There’s a post about online connectedness and facebook and such ahrimanic stuff on the website of the American Anthroposophical Society. Someone is spotting a ghastly potential for the big war of all against all:
‘So, what should we do about these amazing facts of life? Face it my friends (so to speak), we’re stuck with this data. For one thing, we need to accept the reality of our connectedness as one humanity. Like it or not, we are in fact connected to everyone on the earth. With this acceptance comes a choice: to decide to try and understand the other, and seek to help them understand us, or, to decide to reject the other and keep them apart from us. The latter choice, if you think about it, leads to “the war of all against all”. The first choice, which is more difficult but in the end more rewarding, can lead to a community that accepts diversity yet sees it as diverse characteristics of one humanity.’
Should we discuss the war of all against all again? It’s such a delightful anthroposophical prospect. For those who have not yet encountered this notion, Steiner’s Apocalypse of St John will enlighten you about the coming catastrophe, when the races will slaughter each other and evil people and good people will battle each other. (No need to worry. In this incarnation. This is a prophecy for a very distant future.)
There are of course a number of other questions this text raises. How does anthroposophy treat its adversaries? Or, for that matter, with what attitude do anthroposophists approach the world outside their own ranks? With understanding or ill-concealed superiority?
I suspect yhat what they most fear is peace among all. When you’re connected with people just like you, how can your country’s elites tell you your friends are the enemy?
Or: if you actually talk to other people, outside your esoteric movement, it becomes — hopefully — more difficult to paint themas enemies only.