives me the pleasant sensation of wearing something new. So it's almost as though I'm renting the sensation of wearing a new sweatshirt rather than owning a good one that might last several years.
I really do believe the last line you wrote is true. Even though I might not really be able to think like an authentic realist, idealist, etc., I can still take steps in that direction. It helps to find the characters among family or friends, or in literature, because then I can ask, "How am I like that charracter?"
Food falls from the skies
Hi Lori,
It's interesting how eating is such a dominant force in our society's sensationalism. I think you are right that it is a 'soul craving'. For short spaces of time eating fills emptiness or the fear of emptiness and, eventually, the spaces have to be filled more and more. Space creates risk -the risk of seeing too much and feeling too much. When I saw this film of these 40stone people I was struck buy how much psychological pain they were in and how they were aware of being judged. I think we can use our intuition to get a sense of what all these different ways of perceiving may feel like. I've often found it interesting to imagine the world of someone I know who is very different from me. For example: I'm a very day-dreamy person who doesn;t really want a body but wants to float above the material world looking down on it, so it's hard for me to function practically and relate to many physical activities. But I try to get a sense of what it might be like to be different to this. When I was a young man I had lots of problems because I was so imprisoned in my own world of feeling that I thought everyone was the same as me inside but only appeared to be different! I think this was because I was locked in certain childhood perceptions that were not really suitable for the adult world. Did I have a lot to learn! So now I find it useful to really see how different people are. Somewhere in PoF Steiner writes that the concept of 'species' is not much use when it comes to people because, in many respects, we are all species unto oursleves. Never fails to get us thinking, does he, old Rudolfus!
Daydreamers
Simon, you could be describing me when you talk about being day-dreamy and unable to relate to the physical world, and also being imprisoned in one's own world of feeling. The only thing that got me to fully incarnate was working on the farm. And the only thing that freed me somewhat from my prison of self-consciousness was to realize that people really couldn't see how worried I was that they were judging me, because they were usually busy worrying about how everyone was judging them.
Incarnation
Glad to have a fellow member of the day-dreaming club! But seriously, it can be hard to incarnate. I think I chose music as my subject because of the world it transported me into. Everything worked well when it was in my head but as soon as it hit the world it floundered -I was like a ship that could never bring its cargo to port. I still love music but am less involved in it directly as I try to develop in other ways. I have not worked for a few years due to poor health and have had a hard time trying to find something new to do. An answer came recently in the form of a training course to become a piano tuner this seems to unite the practical with the music connection, I hope I can make it work.
I think I became too idealist about healing myself, imagining that I could become this mythical, all round super balanced person. Things have gone better since I accepted that I have to work with what is possible. I whish I'd done work on farms when I was younger, it's a good way to get into the body. Since getting ill I have done short stints on biodynamic farms and Camphill Communities near where I live which has helped me a lot.
Yeats the Pagan Magician
I've been thinking for a while now about where W.B. Yeats might fit in the circle of world-views - clearly he had in a certain way a very highly refined and eloquently expressed world view, but until I read this thread it hadn't occurred to me that there might be a large amount of Sensationalism in his world view.
However now it seems obvious, thanks all for this, - after all Yeats was interested in and practiced a kind of magic, e.g. through the "Order of the Golden Dawn", and a constant theme expressed in his poems is that:
All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
("The Phases of the Moon" by W.B. Yeats)
That is, whatever his philosophy may say about spirits and so on, his primary focus is always on the sensible, on the physical world revealed by the senses.
In addition, it's interesting that Yeats found very little connection with Christianity but a great deal of connection with Celtic myth. Hence the label Pagan Magician.
I can feel another "World Views" article coming on!
Regards,
Tim Bourke
Experiencing all conditions!
Lori, this discussion about the twelve 'world views' and how we all might be able to learn to experience them reminded me of a passage in the journal of the 17th century Quaker George Fox. He went through a lot of turmoil before realising he'd been 'given' (no meritocracy here!) a major insight into Christ's working within us. I get a sense he was experiencing the experiences of others in their differing world views which sort of created what we might now call a 'personality disorder'. I'll quote a bit of it, if you don't mind, even though it is in old English:
'The natures of these I saw within, though people had been looking without. And I cried to the Lord saying, "why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils?" And the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God.'
Not the language we would use today of course but powerful stuff! It could be unsettling to experience various world views in this way as we prefer to see ourselves as a unity -but how else can we learn to understand each other?
George Fox
Simon, I think his language is beautiful! What he had to say after this experience would be well worth reading.
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