"What if you were told by a spiritual scientist that due to karmic factors your child's etheric body will make it likely that she will experience psychotic symptoms starting at the age of 21."

About a year ago you made the point that what you want from science is predictions: The ability to make predictions that can be verified and acted upon. I don't remember the exact context, but it could easily have been in response to my tendency to be very weary of any supposed predictive claims. I often seem way too fuzzy for those who seek a science that will allow more "choices" and control of the future.

But I remember respecting how clearing you stated what you need in regards to science. Your disposition (as many who find inspiration in spiritual paths) is towards a science that uses different "objects" from which to base it predictions. My hunch is that you would be much more trusting of what we might learn about the future of a child via communication from a Throne than from analysis of a gene. Perhaps not. In fact, I can't say that I've ever even read comments from you, Tom, regarding Seiner's claims of child development.

I remember at one point in my journey being amazed to read how Steiner would walk into the school room, watch a number of students and then later that day tell the faculty all sorts of things about the children and their likely futures. You can read some of this in the various lectures and talks with teachers.

He tells one teacher that a student in her classroom "has no ego" and will spend the rest of her life without an ego. It might be true! And if somebody takes my daughter's genes and tells me that she very well might have diabetes or something else, wow! I'm not sure I want to know that, but I can easily imagine contexts in which I wouldn't mind.

But it might do us well to pay interested attention in the types of examples we use when we are worried about this stuff. My goodness, to have some cold scientist in a white lab coat tell me that my son will probably grow up to be a psychopath is about as awful as imagining a spiritual scientist wearing a scarf telling me that my son has no ego or has karmic tendencies to commit crimes.

Of course these are fear-based (still important!) imaginations and of course the good people on each side of the issue would have highly intelligent things to remind us of...The good spiritual scientist would explain why an ethical spiritual researcher would almost never reveal that sort of information in that way. And the good mainstream modern scientists are already sharing thoughtful and practical accounts of the limits that would need to be placed upon anything of predictive value we learn from genetics. But this doesn't mean the "good" people will be in charge!!!

Heck, so far I notice that spiritual types who have a lot of sway on earth these days are NOT the kind that tend towards such prudence. They make big bucks and they impress the hell out of people with their accurate insights and predictions. Same with modern mainstream scientists. It seems our world-culture as a whole is in the grip of those who have a certain lust for power and control, regardless if they aim towards a future of clairvoyance or a future of pure technology (or both!).

Steiner was very much a supporter of how we can look at body shapes and sizes and learn about biological/spiritual tendencies for predictive reasons. For those of us who like/love/trust Steiner that doesn't bug us in the least! We find it fascinating. And useful.

But imagine what it looks like to a rather nice person who simply hasn't been exposed to the "realities" of Lucifer and the scientific hierarchy of the angles and Future Jupiter. Imagine that person read Steiner talking about how a certain shaped face on a boy tells us that he will be dull and hardly responsive in certain subjects....I can easily understand why he'd be a bit freaked out by that. Just as I understand why certain people are freaked out by the suggest that low-hanging ears might tell us something about our child's neurology.

Tom, I like your use of "scientific determinism" and I would really want to make sure that it includes spiritual science to the degree that people find spiritual "data" predictive and useful as well.

It is very interesting to me that some of the most outspoken scientific materalists are also some of the most outspoken people advocating that humans have free will. We might find their logic hard to follow, but it is simply a fact that scientific materialism and out and out determinism do not go hand in hand. I disagree with Dennet and Dawkins and Harris just as much as I disagree with mainstream anthroposophical interpretations, but I have to admit that Dennet and Dawkins put much of their time and energy into arguing why we MUST see the reality of free will and human choice. If we don't agree with their "data", that's no big deal. It's not personal. But I think there is a tendency in those who don't ascribe to materialistic science to conflate modern science with the view that we don't make choices.

You end with a clear question:

Who are the “enthusiastic” supporters of free will today to oppose the daily flow of information supportive of scientific determinism? Will our youth be presented with a strong case in favor of free will and a path to freedom? Or has science settled the issue?

Dennet has written a dense book on free will. I don't like it all that much, but he is very enthusiastic about free will and how it fits with science. My niece was in a classroom in New York that Dennett visited and he spoke to the children about science. My sister says that Dennet inspired many of the children to recognize that it is up to them to ask questions and seek answers for themselves and that they can help bring about a wonderful future by trusting the capacity of their own minds to find new questions and new answers.

It would be such a shame if that enthusiasm would need to be minimized due to theoretical disagreements.

My prediction: over the next 50 years we will not find that the most inspirational and motivating voices on the planet will subscribe to a particular type of scientific views. Many will appreciate science but find it unrelated to their social work. Some will be advocates of material science and others will come from various traditional religious spiritual movements. And some will be associated with far out new age fringe movements. I predict that what all of these wonderful souls will share is a heart capacity to bridge all the brittle differences of the intellectual soul (to say in anthropop lingo). Anthroposophists will undoubtedly wish to call these powerful souls Michaelites (and might secretly wish these souls new more about etheric bodies).

If you self-identify with a particular movement, I predict your tendency will be to hope that the future contains more people who associate themselves in a positive manner with your movement. Superstring theorists imagine a better future in which more people accept superstring theory. Anthroposophists imagine a better future in which more people accept PoF's view of freedom and Dennet imagines a future in which more people accept the modern view of the nervous system.

I consider all of that friendly neurosis. It's not friendly when people get tight and mean about it, however. We do see it often become unfriendly.

In PoF Steiner first poses the question as whether we are free or not. He seems to seriously wish that we consider this question. Later in PoF Steiner says this question is rather silly and meaningless. His book pushes for the individual to pay close attention to the quality of his experience. This kind of attention is not generated by the formal question of free-will. That, in my opinion, is why Steiner can say that the question of "free or not free" is not all that relevant. That is also why, in my opinion, Steiner felt comfortable spending most of his adult life not asking his audiences to intellectually ponder that question.

I would slightly change your phrasing of the question. Not because mine is better or smarter or more correct. I would change it only because it would allow me to connect to where I think you are headed with your question. I believe that you, Tom, are much less interested in who hold the "right" views about free will and that you are much more interested in the kind of world that can come about if we exercise true freedom towards and for each other. I'd connect to it this way:

Who are the enthusiastic souls today who live their lives in such a way that they demonstrate the limitations of getting caught up in world-views that imply divisiveness and subtle forms of superiority? Will our youth be confronted with a wide diversity of souls who demonstrate the active and practical and moment to moment reality of real love, real intelligence? Or has the modern tendency towards explicit and implicit forms of fundamentalism settled the issue?

Steiner was fed spiritually by those who held materialistic views and he had to extricate himself from people who held spiritual views that asserted free-will (and vica versa). The spiritual nourishment that Steiner needed while growing up was utterly independent of the world-view of those he encountered or relied upon. In order to understand how Steiner's young heart was truly and intelligently fed, I think we would need to distinguish between world-views and the actual nature of the human being.

Does this sound like I don't value conversations about free-will? Does it sound like I advocate we simply slip into warm fuzzy feelings of love for all humanity? Some people might read my thoughts and think I believe that Steiner was wrong to teach about how body shapes predict children's futures.

No. I was simply stimulated by Tom's post because I believe it brings up very important questions. I don't believe that hope for the future rests upon any type of intellectual conclusions about free will. That's just my opinion, but it grounded in an empirical methodology and open to discussion. I see people living freely, creatively, responsibly and socially who fall on every part of the intellectual "free-will" spectrum. What distinguishes them, from my point of view, is not "what" they believe, but how they live. As Joel points out in one of his essays, people ain't very good at explaining such things. And as Steiner repeatedly pointed out, it doesn't really matter how well one can speak about one's capacity to love. There are many of us, however and of course, who enjoy the process of trying explain and detail such things. And, to that degree, it is wonderful and important that we keep creatively trying!

So I don't see any evidence that one's basic philosophical or lifestyle orientation is a good predictor at how well one is actively taking responsibility for this love. If there is a woman who is excited to know what a genetic examination might suggest about her infants future health, I don't know yet anything about how she lives, the kinds of community she helps build, her capacity to reason and creatively challenge herself or how amazing she is working with children. If there is a woman who meditates on Steiner's Foundation Stone (and considers this an important activity), i know exactly as much about her as I do the other lady. The fun part is getting to know them!

In PoF Steiner first poses the question as whether we are free or not. He seems to seriously wish that we consider this question. Later in PoF Steiner says this question is rather silly and meaningless.

Jeff I understand where you are coming from in this post and agree with the essence of what you are saying but I would like to find where in The Philosophy of Freedom you can find Steiner saying that the question of free will is "rather silly and meaningless".

yea, so at the beginning he formulates the question of freedom as either or and insists that this must be the framing.

in 10-9{9} he says that question is of no consequence. He justifies stripping it of meaning by putting it in a developmental context. I don't consider this a contradiction, but it does show how Steiner was writing from multiple perspectives. He begins by posing a question that he says is the most important question a human can ask. He later takes that exact phrasing of the question and says that his monism considers it to be of no consequence.

Tim, what is your take on the relationship between the content of one's world-view (spiritualist, materialist, phenomenologists) and creative, responsible living? Do you find that people who subscribe to spiritual beliefs demonstrate more freedom/creativity/responsibility than those who don't?

Jeff

In PoF (Poppelbaum translation) Rudolf Steiner states:

1.1    Is man in his thinking and acting a spiritually free being, or is he compelled by the iron necessity of natural laws? There are few questions on which so much ingenuity has been expended. The idea of the freedom of the human will has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn opponents in plenty.

10.7    According to the Monistic conception, then, man's action is partly free, partly unfree. He is conscious of himself as unfree in the world of percepts, and he realizes in himself the free spirit.

10.9      Monism, then, is in the sphere of genuinely moral action the true philosophy of spiritual activity (freedom). Being also a philosophy of reality, it rejects the metaphysical (unreal) restriction of the free spirit as emphatically as it acknowledges the physical and historical (naively real) restrictions of the naive man. Inasmuch as it does not look upon man as a finished product, exhibiting in every moment of his life his full nature, it considers idle the dispute whether man, as such, is free or not. It looks upon man as a developing being, and asks whether, in the course of this development, the stage of the free spirit can be attained.

Per the above Steiner quotes, as developing beings, if we through our own inner work have been blessed to develop to the place of genuine moral action, then we will experience that sometimes our actions are unfree, but we know (experience) when they are free, and most importantly we will know the difference.

If you take PoF and jump around taking a sentence here and a sentence there haphazardly, and then attach your own prejudices to what is expressed it is easy to arrive at a conclusion that is erroneous.  Steiner never said "the question of free will is rather silly and meaningless."  If we are going to quote Steiner to make a point, we can at least attempt to quote him correctly.

Love to all.

Cheers,
Patri

The first thing that strikes me is:

#1. We've got this amazing book in which Steiner opens up with a question (formulated in a specific way) that he claims is of the upmost importance for one to consider. Later in the same book he points to that exact same question and says that his philosophy considers it "to be of no consequence."

people could use that sort of thing against Steiner, but we know better. I've been involved in many many many study group and will admit I'm surprised that this metamorphosis isn't more commonly enjoyed by students of PoF. I don't think it is enough to minimize the change by simply pointing to the development realities that Steiner is speaking of in chapter 10 (but I think that, at least, is a start).

#2. The second thing that I think is striking is:

You can find many lectures in which Steiner says he is paraphrasing a section of PoF, but if that's what he is doing then he is utterly redefining the word paraphrasing. But even more extreme: in a few lectures, Steiner actually says he quoting himself from PoF but his words couldn't even be considered poor translations of PoF. People get a little upset with me when I paraphrase loosly Steiner, but I think it might be a good thing that they don't read those lectures!!!! Well, I guess he mostly gets off the hook because he's Steiner but....

....but I actually think the whole point of PoF is exactly why Steiner never had a problem saying that "In PoF I said quite clearly that..." and then he goes into something that really is only indirectly and implicitly a part of PoF. What I like even more is that if you collect as many of these instances where Steiner says, "I said very clearly in PoF that..." you start to see that what he claims to have said quite clearly is not only often said at all but sometimes these supposed clear statements don't fit that well together!!!

I've actually now taken that to be a wonderful strength of the book's message. I also think the book makes clear why Steiner had no problem reinterpreting it from context to context. It is more than just that the message is living. But at first I was a bit peeved when he quoted his own book so dramatically incorrectly.

#3. I do a fairly good job referring PoF quotes to their exact places in the text and useing quotation marks when I am quoting his words directly. I can see why my use of "silly" may have rubbed you the wrong way. But I don't think I nor Steiner see "silly" to be mean spirited. I have no problem letting "of no consequence" and "meaningless" hang out in that context. The "silly" gets to come along for the ride because when talking about the scientific (spiritual and materialistic) fixation on the value of prediction, often very silly things get obsessed over; you can see this in Waldorf Schools just as easily as in hard-core proponants of the genome project.

But points #1 and #2 really are useful for PoF research. Point #3 reminds me how important it is to continue using quotes and referring specifically to the text.

Tim, I'm going to think more about your question, but my first take is that helping another discover and cultivate his or her maximum potential is severely limited by the degree to which the teacher or mentor or therapist or leader has unconsciously set certain limits on his or her understanding of his or her own maximal potential. That said, each person is undoubtedly sharing to the best of their ability, regardless of our blind-spots. As a rule of thumb, I'd say we move forward the more we drop our explainations and cultivate our qualitative descriptions. But I want to think about your question more.

Jeff

Senate passes bill banning genetic discrimination

link

By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 25, 2008

WASHINGTON — The vast promise of an era of personalized medicine based on genetic testing long has been haunted by a disturbing possibility: The same data that could alert people to serious medical problems might be used to deny them jobs or insurance coverage.

But Thursday, the Senate voted 95 to 0 to outlaw such discrimination, with the House expected to add its approval quickly.

The bill, which President Bush has agreed to sign, does more than protect those who undergo genetic testing: It marks a significant milestone in the effort to develop a 21st century architecture of laws to govern the revolutionary changes sweeping science and medicine.

"It's the first civil rights bill of the new century of life sciences," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said. "We made sure today that our laws reflect the [scientific] advances we are making."