Nationalism and Intellectualism
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2004 10:08 am
Subject: Nationalism and Intellectualism
It's Easter. 84 years ago, in this very season
Rudolf Steiner held an interesting lecture in Dornach 3rd April,
1920, entitled "The Blood-Relationship and the Christ-Relationship.
(GA 198) It belongs to the collection: "Festivals and Their
Meaning" - II Easter, and is available online at
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Lectures/Easter/19200403a01.html
Here is an appropriate excerpt:
Two of the most unchristian
impulses of all are those which took effect in the 19th century.
The first impulse which came to the fore and gained an ever stronger
hold of men's minds and emotions, was that of nationalism. Here
we see the shadow of the old blood-principle. The Christian impulse
towards universal humanity was completely overshadowed by the
principle of nationalism, because the new way to bring this element
of universal humanity to its own had not been found. The anti-Christian
impulse makes its appearance first and foremost in the form of
nationalism. The old Luciferic principle of the blood comes to
life once again in nation-consciousness. We see a revolt against
Christianity in the nationalism of the 19th century, which reached
its apex in Woodrow Wilson's phrase about the self-determination
of nations, whereas the one and only reality befitting the present
age would be to overcome nationalism, to eliminate it, and for
men to be stirred by the impulse of the human universal.
The second phenomenon is that
men seek to draw their knowledge of the world, not from awakened
powers of soul, but from the material image of these powers only.
Vision of the soul has faded, and in his physical being, man
is only an image of the divine and spiritual. This image can
bring forth intellectualism, but not knowledge of the spirit.
A secret of which I have often spoken to you is that man can
only recognise and know the spiritual by lifting himself to the
spirit; the brain is merely the instrument for intellectual apprehension.
Intellectualism and materialistic thinking are one and the same,
for all the thinking that goes on in science, in theology, in
the sphere of modern Christian consciousness ­ all of it
is merely the product of the human brain, it is materialistic.
This manifests itself, on the one side, in formalism of belief;
on the other, in Bolshevism. Bolshevism owes its destructive
power to the fact that it is a product of the brain pure and
simple, of the material brain. I have often described how the
material brain really represents a process of decay: materialistic
thinking unfolds only through processes of destruction, death-processes,
which are taking place in the brain. If this kind of thinking
is applied, as it is in Leninism and Trotskyism, to the social
order, a destructive process is set in motion inevitably, for
such ideas about the social order issue from what is itself the
foundation of destruction, namely, the Ahrimanic impulse. ­
That is the other side of the picture.
These two impulses, Nationalism,
the Luciferic form of anti-Christianity, and that which culminated
in the tenets of Lenin and Trotsky, the Ahrimanic form of anti-Christianity,
have insinuated themselves into what ought to have been the Christian
impulse of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nationalism and Leninism
are the spades with which the grave of Christianity is being
dug to-day. And wherever these principles, even in a mild form,
become a cult, there the grave of Christianity is being prepared.
Those who have insight can discern here a mood that is in the
real sense the mood of Easter Saturday. Christianity lies in
the grave and men place a stone over the grave. In truth, two
stones have been laid over the grave of Christianity ­ the
stones of Nationalism and of external forms of Bolshevism. It
now behoves humanity to inaugurate the epoch of Easter Sunday,
when the stone or the stones are rolled away. Christianity will
not rise from the grave until men overcome nationalistic passions
and false forms of socialism; until they learn how to find, out
of themselves, the forces that can lead to an understanding of
the Mystery of Golgotha.
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Thu Apr 8, 2004 11:42 am
Subject: Re: Nationalism and Intellectualism
Tarjei Straume wrote:
R.S.
The anti-Christian impulse
makes its appearance first and foremost in the form of nationalism.
The old Luciferic principle of the blood comes to life once again
in nation-consciousness.
Bradford comments;
Let's see what the rational world says about
our Luciferic and Ahrimanic thinking. Non-Anthro Interpretation.
"Communists somehow manage to even aquire
superhuman abilities for spreading evil: "they acquire a
strength and confidence which like the fearful evil they bring
into being, can only be described as Luciferian."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcmaken/mcmaken98.html
"The Texan Noah Smithwick was more blunt
when he declared that "I looked on the Mexicans as scarce
more than apes." Yet, no one could have made the point better
than one Santa Fe trader who remarked that Mexicans shouldn't
even be considered as part of "humanity" but as a separate
race to be known as "Mexicanity."
"The American State and its servants
have always been quite happy to endorse such sentiments, and
today we are forced to endure the same rationalizing, lying,
and stereotyping about Iraqis in order to save yet another race
of men from themselves and to grant them the blessing of American
"liberty" at the point of a bayonet. The Mexicans,
the Filipinos, the Vietnamese, the Haitians, the Panamanians,
and numerous others have all been saved in a similar fashion
by the kind hand of American military might
"Sadly, the modern conservative movement
has been quite susceptible to this sort of wishful thinking about
ready-made classifications for human beings that always seem
- magically - to buttress government claims for increased power.
The bogeyman these days of course is "Islamo-Fascism."
Yet, if we were to take some old books about "the international
Communist conspiracy" and replace "Communist"
with "Islamo-Fascist" while updating some names and
dates here and there, we would fine ourselves with a fine variety
of timely new books on current events.
"Much like Smithwick's Mexicans, the
Communists of the Cold War era, as understood by American conservatives
like Frank Meyer, were uniquely depraved, barely worthy of the
title human. "Against this vision of… Communist man,
there is no recourse in compromise, reasonableness, peaceful
co-existence… Communist man poses two stark alternative
for us: victory or defeat." Worse yet, Communists somehow
manage to even aquire superhuman abilities for spreading evil:
"they acquire a strength and confidence which like the fearful
evil they bring into being, can only be described as Luciferian."
Unlike the dissolute Mexicans, the Communists are too disciplined,
too committed to an all consuming moral cause to be dismissed
as apes, yet the point of the exercise remains to illustrate
that the Communists are indeed inhuman in some way and thus unresponsive
to the human desires of the rest of us.
"Meyer's superhuman Communists care not
for the basic human comforts of home, family, or personal desires.
They are consumed by devotion to their ideology. Like the Mexicans
before them or the Muslims of today, the great foreign menace
of Meyer's day were simply not human. With such people there
is not hope of peaceful coexistence. The choice is victory or
death. Or at least, that is what the promoters of empire would
have us believe. Indeed, it is no surprise that the ideological
descendants of Meyer and Chambers, the neoconservatives, are
at the front of the charge to convince the world that the Muslims
of the world are indeed vicious beasts, and that no peace is
possible without total domination of the Islamic world. It's
victory or death all over again. Only the names and dates have
changed.
"In case there was any doubt that such
adolescent story-telling was not doing its job of addling the
minds of Americans everywhere, the recent butchery in Fallujah
has brought out some of the most disturbing arguments against
the humanity of Iraqis seen yet in this war without end.
"Kathleen Parker of townhall.com
certainly has driven the point home with her recent article in
which she refers to the people of Fallujah as "zoo animals"
and jokes about nuking the Sunni triangle. It might be funny
if it weren't so clear that Parker honestly believes that all
the men, women, and children of Fallujah deserve to pay for the
crimes of a few. Most (unintentionally) ironic of all was Parker's
use of the phrase "These are the times that try Americans'
souls." This phrase comes from the pen of Thomas Paine,
the libertarian British-American revolutionary who originally
penned it as "These are the times that try men's souls."
Unlike our latter-day British imperialist wannabes, Paine believed
that all men were deserving of self-determination, and no empire,
no matter how well intentioned, as the British undoubtedly thought
they were, had the right to take that away."
R.S.
We see a revolt against
Christianity in the nationalism of the 19th century, which reached
its apex in Woodrow Wilson's phrase about the self-determination
of nations
These two impulses, Nationalism,
the Luciferic form of anti-Christianity, and that which culminated
in the tenets of Lenin and Trotsky, the Ahrimanic form of anti-Christianity,
have insinuated themselves into what ought to have been the Christian
impulse of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Bradford concludes:
There were Initiation insights into the Fall,
that were no longer mythic or merely Biblical. The infection
of our astral bodies with concepts that color and cloud the complex
evolution of Mankind and in a Luciferic infection, bind people
to certain fallen astral factors were illuminated with clarity.
There were vaster issues of Initation Science that had entered
under Hitler and specific destinies from Greece, Rome and the
historical unfolding of what is now known as a common Cult of
Personality (People Magazine-Stars) had arisen around the time
of the Initation of Nero.
That is why Christ came at a specific point
in history, where Personality could bind itself to lower or higher
astral beings. Historically Personality and the Cult of Personality
was also when the Personality of Jesus was infused with a God
and Nero wanted Initation but only gained lower Luciferic infection
of his Astral body. Things like this, I don't expect you to understand,
but they expanded my horizons and startled me. Things you need
to have startle you, so that you actually get a thinking education
and not merely a dialectical education.
Thanks Tarjei:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to subscribe to anthroposophy_tomorrow
April/May
2004
The Uncle
Taz "Anthroposophy Tomorrow" Files
Anthroposophy & Anarchism
Anthroposophy & Scientology
Anthroposophical
Morsels
Anthroposophy,
Critics, and Controversy
