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Subject: Re: The human kingdom
[someone] wrote:You really want and demand very simple answers to complex questions and seem stuck in the view that all and everything people in some way related to anthroposophy think and do, they think and do 'because', and for no other reason than that Steiner said something at some time. Are you a good person?
You demand me to argue in a way only permitting answering 'yes' to the second question; if someone is 'good', then that means the 'someone' in no sense, at no time and in no context can be 'bad', as being 'good' and being 'bad' as idealized concepts exclude each other. In normal cases you probably very well understand the complexities of reality. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to anthroposophy and waldorf education you seem to stop thinking and understanding the complexity of what people say and mean as if they were not humans, but some strange creatures from outer space, the way you probably not would if other people than 'waldorfers' would express the same thing; 'Man of course is related to the animal world and can
be described as a being, biologically possible to classify as belonging
to the
But that biological classification is not what it primary if you want to understand the essential human element in 'man' and what distinguishes us from other beings that we classify as 'animals'.' What I tried to point to in some postings on which [someone else] ironized was that this human element in us not is 'material' in a similar sense that 'warmth' not is 'material' as such in the way gases, fluids and solids are, but a quality of matter, in physics related to movement of matter, and that this not was more clearly understood until very short ago, historically, with the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. One aspect of the relation between 'man' and the 'animal' world is - I think - possible to understand if you see how different cultures describe the world of the stars in terms of pictures of mainly animals. When looking in one direction of the sky, one 'experienced' something that had the character of a 'Lion', or the character of a 'Bull' in the Middle East. Or a 'Rat' or a 'Monkey' or some other animal in China. Or an 'Alligator' or a 'Lizard' or a 'Deer' in Mexico. What anthroposophy describes is how we all as humans have something in us that it calls a 'body of star forces' or, for short 'star body' or 'astral body'. In us lives something of the star world. It is a 'body' or 'element' in us that in in a more or less different way comes to expression also in the world of animals. In us it can be recognized as among other complex character traits that one can recognize also in the animal world. In playing when growing up or in other ways later trying to identify and come to an understanding the nature of different character traits is us as humans that also come to expression in the animal world, we learn to understand one of the things that we more or less have in common with 'animals'. They are central traits also in us as humans. But it is not they as such that constitute the essence of us as humans, but something that connects them, cultivates them and humanizes them, making us free to 'play' with them as our personality. Like everything, this distinction between the specific human element in us and the in different senses 'animal' elements in us can be more or less over dramatized, like you hint is was done by someone at the school you referred to. Normally it's probably no big deal handling. Being human means also having integrated and humanized the 'animal' elements in us. Not primarily educating smart or exceptionally intelligent humans but human humans is the goal of Waldorf education. (As I see it, of course.) Regards, Sune Nordwall
http://hem.passagen.se/thebee/indexeng.htm
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