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sets, values, attitudes, and habits of people, in short, its culture,will determine the ultimate success of efforts to create a bettercountry. The heart and mind of any revolution is the revolutionof hearts and minds. In partnership with and in support of civilsociety, the key actor in culture, Perlas will encourage a culturalrevolution that is peaceful, creative, and celebratory. Thiswill be the foundation, the living basis for massive reforms ingovernment and business that will propel the renaissance of thePhilippines, domestically and globally.While most political leaders have no idea of the nature andcapabilities of civil society and have often been in conflict withits active citizens, Perlas has been a leader in civil society forover 40 years and has written one of the most influential bookson civil society in the world. Perlas will use his expertise andcompetence in this area to encourage wide-ranging partnershipswith civil society to lay the cultural basis for renewingPhilippine society.Inner Change and Creativity as Basis of SocietalTransformationComputer science has a saying: garbage in, garbage out. Thewrong software can render the most sophisticated computerhardware dysfunctional and worthless. The same is true in societaltransformation. We may create the most wonderful constitution,sets of laws, and structures of governance, but if peopleremain lazy, cynical, apathetic, corrupt, and hopeless, then ourstructural reform will never take off. Profound societal transformationcan only be done on the basis of inner change.Past and present governments, with rare exceptions, haveno understanding of and appreciation for the importance of humandevelopment within a societal transformation context. ButNicanor Perlas has had extensive experience in socially engagedhuman and leadership development. Perlas will harness hiscompetence in this area to secure the long-term renewal of governmentinstitutions on the basis of self-directed inner changeof its key leaders, management, and staff.Tayong Lahat! Ngayon! (All together! Now!)Systemic transformation, societal threefolding partnerships,positive initiatives, cultural transformation, and inner-changeall point to one reality. No single person, no matter how brilliantand competent, can change the country alone. It will requirethe engagement of millions of citizens to renew a country. Mostgovernments do not appreciate the genius of its people, no matterwhat economic class they may belong to. But Nicanor Perlashas been facilitating national and global workshops on harnessingthe collective intelligence of groups of people. With his rallycry, TAYONG LAHAT! NGAYON!, Perlas will become the firstPhilippine President, if voters say so, to harness the collectiveintelligence of a nation to realize its highest aspirations and tochange its destiny forever.JOB 9-0347.5 X 5As accessed 11/25/2009 at www.nicanor-perlas.com/Nicanor/whyvote-for-nicky.html.Evolving News for Members & Friends doesANTHROPOSOPHICAL SOCIETYnot endorse political candidates. The opinions expressed aboveare those of the authors.let the journey begin…australia • china • costa ricaindia • taiwan • thailand • turkeyDuring its 44-year history, Global College (previously Friends WorldProgram) has established itself as one of the nation’s leading experientialeducation programs. Students benefit from international experiences as wellas a broad-based liberal arts education offered by one of the largest, mostcomprehensive private universities in the country. Global College is the onlyglobal studies program in the nation that integrates a series of year-longcultural immersions into a progressive, four-year Bachelor of Arts degree.718.780.4312 • www.brooklyn.liu.edu/globalcollegeglobalcollege@liu.edu14 Evolving News for Members & Friends
The Web as Will and IdeaEugene SchwartzIn the summer of 1984 I was invited to the Goetheanum bythe Section for Belles-Lettres 1 to help lead an English-languageconference on the influence of Albert Steffen in the West.Throughout the conference week the leaders would gather inthe evening in the office of Hagen Biesantz, the Section leader.One night, after a long and lively conversation, we made readyto leave, only to discover that we were locked inside the building.Even in those pre-9/11 days the Goetheanum had a vigilantsecurity team who, though they saw us walking through thehallways, had no intention of releasing us. The sight and soundof those men in brown uniforms calling out commands to theirpolice dogs in harsh Swiss-German, evoked some unpleasant associationsin the mind of this Jewish boyfrom Brooklyn. I was relieved when Dr.Biesantz said that he knew of anotherway out of the building.Down, down, down we went into passagesso constricted and labyrinthinethat they seemed to confirm the Goetheanum’sstature as a modern mysterycenter. The exit was in sight, but beforewe came to it Dr. Biesantz drew us tothe nondescript door of a storage room.“Come in,” he said, unlocking the portaland switching on the light, “Look!”There it rested, immutable, bland,and mostly plastic: the Goetheanum’sfirst (and only) computer. “We don’tknow what to do with it,” Dr. Biesantzconfided to our pale and shaken group(first the police dogs, and now . . . . this.And it was 1984!). He went on. “It is theunmentionable,” he intoned, and placedhis forefinger against his lips. We understoodthat we were pledged to silence.Today, of course, the idea of a solitary computer is all butunthinkable. In the Goetheanum, as in many centers of anthroposophyworldwide, computers work in tandem, whetherthrough internal networks or the internet. In spite of the remarkableproliferation of computers throughout the anthroposophicalmovement (compared, say, to devices such as televisions oriPods) very little has been written about them. We must thereforebe especially grateful to Sergei Prokofieff for “The Being ofthe Internet,” an article that appeared in the English-languagePacifica Journal three years ago. 2 The article is no less germanenow than it was in 2006, and with the hope of making it knownto a wider audience I offer the following elucidation.As is only to be expected, Prokofieff’s article is concise and1 This section is now known in the USA as the Section for the LiteraryArts & Humanities.2 Editor’s note: Pacifica Journal noted prior publication in the newsletterof the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain. The first USE-News pointed the article out online last spring, and the San MiguelBranch newsletter in San Diego reprinted the article this fall.well researched. He touches on so many important points insuch a compressed way that it would be far beyond the scope ofthis article to speak to them all. Therefore, in this commentary Iwant to address only three of the myriad issues he raises:1. Who stands behind the internet?2. The question of the compression of spiritual content.3. Our responsibility vis-à-vis the internet.The Imagination of the Spiderweb“It is frightening,” Prokofieff writes, “how poignantly RudolfSteiner describes this spirit world in comparison with the worldsituation of today,” and he then presents a lengthy quote fromPerspectives on Human Development, aMay 13, 1921 lecture. Because this lectureis not readily available, I, too, willquote his excerpt in full:And from the earth will well up terriblecreations of beings who in their characterstand between the mineral kingdom andthe plant kingdom as automative beingswith a super-natural intellect, an immenseintellect. When this development takeshold, the earth will be covered, as witha web, a web of terrible spiders, spidersof enormous wisdom, which, however,in their organization doesn’t even reachthe plant status. Terrible spiders whichwill interlock with each other, whichwill imitate in their movements all thatwhich humanity has thought of with theirshadowlike intellect that was not inspiredby a new imagination, through that whichis to come through Spiritual Science. Allman’s thoughts of this kind, which areunreal, will come alive. The earth will becovered […] with terrible mineral-plantlike spiders, which will link up with empathy but evil intention.And man […] will have to unite with these terrible mineralplantlike spider creatures.Prokofieff goes on to say,These spider creatures will be of a distinctly ahrimanic character.When you read these prophetic words of the spiritual scientisttoday, in an era of world wide connections via computerand the internet you may be disheartened to find how quicklythis prophecy has become a reality on earth. It is as if RudolfSteiner, with his spiritual gaze, described today’s internet frombeyond the threshold, categorically warning humanity that ina not too distant future, with the unification of the moon andearth, this whole internet-computer-web and in fact everythingconnected with the development of artificial intellect will suddenlycome alive . . . .Steiner’s 1921 lecture is unusual for its strongly prophetictone. As if the nearly apocalyptic picture of the spider webs andtheir spinners were not enough, Steiner also spoke of “Supermen,”super-human beings who began to descend to the earthFall-Winter 200915
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