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THE SOCIAL QUEST 

 

In the human social organism today great oppositional forces are at work. We are experiencing an intensification of age-old conflicts, in particular between individuality and the demands of the "common good". What is completely new is the way the modern digital reality has globalised society and has allowed for the emergence of unprecedented potentials for both tyrannous control and individual freedom.

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Virtually nowhere today in our tertiary educational institutions is heard the call made by Rudolf Steiner, over a century ago, for a living social thinking. He warned us that social transformation is not a matter of bringing forward new versions of theories coming from either the left or the right. To understand and work creatively with the living social organism we must develop a living social thinking. Materialistic thinking, in the form of "critical theory" of either a socialist or liberal orientation, can no longer serve us.

". . . a spiritual contemplation of nature will provide means for the kind of training in thought which, among other things, makes it possible to comprehend the social organism".

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Rudolf Steiner, The Renewal of the Social Organism

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The rapid advance of Artificial Intelligence is already bringing about a vast social reshaping; its impact as a technology is only beginning to be grasped. However it also has a potential of an entirely different kind. Artificial Intelligence can have a revelatory function; it can help us to perceive the essential nature of our thinking, the kind of thinking which is cultivated in all the natural and social sciences. If a machine can take over this thinking, then the thinking itself is essentially mechanistic or, as we normally say, materialistic.
 
The living beings of nature and the human social organism cannot be properly or adequately understood in this way. If humanity and nature is confined to the logical structures of a "mineral" intelligence, then people and the beings of the natural world will be progressively enslaved by this intelligence and not able to realise themselves in freedom.
 
How do we develop an exact form of living social thinking? Following the indications of Rudolf Steiner we seek to develop an imaginative, living thinking through - in the first place - allowing the living phenomena of nature to teach us. This is the goal of Atelier for the Social Quest.
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THE ATELIER COURSE
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Atelier for the Social Quest is a self-directed course made up of four study modules - Nature, Society, Self and Economics. The course is best done in a group setting - an "atelier" - but it can be worked with solo.  Atelier for the Social Quest is a social art studio, shaped and managed by the participants themselves. The work is not assessed - what can grow out of it depends on individual and group initiative.

 

The journey of Atelier for the Social Quest begins with the study of natural phenomena – plants, animals, colours and the human form. The natural scientific insights of the poet J. W. Goethe in the 19th century were developed further by Rudolf Steiner in the twentieth century. Their work forms the basis of this study. In this holistic science the scientific and artistic are inseparable.

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The artistic observer learns how to read the language of nature and the social organism. This is the possibility of an exact imaginative thinking. Goethe, in his natural scientific studies, interpreted this language in terms of these primary elements - the archetypal phenomenon, polarity, metamorphosis, intensification. Each of these principles is vital in order to be able to understand and work with Steiner's picture of a threefold social order.

Atelier for the Social Quest

     Shaping the Social Threefold

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