From Symptoms to Real Insights into
the Social Backgrounds of the Corona Pandemic
By Brane Žilavec, 4 July 2020
Improved version: 14 June 2021
From Symptoms to Real Insights into
the Social Backgrounds of the Corona Pandemic
By Brane Žilavec, 4 July 2020
Improved version: 14 June 2021
In the first months of the year 2020 we witnessed a series of events coinciding with the period of the ‘normal’ seasonal flu when, after the long winter period of darkness, the immune system – besides all other unhealthy impacts of modern life – has weakened further due to life indoors and the consequent lack of sunshine and the outdoor activities. At this time of year in the northern hemisphere our breathing system is additionally burdened with greater amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to minimal absorption of it by minimal amount of winter vegetation. The estimated yearly results of seasonal flu are “about three to five million cases of severe illness and about 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths,” [1] especially amongst the elderly and those with various chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, etc. – all of which receives only little media attention.
But this year something unprecedented happened. In March the World Health Organisation (WHO) proclaimed a global epidemic for Covid-19, a new form of respiratory infection, on the basis of “more than 20,000 confirmed cases of infection and almost 1,000 deaths in the European Region.” [2] This triggered a great flood of news in the mainstream media about apocalyptic consequences of this pandemic. Soon the governments of European countries proclaimed a ‘state of emergency’, and one after another closed borders, stopped international travel, imposed social distancing and house-quarantine rules and closed all economic activities deemed nonessential. Only Sweden and Belorussia did not go so far in closing down the economy and imposing house quarantines. This model of controlling the spread of a ‘deadly virus’ that, it was claimed, could infect “between 40% and 70% of the world’s adult population” [3] and “could kill millions of people” [4] was also introduced in the USA and many other countries. It is estimated that more than one third of the world population was in some form of lock-down at the time of Easter.
One can imagine that not everyone was happy with such extreme and unprecedented governmental measures to combat a respiratory infectious disease. There were critics that pointed out the negative economic, social and health consequences on the people who were exposed to such radical forms of ‘social engineering’. Some were protesting that their jobs were essential for their economic survival. Others were asking who gave governments authority to ignore basic human rights on the basis of questionable statistical predictions of apocalyptic numbers of deaths if such drastic measures were not implemented. And some were pointing out that there was no medical justification, or leading epidemiological research, to support introduction of such a lock-down.
Some independent researchers and doctors have exposed the various methods used to increase the number of recorded people supposedly dying due to the coronavirus. [5] Others called attention to the fact that many who tested positive did not exhibit any symptoms of a disease. The WHO also acknowledged the inaccuracy of testing; however not due to false positive tests, but due to false negative tests, which “do not rule out the possibility of Covid-19 virus infection.” [6]
Soon all kinds of critical responses in regard to medical and social aspects of the corona pandemic were spreading via the internet. Many of them were exposing various forms of manipulations that are happening all the time behind closed doors that usually do not attract such a level of attention. And it was not long before this led to evident and blatant cases of censorship on social media with Facebook and Twitter deleting ‘offenders’ users’ accounts and YouTube and similar internet platforms taking down specific videos primarily due to criticism of the mainstream and government narrative concerning Covid-19.
These happenings are demonstrating that we are dealing not just with an epidemic of an infectious disease, but with a disease of the social organism of modern humanity. The symptoms of this are: the ‘pandemic’ of fear of disease and death; the pandemic of one-sided narratives and propaganda; the pandemic of censorship and other means of control of critical thinking; the pandemic of irrational behaviour, such as imposing curfews, disinfection of the streets, closing public parks and preventing beekeepers visiting their hives; and the pandemic of antisocial behaviour, such as the manipulation of the population, the use of the army and police to enforce new rules of social distancing and a great intolerance towards those who were not scared of the virus.
In this article are presented some insights into the realities behind these symptoms from an anthroposophical perspective. In doing this we might “touch upon matters which mankind finds unpalatable today. But it is important that these problems should be thoroughly understood. It is only by gaining a clear understanding of these problems that we can hope to escape from the present calamitous situation.” [7] For “we shall only be able to contribute to the true evolution of mankind by acquiring knowledge of the impulses” [8] that are active behind the events we are witnessing in the present times. “What is necessary is to have insight and understanding, to avoid false judgement and the passive attitude which refuses to see things as they really are.” [9] For we cannot hope to contribute to the healing of the diseased social organism if we do not understand the true nature and the origins of its disease.
Free Development of Ethical Individualism as the Key Impulse of the Present Age
Much that has happened in recent times demonstrates to us that we are living “in an age fraught with difficulties and many insoluble problems. For this reason it is necessary for us to look with unflinching eyes upon those elements which make up the present. In this present a great deal more is working than the cosmic moment through which we are actually living. Through this present the stream of mighty cosmic happenings is flowing, in such a way that the whole force of the current of human evolution is being expressed in it. Both the future and the past are working into present happenings.” [10]
One influence working from the past can be found if we look at the hierarchical social structure of ancient Egypt with the god-like pharaoh at the top and the slaves at the very bottom of the pyramid. In those ancient times the priest and nobles belonged to the same social class. However, if we move to the Middle Ages we can see a division appearing between the kings, nobles and feudal lords on one side and the religious rulers – popes, cardinals, bishops and priests as the guardians of the spiritual life of the populace – on the other. Attempts to revolt against any authorities were suppressed and punished, often by death. But even such ruthless suppression did not stop the gradual process of transition from the dogmatic hierarchical structures of the ancient societies to more democratic structures of the present. The most important were a transition from slavery to serfdom, abolition of serfdom, and the foundation of free cities which “grew and flourished and thus developed a culture of their own, the culture of the bourgeoisie. From this then evolved a utilitarian morality, [11] which provided the impetus for the growth of natural science.” [12]
From the Renaissance onwards we witness the attempts of the Catholic Church to suppress the teachings of Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno, the pioneers of modern science based on intellectual comprehension of the facts of the outside world. In essence this was a battle for the liberation of thinking from the religious dogmas of the Roman Church and its claim of papal infallibility. Those who didn’t agree with the Church and its views were accused of heresy by an inquisition, often forced to confess their ‘error’ by means of torture whilst having no right for any legal defence. Some, like Giordano Bruno, were put to death by being burnt at the stake if they did not confess.
In recent times we come to a very important further step. Following the Second World War many people were shocked by the extent of the abuse of civilians. This mood culminated “in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.” [13] Although the process of implementation of these rights is still far from finished, this document clearly defined those rights of individuals which cannot be taken away by any governmental or religious body. For “human rights are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly protected as natural and legal rights in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable, fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being.” [14]
These historical facts indicate the special task of the present time. From an anthroposophical perspective we are living now in the ‘epoch of the spiritual soul’ or the ‘epoch of consciousness soul’. This epoch started with the Renaissance and will last till the middle of the fourth millennium. Steiner explained that he wrote his book “The Philosophy of Freedom in order to give mankind a clear picture of the idea of freedom, of the impulse of freedom which must be the fundamental impulse of the present epoch.” [15] What he had advocated in this book was an ethical individualism. For that reason he had “to show that man can never become a free being unless his actions have their source in those ideas which are rooted in the intuitions of the single individual. This ethical individualism only recognises as the final goal of man’s moral development what is called the free spirit, which struggles free of the constraint of natural laws and all conventional moral norms.” [16] In other words, in our epoch the development of moral values has become the responsibility of each individual who has emancipated himself or herself and is not anymore under the restrictions of traditional rules of behaviour.
For that purpose “cultivation of individuality belongs to the consciousness soul. Through the consciousness soul man is much more an individual, a solitary traveller through the world. And the tendency people now show to withdraw into themselves is becoming a more and more pronounced characteristic of our time. The hallmark of the consciousness soul is the urge towards an isolated life, secluded from the rest of mankind.” [17] Yet, if this development is carried too far we are exposed to a certain danger of being too self-orientated. If we want to avoid it we need “to base our opinions on facts and not on subjective impressions; for, in the epoch of the consciousness soul nothing is more dangerous than to surrender to, or show a preference for personal opinions or prejudices. In order to develop the consciousness soul we must not allow ourselves to become dogmatists unwittingly; the driving forces of our thoughts and actions must be determined by facts. That is important. Beneath the surface of historical evolution there is a fundamental conflict between the acceptance of what we consider to be right and the compulsion of facts.” [18]
Today, when many people are still “deeply asleep, one must earnestly wish that they would at least be awake to the most important things that are happening, even if as individuals they can do little to change them in many cases. There is no need to say: How can I alone change anything? In many cases we can work only when conditions are right. We need not apply the same prescription to everything; but we do need to know how to observe, so that when something is asked of a man in his own sphere of work he really knows what he has to do. Above all, we must realise that most people nowadays who believe they do a great deal of thinking, in fact go to sleep whenever they can; they sleep when they might be won over – though this is difficult – to real knowledge of the impulses at work in human evolution. We should not judge the world today in accordance with abstract principles, for then we only fall into a deeper doze; we should make it our aim to judge with actual knowledge.” [19]
If we look around we can find plenty of evidence that in the present age the “facts are scarcely allowed to speak for themselves; we only hear what we deem to be facts. And this situation will persist for a long time. And it will be equally long before we develop the capacity to apprehend reality objectively. In the epoch of the consciousness soul what matters in all spheres of life is an objective apprehension of reality; we must strive to acquire an impartial attitude to reality.” [20]
Those people who are not willing to invest efforts to achieve an objective apprehension of the realities behind the manipulations of those who want to keep old hierarchical reigning structures will be forced to do so when things get more extreme. We might wonder: “Must it then be that men will never succeed in finding the path to the ‘light’ by awakening that which dwells in their hearts and their inmost souls? Must they then come to the ‘light’ through external hindrance? Must everything collapse in front of their eyes before they begin to think?” [21] And the answer is: For many people this will be the only way. “It is tragic when things happen only under constraint, whereas they could be truly beneficial if they were the fruit of freedom. For today that which must be the object of freedom must stem from free thoughts. These things are not said in order to evoke pessimism, but in order to appeal to your hearts and souls so that you, in your turn, may appeal to the hearts and souls of others and so awaken insight and understanding. What has suffered most in recent years are judgements that have allowed themselves to be clouded by submission to authorities.” [22]
With the further advance of humanity “we will become more and more independent, more and more individualistic. Belief in external authorities will be increasingly replaced by belief in the authority of a man’s own soul. This is a necessary trend of evolution.” [23] But for this to happen we must first learn how to think for ourselves and not succumb to any form of manipulation of public opinion by those who want to keep their social privileges. We need to guard against the danger which Einstein described as: “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
To get a clear picture of the methods and extent of manipulation of public opinion in modern societies we need only look at the story of Edward Bernays (1891-1995), a nephew of Sigmund Freud (the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis), who “showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement to eroticising the motorcar. His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom.” [24]
Now they are not just corporations who use such methods of persuasion of consumers, called ‘public relations’, but also political parties. And the mass media and the internet have become the most effective channels for manipulating public opinion. Of course, in the age of the consciousness soul “we must go through trials and provings, by means of the opposing forces setting snares in our way. And accordingly feelings of sympathy and antipathy can be widespread; it is only by consciously combating these superficial feelings that we shall bring the consciousness soul safely to birth.” [25]
It is important not to get disheartened because “we perceive chaos in our civilisation. Theoretically speaking, materialism holds chaos in it. It is awful that when someone opens a book today he is presented with a mass of unconnected individual insights. Nothing but details, and chaos everywhere, also in the social life.” However this also has a positive effect. “If our whole civilisation had not fallen into chaos, individuals could not have unfolded freely out of their own resources. They would always have been bound to their environment. The old order must break apart and become chaos. We face great changes in this respect and no one can hope to reform anything in the world without means of inner development.” [26]
Thus we can see that chaos has a positive side. It is enabling us to separate from old forms of communities. Chaos is forcing us out of our comfort zones, stimulating us to overcome mental laziness. And although the first effect of such development is that “egoism and selfishness are being pushed to the extreme – because everyone wants to be his own master – a time will come when no other authority will be recognised except one which men recognise freely, whose power is based upon free confidence. Each single human being must strive more and more to attain wisdom.
Will this counteract egoism and the threatening disintegration? Yes. For only when we reach the highest wisdom, in which there are no differences of personal opinions and standpoints, but one view only, will men agree. If they were to remain as they are at present, following their different standpoints, they would become more and more disunited. The highest wisdom always produces a unanimous view among all men. Real wisdom is one, and it unites men again, whilst leaving them as free as possible, without any coercive authority.
The development of our materialistic civilisation reached its climax in the nineteenth century, and that is why the impulse of spiritual science (anthroposophy) entered the world at that time. Through spiritual science, something was called into life – and now exists – that counteracts materialism: it is the counter-movement in the direction of spirituality. The great goal of the spiritual-scientific movement is to make it possible for man to attain freedom and true wisdom; its mission is to let this truth and wisdom flow into men. Materialism and egoism bring disintegration to humanity, for the individual human being only regards his own interests. Wisdom must therefore reunite the human beings who have thus become separated. Wisdom brings them together in fullest freedom and exercises no coercion whatever. This is the task of the spiritual-scientific movement in our time.” [27]
From all that has been described so far it should be clear that this task cannot be implemented by those anthroposophical communities that are still working hierarchically, but only by all those communities where individuals are working together with the aim to develop ethical individualism on the basis of free spiritual intuitions – regardless if they are anthroposophical communities or not.
The Widespread Faith in Authority and the Infallibility of Scientific Materialism
According to statistics there are more people in the world with traditional religious beliefs than atheists. In spite of this the prevailing mode of scientific research is based on the conviction that “information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge.” [28] On the basis of this conviction introspective and intuitive knowledge, metaphysics, theology and other forms of spiritual worldviews are rejected. This attitude of mind, called positivism, has pervaded all branches of natural science.
For many reasons humanity has to go through the phase of evolution in which the materialistic worldview plays an important role. One reason being that humanity has to forget the existence of the spiritual world in order to be liberated from old authoritarian spiritual beliefs and the remnants of an atavistic clairvoyance in order, over time, to freely make a new connection to the spirit. But if we carry this mode of materialistic thinking into the future, then sooner or later we are going to be confronted with insurmountable problems. “The tragedy of our time is that students in our universities are taught to harness their thinking only to the sensory world. In consequence we are involuntarily caught up in an age that is more or less helpless in face of ethical, social and political questions. For a thinking that is tied to the complete control of sense perception alone will never be able to achieve inner freedom so that it can rise to the level of intuitions, to which it must rise” [29] – if we want to resolve modern problems of existence.
Many people who “succumbed to a blind faith in the infallibility of scientific materialism, in positivism” [30] are not aware that “this positivism is simply the continuation of the decree of the Eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, in 869, at which the Western Church officially renounced the ancient concept of man as a threefold being of body, soul and spirit – by asserting that he is a duality of body and soul only – and by a deliberate denial that man’s thinking and rational faculty is anything more than a soul quality.” [31] This paved the way to the loss of knowledge of the existence of the ego – the essential self, the spiritual kernel of the human being – as the spiritual member of the human constitution. But this was not the only supersensible member of man lost on the journey towards pure materialistic science. We have also lost knowledge of the soul as a manifestation of the astral element in our human condition – which Steiner refers to as the human being’s ‘astral body’ (the influence of the starry realms in our souls’ life of feelings) – and knowledge of the forces of life as a manifestation of the human ‘etheric body’. [32] Therefore, it is no surprise that orthodox materialistic science regards all mental, psychological and living functions as the result of the physiological, chemical and biochemical processes in the human organism.
This materialistic positivism did not only stay in the narrow scientific circles. “Since the last four centuries popular ideas have sprung up from the popularising of the methods of natural science. Even the peasant on the land thinks along the lines of natural science, although he may clothe his thoughts in his own words. Catholicism with its dogmatic materialism thinks in the sense of natural science – natural scientific thoughts dominate everything.” [33]
We can see how – “like an infallible and invisible pope – this positivism holds in its iron grip the political parties” on both sides of the political spectrum (especially those which do not have any links to the various traditional religions) and “prevents them from attaining to freedom.” [34] Positivism also dominates teachers in public schools, colleges and universities, members of the medical profession and all other people who have adopted an atheistic worldview. Some of them even go to the extreme of opposing the basic human right to a free choice of a worldview, feeling the need to ‘protect’ others from ‘indoctrination’ with a spiritual perspective. Such people are often passionate opponents of free choice of education.
However, this attitude goes against “the impulse of freedom which must be the fundamental impulse of the present epoch. The concept of freedom is a universal concept, that only he can understand and truly feel what freedom is who perceives that the human soul is the scene not only of terrestrial forces, but that the whole cosmic process streams through the soul of man and can be apprehended in the soul of man.” [35]
There is another important reason for opposition to the freedom of thinking. First we must recognise that “the thoughts and inner motivations being brought into the world right up to these times of social crises are no use any longer, and that we need new impulses. If you bring in a new impulse today, it tends to be the very last thing people are likely to understand. A living motivation is brought down directly from the spiritual world so that it can be a remedy for the evils of our time, yet what you hear is a chorus of accusations from all sides, from the extreme left to the extreme right, to the effect that it is all incomprehensible. Of course it is incomprehensible so long as the old forms of thinking are retained. Instead of remaining stuck in the old forms of thought, we must transform our whole soul.
Every external revolution today, no matter how agreeable to whichever party or class, will only lead us down the worst of blind alleys, and inflict the most terrible misery on humanity, unless it is illumined by an inner revolution of the soul. This involves abandoning one’s absorption in purely materialistic views and preparing to receive the spiritual wave that wants to pour into human evolution as a new revelation. The revolution from matter to spirit is the only healthful revolution. All the others are merely the childhood diseases – like scarlet fever or measles – forerunners of what is trying to come to birth in a healthy way in the emergence of the spirit at the present time.” [36]
“Truly of tremendous importance is the work accomplished by natural science during the last few centuries; we need to emphasise the great significance of the triumphs of natural science,” [37] especially those who have improved living conditions and liberated people from laborious manual work. At the same time we need to confess that “natural science has become much more dogmatic than the old religions. Today, people – and mostly those who take up natural science as amateurs – stick to dogmas more rigidly and seriously than was the case with the old religious dogmas. Truly the Copernican views represented a great swing of the pendulum; they had to come, they were a step towards the truth. But, they too are in many respects one-sided and must be completed by a spiritual conception of the universe. If they are held as dogmatically as they are being expressed – if it is said that they are absolutely true – they will then force concepts into men’s souls which will prevent them from understanding and grasping spiritual science.” [38]
There are many signs which demonstrate that “science is not readily inclined to accept new ideas.” We know that “in the Middle Ages there were men who opposed Kepler’s discoveries. The greatest efforts were needed before his teachings could assert themselves against the dark minds of his age. The very people who more than others now draw attention to this fact, are those who adopt the same attitude, not only towards spiritual science, but also towards scientific facts which force us in the present time to seek spiritual laws” [39] because we simply cannot explain them by means of scientific materialism.
People need to see that “the epoch of the consciousness soul demands that man should stand on his own feet, be self-sufficient and, as personality, emancipate himself. Man must abandon the old supports. He can no longer allow himself to be persuaded into what he should believe.” He must work out for himself his own spiritual comprehension of the world. “We have therefore two streams in contemporary history: on the one hand, since the impulse towards the consciousness soul already exists, there is the chaotic search for liberty, equality, and fraternity. On the other hand we see the efforts on the part of widely differing orders to suppress this awakening in the consciousness soul for their own ends. These two currents interact throughout the whole history of modern times.” [40]
What are those ‘widely differing orders’ that are working against the awakening of the spiritual soul? They are secret brotherhoods, about which Steiner talked in numerous lectures. Among these stand out three groups. The first are the Eastern brotherhoods, especially Indian ones, which want to continue to work as they have been doing for millennia before the emergence of Christianity. In the second group are Jesuits, who want to keep humanity in the state of dependence on the priesthood as the shepherds of the faithful ‘sheep’. The most influential group are elite members of the Masonic lodges, who strive to replace spiritual life with a thoroughgoing materialism. The main tools to achieve their goal are veneration of the god of money, Mammon, love of comfort and fear of death. [41]
At the end of the First World War Steiner gave the following warning: “If what we call science, and especially what we call art, is not fructified by the science of initiation practiced by people whose consciousness is touched today by the spiritual world, humanity will face a quick decline, a fearful decline. Let the kind of teaching that prevails in our universities continue for another three decades, let social questions be treated as they are now for thirty years more, and you will have a devastated Europe.” [42] As there were not enough people capable to recognise the need for anthroposophical spiritual science – the modern form of the science of initiation – humanity was plunged into the devastation of World War Two.
For people can “set up ideals in this field or that as much as they please, they can talk themselves hoarse about individual demands coming from one group or another, they can talk in the belief that with such urgent demands something will be done for humanity’s future – it will all be in vain unless the transformation comes from the depths of human souls, from the thought of the relation of this world to the spiritual world. If in this regard there is not a change in learning, a change in thinking, then the moral deluge will overwhelm the world.” [43] Today there are more than enough signs of the moral deluge degrading the healthy social and natural fabrics, triggered by unbridled competition to accumulate the global wealth by a small percentage of people supported by an army of modern mercenaries: politicians, economists, scientists, researchers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, advertisers, etc.
“The day that sees an end to the denial of the spirit, a denial that is characteristic of modern positivism, the day when we recognize that we must build upon a thinking freed from the tyranny of the senses, upon spiritual investigation, including all that is called science in the ethical, social and political domain, that day will mark the dawn of a new humanity.” [44]
The Dominance of Orthodox Medical Approach
and the Industrialisation of Medical Care
Although in various countries of the world some methods of traditional medicine are still in use (herbalism, acupuncture, ayurveda, etc.) and many new alternative or complementary methods – including anthroposophical and nutritional therapies – it is nevertheless true that the dominant one is modern scientific medicine. In this approach “the human body is regarded as a machine that can be analysed in terms of its parts; disease is seen as the malfunctioning of biological mechanisms which are studied from the point of view of cellular and molecular biology; the doctor’s role is to intervene, either physically or chemically, to correct the malfunctioning of a specific mechanism.” [45]
However, “by concentrating on smaller and smaller fragments of the body, modern medicine often loses sight of the patient as a human being, and by reducing health to mechanical functioning, it is not longer able to deal with the phenomenon of healing.” [46] This is not surprising, if we know that “we have to look for the principle of inner healing power in the etheric body” [47] which enables all the living functions of the body.
As modern medicine acknowledges only the existence of the physical body, it is not at all strange to find that it cannot help people to really heal internal physical diseases that are the outcome of the soul-spiritual irregularities of the human being. In spite of this striking lack of success many people “are mesmerized by the glitter of high-tech ‘solutions’, they pathetically believe in ‘fix-it’ drugs and mistakenly think all pain is an evil to be suppressed, and seek to postpone death at almost any cost.” [48]
The modern approach to healing is the offspring of materialistic science. It really excels with surgery and emergency interventions in the case of injuries and poisoning. But whilst medical researchers are very good at detailed descriptions of the pathological symptoms and processes in the human organism and at naming new diseases or variations of the already existing ones – it is also true that at the same time people are becoming more and more sick.
Instead of recognising the failure of such a mechanistic approach – “spellbound by the mystique that surrounds the medical profession – our society has conferred on physicians the exclusive right to determine what constitutes illness, who is ill, who is well and what should be done to the sick. Numerous other healers, such as homeopaths, chiropractics, and herbalists, whose therapeutic techniques are based on different, but equally coherent, conceptual models have been legally excluded from mainstream health care” [49] by regulations which favour surgical and pharmaceutical interventions.
How is it possible that such an authoritarian approach is tolerated in modern societies which are otherwise very proud of their level of democracy and protection of human rights? One reason lies in the suppression of the free cultural life which “has become an appendage of political life and economic life. As the administrator of cultural life, the state has ruined the education system. In its capacity of employer, the economic life has ruined it further. What we need is a free and independent cultural life, for only into a cultural life which is free can we introduce what the spiritual world wants to reveal to humanity. Our time itself demands that we extricate the life of culture from the shackles of the state and of the economy.” [50]
An example of cultural life under the undue control of economy is medical education. The curriculum of modern medical training was set up in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century by the American Medical Association (AMA) with the generous financial support of John D. Rockefeller, an oil industry magnate, and Andrew Carnegie, a steel industry magnate. “The AMA which was evaluating the various medical colleges made it their job to target and shut down the herbalist, homeopathic and chiropractic colleges, while Carnegie and Rockefeller were showering hundreds of millions of dollars on allopathic medical schools. They also began to load up the boards of directors of these teaching centres with people who were on the payroll of the donors. So once that was in place the curriculum of the universities swung completely in the direction of pharmaceutical drugs. And it has remained that way ever since.” [51] And it is not only medical education that is under the financial control of pharmaceutical corporations, but also the vast majority of medical research.
Another reason for extreme opposition to alternative methods of healing is that the medical services themselves became one of the most successful business models due to the following facts:
In this context the epidemics of infectious diseases are an ideal market for selling of their vaccines. [53] And the best ‘advertising’ is the promotion of fear of ‘deadly virus’ against which we can defend only by the following three actions:
The use of social engineering in the case of the corona pandemic is just one manifestation of the world domination of the Anglo-American business model in the domain of health care. Steiner warned that in our modern times will come into existence the domination of the economic sector over the whole social organism. But “without the threefold social order it will, through this dominion, pour out cultural illness and death over the whole earth.” [54]
Therefore “if we do not wish to perish because of the extreme degeneration which has come into the spiritual life and the rights life, we must turn to the threefold social order” [55] because “in a healthy society the spiritual life has a sphere of its own and must function alongside the spheres of politics and economics.” [56] The cultural life must be completely independent from all political and economic influences. This means complete independence of education, science, art and spirituality from the control of the state or big corporations. This also means the end of censorship or prosecution of those who disagree with the official narratives. What we need is absolute freedom of all forms of the spiritual life.
The current level of the submission of people to medical and governmental authorities in the case of the coronavirus pandemic is really extraordinary, especially in those countries with the longest democratic traditions. Such passive responses are working against the evolutionary task of the present age and, for that reason, “must be resisted: we must endeavour to support our judgements with sound reasoning. One does not form judgements by getting up on one’s hind legs and pronouncing judgements indiscriminately. Those who are the leading personalities today are often the worst possible choice, the products of the particular circumstances of our time. We must be aware of this. It is not a question of clinging to slogans” such as ‘save lives’, ‘be alert’, ‘control the virus’, ‘keep a distance’; “what is important is to perceive the realities behind the words – what matters is judgement, insight and understanding” [57] of the hidden realities behind the outer events.
We should recognise that “we have entered an era where medicine no longer bears any resemblance to the art and science of healing. The doctor no longer facilitates the body’s innate self-healing capabilities with time, care, good nutrition and special help from our plant allies. To the contrary, medicine has transmogrified into a business enterprise founded on the inherently nihilistic principles of pure, unbridled capitalism, with an estimated 786,000 Americans dying annually from iatrogenic or medically-caused deaths.” [58] This is, of course, not just an American problem, for “globally, as of 2013, an estimated 20 million negative effects from treatment occurred.” [59]
This is not the only danger of pharmaceutical drug-based medicine. Steiner gave a stark warning that in the case “if materialism were to triumph at the expense of tradition, chemical remedies alone could not effect any healing. We are now at the point in human evolution when we must make a new approach to the spiritual, because the old traditions of primordial clairvoyance have gradually been lost.” The only reason that “medicine is still able to heal is because it still preserves a memory of the old traditional knowledge about the spiritual elements in minerals. It uses a combination of traditional knowledge and purely physical discoveries, though these are of not much avail.” [60]
Due to these facts, and much else, some physicians “feel that what they learned about the human being and the art of healing lacks the intuitive, spiritual element. Medicine is the most striking example of what happens when science eliminates the human being from its methods” [61] of research. For this elimination of the human being is the key cause that leads into industrialisation and automatisation of modern ‘medical care’. For example, in the USA companies are already developing computer algorithms “using Artificial Intelligence to study patients in its data universe to identify people and communities at highest risk of Covid-19 on the basis of more than 5,000 variables that include not just medical history but also lifestyle and socioeconomic factors” [62] with the aim to create “lists of people who should be contacted proactively to warn them about their vulnerability so health providers can create a care plan for them.” [63] Such development is leading towards the complete dehumanisation of medical care.
If we want to stop such sinister developments we need to raise our voices and demand:
Only in this way we can hope to free ourselves from the tyrannical authority of those who usurped a god-like right to decide what other people should think, feel and do in regard to intimate questions of health and disease. What is encouraging is that increasing numbers of people want to know what is happening in the background of the present events and are willing to stand up for medical freedom. [65]
What we urgently need in the present crisis of the medical system is a holistic approach that reveals how “processes of illness and health are continually taking place in the human organism, and everything a person does or is guiding to do has its effect upon these processes.” [66] Therefore “healing entails not only applying a medication but also adjusting life accordingly, so that the human body reacts in an appropriate manner to what has been given it. This naturally is of tremendous significance; otherwise, the person can be made even sicker.” [67]
For that reason “it does not suffice simply to train doctors to know that a certain remedy is good for a certain illness. One must rather seek to make the totality of life healthier, and for that one must first discover all that is related to a healthy life. Anthroposophy can provide this understanding” [68] if people are really interested in acquiring it. Now everything depends on decisions of individuals to either passively follow the instructions of medical authorities or to take over the responsibility for their own health in accordance with the progressive spiritual development of humanity.
For an additional perspective see:
❖Three Root Causes behind the Responses to the Corona Pandemic
NOTES
