Communication & Humanity

Communicating Anthroposophy: The Course for Speakers to Promote the Idea of Threefolding, by Rudolf Steiner. Introduction by Christopher Bamford, translated by Rory Bradley.

review by Seth Jordan

I found Communicating Anthroposophy to be a pretty fascinating read for a number of reasons. First off, the time and place are immediately present—World War I is over, Europe is in chaos, and Rudolf Steiner is in southern Germany speaking with activists who are preparing to travel west to Upper Silesia (which is in the midst of deciding its direction as a nation) to stand on soapboxes and give public speeches advocating for the ideas of social threefolding. It’s a historic moment of possibility (“we are dancing on the edge of a volcano”) and the scene is one of real strategizing on the ground—“for unless agitations are conducted in a drastic and widespread manner, and soon, we will never get anywhere with something as comprehensive as the threefolding of society must be.”

How does one prepare for such a task? This type of activism is no simple matter—Steiner tells his listeners about the need to grasp the living threefoldness of society, to work out of a deep foundation in spiritual science, to familiarize themselves completely with the trends of modern thought, all while never speaking abstractly but always out of one’s own experience. As if that’s not difficult enough, Steiner tells his audience that “we do not dispense finished, dogmatic judgements; rather your primary task above all else must be to see to the creation of a basis upon which one person will arrive at a judgement by one means, another person by another. Only when there is a convergence of these sorts of judgements will we have something that we can use in reality.”

If one is hoping for the nuts and bolts of public speaking, one might be better off with The Art of Lecturing, a somewhat similar course that he gave to threefolders later that same year in Switzerland. That said, in Communicating Anthroposophy he still spends a number of lectures going under the hood and into the mechanics of public speaking, just not as systematically. One invaluable treasure contained in these talks is the combination of his advice on how to prepare one’s notes for a presentation (to be found in lecture 5) with his actual notes for these presentations (which are found at the end of the book). In this way, you both hear his advice as well as see the evidence of how he himself did it. One also gets a small window into such “mundane” matters as fundraising and publicizing the books and newsletter— everyday affairs that never find their way into his other talks and so are all the more interesting.

Then there is all the rich content of these lectures which, for the contemporary threefolding activist, offers many years of material for study. He brings in new pictures around the development of social life and touches on its deeper ninefoldness. He goes farther into some particulars of economic life (including the forming of associations) than he does anywhere else to my knowledge. He emphasizes over and over again the “productivity” of spiritual/cultural life, and the need to make it independent. And he speaks about the administration of the cultural and economic spheres, offering new pictures to meditate on while still remaining frustratingly elusive (the open-ended approach, devoid of all “finished judgements,” that have irritated many a student of threefolding who really just wants some good, cookie-cutter answers!).

In the end, he throws his listeners (as well as the threefolding activist of the present day, of which the current write considers himself) back on him or herself. It is bitter medicine. He says that the anthroposophical movement “has progressed in such a way that its members have far too little interest in what is actually happening in the world around them”—an accusation I would say holds true today. To the frequent objection that the healthy threefolding of society is a development that will take decades and centuries to unfold, Steiner says “the things that are to come about in humanity, particularly when it comes to social institutions, are entirely dependent upon what human beings want, and how much strength and courage they set behind their will toward it. [In this way] institutions that might last for centuries due to carelessness and inaction can be overturned in a moment by the use of active powers.” For folks struggling to understand and advocate these ideas with little to show, it is hard to hear but also hopeful. Ultimately, the healthy development of society depends on our commitment, the strength we muster and the courage we manifest, when the moment arrives and the possibility of a new step presents itself.

The hardest pill to swallow, though, comes right at the beginning. The first thing he mentions, in the very first lecture, are two “foundational forces” we all need in order to truly advocate for a healthy threefold society— love for the cause of threefolding and love for humanity. Like most activists who have fallen in love with a specific cause, the threefolders I know (myself included) advocate for it somewhat blindly. We step into a conversation and forget the person in front of us. The idea becomes vivid, catches fire in our imagination, and the human being before us dims. It only become worse if they disagree, in which case we might just write them off and go on to the next person. It is in such moments that our true lack of love for humanity becomes clear. Humanity is no abstraction, but simply the person in front of us that we struggle to tolerate. “Be clear with yourselves about this: if these two preconditions are not met [love for the cause and love for humanity], or if they are replaced by some other force such as ambition or vanity, you will still be able to deliver very logical speeches to people; you will be able to speak very cleverly, however you will not be able to achieve anything.”

It’s pretty discouraging really, and pretty much enough to make one want to give up before one’s even started. But it’s also an impetus to struggle through to develop a real interest in others (including their ideas!) while simultaneously striving to comprehend threefolding and to take up the work of self-development that is an ongoing precondition for this work. Thankfully, with Communicating Anthroposophy we have one more crucial aid in figuring out how to take up this difficult work.

Seth Jordan (seththomasjordan@gmail.com) is an organizer and educator living in Harlemville, NY. Since co-founding Think OutWord, a peer-led training in social threefolding, in 2008, he has traveled widely, giving talks and workshops and organizing projects in Europe, Asia, and the US. At home, Seth works with organizations including Free Columbia, 7 Billion Crowns, and The Nature Institute.