Framing and Foundations

I see a question arising in a forum such as this might become, as to how far one might go in addressing cultural and contemporary streams and issues from the perspective of a spiritual framework. To what extent does one allow oneself to engage in the controversies of the day or contrariwise, to what degree does one remain apart from life, as “a watcher” in the tradition of Odin. To what degree is it still necessary to stand in the background while influencing affairs of men? I'm sure this question has been the subject of much debate over the ages and I'm merely re-inventing the wheel. And yet, who could say the question has been answered once and for all?

When I refer to “a perspective from a spiritual framework” in the paragraph above, I do so in the awareness of how “framing” these days has become a much-evolved discipline, originally in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and more recently in American political languaging. To scratch the surface of this subject, take a gander at George Lakoff's little book “Don't Think of an Elephant”. Lakoff argues that the American left is falling into the trap of allowing debate to take place within “framing” that's been cognitively engineered by heavily-financed right-wing think tanks, and that this framing already slants the way arguments will come across to the listening public. Perhaps you've also noticed that academic studies of “game theory” are being used to engineer political strategy. Reminds one of Josuf Stalin's famous reference to the writer as “engineer of the soul”. Which in turn reminds one of last year's most important movie (my rating), “The Lives of Others”, in which that quote appears, a movie that was made with the hope of stemming a growing tide of nostalgia for the old days of east-bloc communism. Reminds me how I wondered, back in the 90s, how things would look if we ever had “glasnost” over here in the west. Aggh but I digress. So how's all that for venturing into the dirty waters of politics? Not too deeply I hope.

Perhaps a distinction is necessary between what might be right for anthroposophy, and what might be right for individuals who themselves are more or less connected with anthroposophy. And when we bring our own anthroposophically-influenced perspectives to bear on our discussions of contemporary issues, to what degree does our responsibility to appropriately represent anthroposophy limit us from delving as deeply as we might like into those issues, because we wouldn't want anthroposophy to become tainted by association? Might that be why some contemporary spiritual teachers choose not to stand in the world as representatives of an existing spiritual stream, but rather as pilgrims on their own paths, drawing from various sources of learning? Yet such an approach has the downside of failing to give credit where credit might be due and of perhaps not making it any easier for new seekers to find their own way to hidden knowledge.

We could mention here people like Richard Tarnas, who I'm currently reading. In his talk at Rudolf Steiner Centre Toronto, he mentioned first learning about anthroposophy from a Waldorf teacher education student some decades back. Who really knows to what degree anthroposophy has informed his world outlook? But his treatment of astrology from what amounts to a phenomenological aspect is, to my mind, highly congruent with what one could expect from a “spiritual science”, both in rigor and in depth. I don't think Tarnas represents himself as an anthroposophist. He's “just” a university professor from California who's explored a lot of different esoteric and cultural streams. Would it have enhance the palatability of his book, which already takes on the unpopular topic of astrology – Tarnas calls it “the gold standard for superstition” -- if he had connected it with anthroposophy in his back-cover blurb. I'm guessing probably not.

Clearly I'm not trying to draw conclusions here, but hoping to stimulate dialog. So what do YOU think about all this? It's really very easy to post a comment. Start by clicking immediately below on the word "comments".