Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Freedom, Thinking, and Individuality:Ways to a New Style in CulturebyJohn Root, Sr.Preliminary facts– The work of the environmentalists foreshadows the need for ano-growth, or maintenance, world economy. Such an economy cannot bebased on the present forms of competition, which would require growth asa safety valve against monopoly and its attendant economic hierarchy andpolitical despotism.– That the advanced few develop at the expense of the ordinary manyis an archetypal principle described by Rudolf Steiner in terms of planetaryand earlier earth evolution. But that the advanced few should keep the manydown is no longer as self-evident as it was, for example, in ancient Egypt.– Evolution now calls for the transformation of selfishness as partof the incarnating process, into selfless objectivity as part of the excarnatingprocess. This change was heralded by the internalization of religion,the emergence of conscience and intellectual thinking, and ultimately thestruggle for the ideal of individual freedom. The idea of the Res Publica, orpower in the name of the people, gradually penetrated to forms of governmentand society in the West.– Two books which shed light on this point of view are:An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by CharlesA. Beard, first edition 1913; edition with new Introduction byForrest McDonald, N.Y., 1986, andFigures of Speech: American Writers and the Literary Marketplace, fromBenjamin Franklin to Emily Dickinson, by R. Jackson Wilson,Baltimore, 1989 (first edition 1987).317