This is a gif dancer with or without music. Test to see if you are using the left part of your brain or the right. This includes details on what your right brain and left brains functions do for you. If you see this lady turning in clockwise you are using your right brain. If you see it the other way, you are using left brain. Some people do see both ways, but most people see it only one way.

See if you can make her go one way and then the other by shifting the brain's current. BOTH DIRECTIONS CAN BE SEEN. Experimentation has shown that the two different sides, or hemispheres of the brain are responsible for different manners of thinking. The following table illustrates the differences between left-brain and right-brain thinking:

Ethical individualism and social conflict
a study in agrarian discontent and irreconcilable world views
by David Heaf

Organic versus chemical farming
The clash of world views that underlies the agrarian discontent is nowhere more intense than between the organic farming movement and chemical farming interests. The government funded farm scale genetically mutilated crop trials currently under way in the UK are being undertaken primarily to study the effects of the crops on the biodiversity of insects, wild flowers and birds as one of the final steps before commercial planting goes ahead. The key point is that SCIMAC,7 the voluntary body formed by the seed industry to oversee these trials and eventual commercialization, and plant breeders cannot guarantee that transgenes will not escape from genetically mutilated (GM) crops and contaminate organic crops. Clearly we have two apparently irreconcilable standpoints. But the UK government has expressed its belief that organic farming and biotechnology based agriculture can coexist. What form will such coexistence take and how will it be reached?

Ethical individualism
Before attempting to begin to answer this question, it is worth considering the process whereby differing viewpoints become motivations to action. This necessitates looking at ethics, the science of morals. We hear calls for an improvement of public morality, but this overlooks the fact that moral action is a characteristic only of the free individual. Actions motivated by instincts, reflexes, dispositions, maxims, commandments, social and religious customs and even laws are not truly moral. A deed can only be described as moral in the truest sense when the individual has intuited the idea which he makes the moral principle for the particular situation concerned and brought into play the imagination needed to realize that principle in the deed. The idea and the love of the deed it engenders in the individual is all the motivation that is needed. And of course the idea may be identical with the idea which once inspired the passing of an existing law. There is a difference between reducing speed in a built up area because that is the law and doing so because one intuits it as right for the particular situation. If this seems like a recipe for anarchy, then in a certain sense it is, that is in the sense that no external governance prevails, only the free individuality. But the freedom meant here is an inner not an outer one. Until we are all so free inwardly that our actions are not governed by our personal inclinations, outer laws are needed to protect us from our own and other people’s selfishness. What I have outlined here is what Rudolf Steiner called ethical individualism. In some key respects it resembles what modern ethicists refer to as Aristotelian virtue ethics. Because of the seemingly anarchic element in a moral philosophy based on the individual it immediately begs the question as to how social life would be possible in a world where ethical individualism prevails. Steiner answers: "To live in love towards our actions, and to let live in the understanding of the other person's will, is the fundamental maxim of free men." No morally free individual would want to compel another person to agree with him, but he can legitimately hope eventually to find agreement because we all draw from a common world of ideas – we are one in spirit. This is evidenced by the fact that in most instances most of us can intuit the ideas behind, i.e. see the justification for, many of the laws of our state.

Living in love towards our own actions is a matter of individual responsibility and inner development, but to let live in the understanding of the other person’s will takes us into a social process for which there is no sustainable alternative other than dialogue in a context of mutual trust. It is easy to see that when chemical farmer and genetically mutilated crop grower William Brigham drove his JCB13 at organic farmer and Greenpeace director Peter Melchett’s tractor-mower as he cut a swathe through Brigham’s maize field this summer, dialogue had been dispensed with and the protagonists were well down the road that leads to Kosovo, Rwanda, Chechniya etc. Were these men acting out of ethical individualism? Here, Steiner gives a clue: "A moral misunderstanding, a clash, is impossible between men who are morally free." Obviously there was a clash, thus on this basis one or both must have been morally unfree. We need not speculate here about the pros and cons of genetically mutilated crops – for which there are many good arguments on both sides – or whether Brigham needed the money and Greenpeace needed another publicity stunt. What is clear is that the event symbolized in microcosm a blockage in a social process which on a wider scale is evidenced by the current irreconcilability of the polar positions of SCIMAC (group supporting genetically mutilated crops) and the organic movement. How this is to be overcome will depend as much on the quality of future dialogue as on the quality of the thinking on both sides. More...

I came across this wiki page called Freedom (philosophy) which discusses various freedom philosophy's including a brief mention of Steiner.

Especially spiritually-oriented philosophers have considered freedom to be a positive achievement of human will rather than an inherent state granted at birth. Rudolf Steiner developed a philosophy of freedom based upon the development of situationally-sensitive ethical intuitions: "acting in freedom is acting out of a pure love of the deed as one intuits the moral concept implicit in the deed".[2]
[2] Robert McDermott, The Essential Steiner, ISBN 00606553450, p. 43

The article says Steiner's freedom philosophy is based upon "situational ethics" so I looked up situational ethics and found this:

Situational Ethics, according to Fletcher's model, states that decision-making should be based upon the circumstances of a particular situation, and not upon fixed Law. The only absolute is Love. Love should be the motive behind every decision. As long as Love is your intention, the end justifies the means. Justice is not in the letter of the Law, it is in the distribution of Love. Fletcher founded his model upon a statement found in the New Testament of the Bible that reads, "God is Love" (I John 4:8).

Is Steiner's freedom philosophy based upon the circumstances of a particular situation with love being the motive? The interesting thing about Steiner's way is that it is very difficult to describe it in a few sentences. Many views can be true but one particular view may be misunderstood without knowing the many other perspectives. If an action is based upon the particular circumstances then it can be considered determined by the circumstances and thus not free. Steiner raises this issue in chapter 9. Studying this paragraph is a good thought-training work out. I will be doing a video on this paragraph in a few weeks. Ha, I wonder what I will come up with?

POF 9-6 [27] A superficial judgment might raise the following objection to these arguments: How can an action be individually made to fit the special case and the special situation, and yet at the same time be determined by intuition in a purely ideal way? This objection rests upon a confusion of the moral motive with the perceptible content of an action. The latter may be a motive, and actually is one in the case of the progress of civilization, or when we act from egoism, and so forth, but in an action based on pure moral intuition it is not the motive. Of course, my "I" takes notice of these perceptual contents, but it does not allow itself to be determined by them. The content is used only to construct a cognitive concept, but the corresponding moral concept is not derived by the "I" from the object. The cognitive concept of a given situation facing me is at the same time a moral concept only if I take the standpoint of a particular moral principle. If I were to base my conduct only on the general principle of the development of civilization, then my way through life would be tied down to a fixed route. From every occurrence which I perceive and which concerns me, there springs at the same time a moral duty: namely, to do my little bit towards seeing that this occurrence is made to serve the development of civilization. In addition to the concept which reveals to me the connections of events or objects according to the laws of nature, there is also a moral label attached to them which for me, as a moral person, gives ethical directions as to how I have to conduct myself. Such a moral label is justified on its own ground; at a higher level it coincides with the idea which reveals itself to me when I am faced with the concrete instance.

Another issue is love as a motive. Steiner's philosophy includes love for the deed but the action carried out in love could be an evil force in the world doing great harm to others if it is not integrated properly into the world.

POF 9-8 I do not work out mentally whether my action is good or bad; I carry it out because I love it. My action will be "good" if my intuition, steeped in love, finds its right place within the intuitively experienceable world continuum; it will be "bad" if this is not the case.

Why does ignorance sell in America? This country has elected the worst president in American history, George W. Bush, twice. Now Sara Palin, Republican vice presidential candidate, appears to be more ignorant than even Bush. Yet she has found many enthusiastic supporters. In last nights debate, Palin smiled, winked at us repeatably, giggled like the teen beauty queen she once was, ignored the debate questions and instead recited talking points from the index cards she pulled out. She was a disgrace to every woman who has fought for the right to be validated on an equal platform as men based on their skills, ideals, principles, and logic. Some Palin reviews:

Huffington Post
This woman is dim. She's scary stupid.

WiredPRNews
Despite her appalling ignorance, everyone agrees that Palin made an impact.

Telegraph UK
The only possible excuse is she just went blank, or was worried about getting the name wrong. But that is almost as bad as the complete ignorance her wide-eyed, rambling response suggests.

San Francisco Chronicle
It's one thing to say Harvard shouldn't dictate what the country believes, but (the McCain-Palin team) is perilously close to arguing that ignorance is good.

Is it the widespread ignorance of the American people that has lead to senseless wars and economic collapse? A population made stupid by too much television, junk food, and far too much religion?

The Philosophy of Freedom was written in a way to end stupidity by anyone who reads and study’s it. Yes, the book is difficult, but that is the point. You can’t sharpen your mind by reading tabloids, comics, or the non-challenging information books commonly sold. You can't learn how to think without being challenged to think. Everyone acknowledges you need rigorous physical exercise to get the body in shape. It’s the same with the mind. Ending stupidity requires vigorous mental exercise. Start today!

NaturalNews
by Kevin Gianni September 30, 2008
This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Renegade Water Secrets.
Renegade Water Secrets with Iain Trousdell, founder of New Zealand's Living Water Institute.

Kevin: You've mentioned Steiner a couple times. Why don't you explain to people who may not know who that is and what kind of impact he's had?

Iain: He was born in 1861 and died in 1925 and he was a leading scientist and an artist and spent his life looking into the deeper realities of nature and human beings in order to create an amazing body of knowledge and method for coming out with what is now called biomimicry. So he was behind the Waldorf schools which is now the biggest alternative education movement in the world with over a thousand schools around the world.

He is behind biodynamics which is now taking off in many places around the world as another method of agriculture. We've got permaculture, we've got organic farming, we've got the conventional ones where you're basically using more armament refuse to work on your field and there's a fourth one termed bionamics which is now taking off in India to such an extent that it's thought that by the Gandhi movement there, within ten years every village in India will be operating bionamically.

Kevin: How did it influence what you have done?

Iain: Well, Rudolf Steiner, one of his pupils -- he had pupils who he taught how to renew their thinking and how to renew their perception, so from my point of view, he was way ahead of good years, he was also someone with that sort of nature as well. So he had a very strong life with a great deal of clarity and in Asia, he would have been counted also as a master. In fact, in India, the talk about Maharishi Steiner, he had this whole inner life as well and he had some people who came to him who said "Please help me develop what you have," and one of these fellows was George Adams who was a brilliant chemist and mathematician from Cambridge University. And this George Adams then proceeded to take up this mathematical study of nature amongst other things and John Wilkes was his pupil and also his colleague because John is a world academy sculptor from London and so he understood enough of the nature mathematics, path code mathematics to work with George to make some of these early surfaces in the late 50's and early 60's where these mathematical surfaces, if you move water over those surfaces, the thought was that it would increase that water's capacity to support life.

Unfortunately, George Adams died in 1963 and so that work has not been taken very much further but we have done some of that in association with Flow Forms. So it sort of goes back, Rudolf Steiner and George Adams, John Wilkes plus other people.

Kevin: And you also talk about Viktor Schauberger, as well.

Iain: Yes Schauberger's marvelous because Steiner goes back to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who's this universal genius from Germany, and he was so interesting that the American and Psychological Association or some such group, about ten years ago, did a study on all of the known historical figures and they had a method of working out IQs from it and the person who had the highest IQ in history, was this man Goethe. He was a primer minister of one of the states in Germany in about 1800, or in the late 1700's when he was only 25 who's basically Newton and Shakespeare rolled up in one for the German culture.

Kevin: Okay.

Iain: And he had a science which is called Phenomenal Logical Science where you develop the human being as the scientific instrument and developed a high level of objectivity and observation and thought and so it's a whole world of science which has unfortunately been passed by by Dicarthian and Utaniun reduction of science, but it's a science we need to pick up and Rudolf Steiner did that and developed that. So Schauberger also took his start from Goethe and he developed phenomenal capacities for observation of nature and learned off his own living thinking, he created these various technologies which apparently are capable of producing energy without pollution and many other aspects which are being worked on by people now in Sweden and Australia.

Kevin: Right, and so you're... I would guess basically on what you have said which is that you're model of scientific development is looking at nature first and not taking a reductionist type of perspecive.

Iain: Exactly, I think the reductionist approach is of great use. The point is it's like running a business: a business running you or you running the business.

Iain: And it's the same with the reductionist thinking which breaks things down into smaller and smaller areas and becomes very very clever about it. Fortunately, in the last few decades, we've broken through to the whole thing of science equality and we've got to a point now where the Tibetan Masters knew is what modern science is beginning to enter as well. But we're still setting up a kilometer wide instrument in the Swiss Alps to measure quality. It's just we'd forgotten and there's a whole story behind that too, going back to Galileo. We've forgotten that the human being can be an object, an instrument, of knowledge and so we don't trust human thinking and worsen science and we have all of these systems set up to check it, forgetting that it's human thinking at the beginning that didn't trust itself and set up all the systems. So it's a very interesting, complicated woven tapestry of leading ourselves down and down a path into this destructive world that we've created for ourselves.

Kevin: Right.

Iain: There is another type of thinking and this other type of thinking can come up with solutions just as well, different solutions, I believe.

The revisions Steiner made over 20 years later reflect his turning to the more spiritualistic German Theosophists and then Anthroposophy after he wrote The Philosophy of Freedom. In the original opening of Chapter 9 he does not use the word "spirit" but explains things in an observable way very well. In the revised version he uses the term "spirit" 8 times and the section becomes more difficult to understand. The "purely ideal interdependence of the members of my systems of concepts" in the original becomes "the self-sustaining spiritual essence" and the "self-supporting, spiritual web of being".

The term "spirit" does not translate well to English from the German. Steiner means spirit more as experienced in "mind". The only people who would listen to him after the completion of his Philosophy of Freedom were the Theosophists who wanted to be wowed by spiritualism revelations. If only the scientific community would have also been interested and asked Steiner questions we would have thousands of lectures relevant for today. Oh well, fortunately we have The Philosophy of Freedom which was written before he became involved with Theosophy. (see revised text inside)

Michael with Lyre, Beckoning

As a contribution to this festival day, I offer a reminder of the mighty task before us: to hold the wellbeing of the world (and its environment) within our self-aware activity. 
 
Mother Nature, your sustaining presence
I bear deep within my will               
And my will’s fiery vigour
Can temper my impulsive mind,                 
Evoking self-awareness  
To hold me wholly in me.
 
-- Rudolf Steiner, Calendar of the Soul: 26 (trans. JR)--end