User:Threefoldfellowship

THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORGANISM RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

[[Category:Governance]]

HOW WILL WE PROTOTYPE TOMORROW?

Progress Towards Understanding the Threefold Nature of Social Life as a Compelling Basis for the Shift to Game ~B

Why are we saying there's a threefold nature to social life?

Historically, when we humans think about how our needs could be met in our social life together as a ‘society’, three distinctions inevitably keep showing up: Plato’s ideal state had three parts “corresponding to the human soul” - the intellectual governing class, the soldier class defending the state, and the peasant/worker class of farmers and artisans; the French Revolution wanted “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”; The American Declaration of Independence calls for “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. A New York Times lead piece on this weird Independence Day weekend calls on these three distinctions again out of the disorienting strangeness of this, our, time:  “In recent months, under the banner ‘The America We Need’, the Opinion section has presented a wide range of ideas for reforging our economy, our society, and our democracy … to better serve the people of the United States.”

The continued need for fresh appeals in the streets to America's historical conscience and an end to racist horrors, injustice and poverty calls on us to ask if there is perhaps some systemic STRUCTURAL issue with how we view society's functioning that could use a deepening.  The 'threefold nature of the social organism' asserts that the whole social organism is composed of three separate and integral operating principles - spiritual/intellectual/cultural, governmental/political/state, and economic. The idea is meant not merely as a way to categorize different functions, but to create practical 'living' containers within which each distinction can fully expand to its most creative potential and also contain itself.  The principle of separation of church and state is an example of appropriate expansion and containment in the 'threefold social organism' sense. When the state makes laws either to allow or disallow a woman's reproductive preferences, this is an 'unlawful' interference of the government/politics/ state into the spiritual/intellectual/cultural life of a member of civil society.

The idea of restructuring the social organism around the threefold nature of social life first came to Rudolf Steiner, who describes himself as a theoretical ethicist, in the interwar years. Steiner is well known for seeding the invention of new forms of education, healing, agriculture, architecture, and, primarily a path of contemplative practice aimed at preparing humanity to assume the mantle of moral progress through healing of self, society and earth. Steiner's books and thousand's of lectures are synopsis-resistant IMHO, so I will leave it there. Besides, the utility of the idea of the threefold nature of social life will have to be made real in our time among us all as contemporaries.

I will add that another way to put it is that the threefold nature of social life is a theory of an organic social platform designed to mirror the cognitive/nerve-sense, social-emotional/rhythmic, and will/metabolic-limb systems (a.k.a. “head, heart, and hands” of its human ‘citizens’.  Our aim in mid-pandemic, mid BLM protests/soul-search, mid-economic %#@&^* is a shift towards radical human cooperation between the three fundamental principles of society:  The Principle of Unique Creative  Individualism in Cultural Life, the Principle of Democratic Equity and Social Justice in Political Life, and the Principle of Filial Solidarity in Economic Life.

Initially, the Threefold Research Fellowship will shine a light on the present 'social threefolding' pioneers  who are bringing theory into action so that the threefold social organism idea may collaborate with kindred spirits sharing  similar goals for humanistic social transformation. - JOAN JAECKEL

We will use the Appreciative Inquiry practice of Positive Questions to shape the conversations. "Appreciative inquiry attempts to use ways of asking questions and envisioning the future in order to foster positive relationships and build on the present potential of a given person, organization or situation." - Wikipedia

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HOSTING GROUP

JOAN JAECKEL Threefold Social Organism Research Fellow

Circles for the Renewal of Culture