Sympathy for America’s Burden
Michael Hallam
American forces under attack from their own ‘double’ in the film “INDEPENDENCE DAY”
In an attempt to try to understand the current American situation a very interesting thought occurred to me. Whilst many people from the older continents might experience America as brash, insensitive, abrasive and full of wild and unfounded optimism that is not how the American people experience themselves. On the contrary, it occurred to me that the Americans are a profoundly insecure people, who, in contrast to their more superficial image, are far from confident about their own abilities.
Why should this be so. Firstly, consider that the modern American Nation is comparatively young and comprised of peoples from every race, nationality and culture on the earth. A very large number of those people went to the ‘New Continent’ to escape economic and social hardship and persecution, that is, as a consequence of social, cultural and economic failure within their original environment. This includes ‘our own’ Pilgrim Fathers, who left in The Mayflower, from Plymouth, to escape religious persecution. Apart from the hope of finding a new ‘Atlantis’ in which to make a new start, the only thing which truly unites all of those people is the culturally inspiring vision laid down by the founding fathers of the nation soon after the victory over the colonial regime of the British Empire. The remnants of that inspiration are enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which is the closest thing which the people of America have to a common ‘sacred’ text.
It could be argued that the essence of that constitutional vision has calcified and degraded in the popular imagination to such an extent that the essential freedom of the individual to pursue their own destiny has retranslated itself, over time, into the freedom of the individual to acquire and dispose of all physical resources as seen fit, without let or hindrance.
But how has this come about, and is it in Americas own best interests. Here Rudolf Steiner provides an important clue. In two lectures, given in St Gallen, on November 15th and 16th 1917, which have acquired the title “Geographical Medicine”, he explains how the spiritual forces and influences which work in the wider world are not uniform over the whole earth but vary from place to place. That the mineral earth, which we experience through our physical senses in the structures of rock, plant and animal is not the whole earth organism, but rather “only a skeletal system” and that the earth itself is a living organism, thus pre-dating the Gaia theory of James Lovelock by several decades. Just as there is a ‘geographical’ differentiation of function in a more easily recognised living being, represented by the specialisms of the various vital organs, so this is true of the earth as a whole.
In the context of Spiritual Science, the more mineralized a substance has become – the more insensitive it is to the forces and qualities of movement, the more it exhibits symptoms of decay and disintegration. The laws of physics, as they are conventionally understood, the laws regarding electromagnetic and nuclear forces, are principally descriptions of what happens to substance once it is no longer capable of embodying a living creative spirit. (1). However, even unresponsive matter still possesses spirit, as there can be nowhere where there is not spirit. But in the case of ‘fallen matter’ these spirits work out of a destructive rather than a creative impulse. These shadow spirits, as a class of spiritual beings, are what Steiner describes as “The Doubles”.
Thomas Cole. Landscape Scene from the Last of the Mohicans. 1827. Portrays the natural grandeur of the American Continent
In the two lectures mentioned above, Steiner makes it clear that this race of fallen sprits is not amorphous but possesses its own distinctions and variations and that these are geographically determined. Since the Fall of humanity (2) there has been a dislocation within the human being between our spiritual ‘bodies’ and our physical bodies, (3) and in so far as our own bodies contain fallen matter, we have a connection with these doubles. They get a foothold under our skin, so to speak, and we become intimately influenced by them.
Rudolf Steiner speaks of how there are some regions of the earth where the ability of the doubles to influence human beings is stronger. This is particularly true on the American continent, with its strong north-south mountain chain, which runs like a spine right down the West Coast. On the American continent, therefore, the human being is particularly prone to the influence of these shadow spirits, who are sensitized to destructive processes. In this sense the people of America are bearing a heavy spiritual sacrifice, not because of any racial qualities but by virtue of the very location on the earth where they live.
As a consequence of this it is very difficult for them to see their impact upon wider global culture in the same destructive context as we do. Nor is it easy for them to resist the impulse to consume, as this urge has such a strong pull upon their Sentient Soul (4). The ‘degeneration’ of the principles of the American Constitution, as outlined above has come about partly as an historical decision, in the 19th century, to give legal-person status to corporations of individuals. (5). This meant that corporations, as individuals in law, had the same rights under the Constitution as individual citizens. Having only an abstracted individuality, with which to counter the influences of the doubles, such organisations have succumbed to these double forces and serve to magnify and intensify their effect. They have also afforded the means to mechanise and replicate the consuming process.
One other point is worth noting. Due to the youth of the American ‘Nation’, its geographical remoteness, the seemingly unlimited abundance of its natural resources and the life forces enbound within them there is a feeling within the American psyche of the opportunity and ability for unlimited expansion, which is very similar to that in the teenager. But in order to find and identify the Self, the teenager must encounter boundaries. Indeed they will push outwards until they meet them and get a response. True individuality is developed when one can perceive clear boundaries between self and other. This is not in order that a being can stay within its boundary but in order that it may transcend the boundary and incorporate the capacity to choose into the self-consistency of its own self. But to do this it must be able to clearly and precisely experience the shifting nature of the dividing line between ‘things’.
Pearl Harbour is often quoted as the wakeup call of the American people but that was only a prelude to what happened on September 11th 2001. The total destruction of one of the principle buildings representing the American sense of corporate-self was totally destroyed in one of its principle cities. The fear, which must have arisen within the American people regarding the limits of their powers, their finitude and the corresponding sense of vulnerability, is difficult for us to appreciate.
If we want to really understand the American people, we must recognise that there are two players in the American situation, the American people and the doubles, which, in their turn, work both at the individual and corporate level. For America to move forward they have to address this fact. And if we in the rest of the world are to be of any true and lasting help to them then so do we. Rudolf Steiner stressed that the influence of the doubles is not racially based it is geographically based. We need to know this if we are to come into a proper relationship with America, and if Europe is to fulfill its cultural mission in the world. The consequences of not doing are severe.
The US film INDEPENDENCE DAY portrays
American fears of self-destruction
To quote Steiner’s own words. “Europe will be able to come into a proper relationship with America only when…..it is known what geographical determinants come from there. Otherwise, if Europe continues to be blind to these things, it will be with this poor Europe as it was with Greece in relation to Rome……..for America’s endeavor is to mechanise everything, to drive everything into the realm of pure naturalism, and gradually to extinguish European culture from the earth.”
FIN
FOOT NOTES
(1) The forces embodied in nuclear radiation arise quite literally out of the disintegration of atomic substance, as a consequence of which the substance ‘tumbles’ from a higher state, in terms of responsiveness, to a lesser state, and ultimately to that of lead
(2) The Fall, as supersensibly represented in the imaginative picture story of the temptation and fall from Grace of Adam and Eve, in the ancient Book of Genesis. The word imaginative is here used, not in its modern corrupt sense of fictional and fabricated fantasy, but in its ancient sense of bringing before the soul in image form the realities and dynamics of spiritual events.
(3) Dislocation and its progressive widening is the root cause of illness and leads, ultimately, to the sprits need to discard the physical body and re-form a new one. This fact is encoded in the Mercury symbol, taken up by the medical profession, wherein two snakes, pulling in opposite directions, are repeatedly brought back to the centre line around which they intertwine. Within the context of this article it is interesting to speculate whether our fear of death is natural to our own eternal spirit or to the double, which shares our physical body. There are numerous points in Steiner’s writings and lectures where it is made plain that the ‘growing point’ of human evolution lies in the central potential for development remaining free and unencumbered by one sided inclination. Within the circle of the Zodiac, with its several one-sided inclinations and counter-inclinations, it is the central point which remains as the common reference point for all the signs. Not only does it remain free of one-sided commitment, it also becomes the point around which the whole revolves. In this sense, the animal kingdom, of which the zodiac is the archetype, can be seen as consisting of beings who are ‘addicted’ to the expressing and experiencing of their own particular quality, at the expense of all others. By extension, in human beings, any persistent one-sided activity or habit will lead to an exaggeration of particular abilities at the expense of the whole. This is precisely the motivating signature of the double, which derives its energy from imbalance.
(4) An excellent description of the nature of this particular aspect of the soul and its relationship to the physical body is given in the first chapter of Rudolf Steiner’s “THEOSOPHY”
(5) This is a practice begun in England to en-corporate the individual human members of a shared venture. It transfers legal status from the several individuals to the corporation itself, which then becomes legally responsible for the consequences of the venture. The individual members of the corporation – the share holders, are able to transfer their personal liability for any negative consequences regarding capitol assets to the Company/Corporation, and risk only the value of their financial share invested in the company.
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