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Steiner1
The European College of Human Ecology (COHE) International Online Program 2021
Prof. Dr. Dieter Steiner, European College of Human Ecology & Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland - steinerhamel@bluewin.ch
I. Diagnosis: Our Civilization Stands on its Head and is Threatened with Collapse
Abstract
This video makes the diagnosis that our Western civilization stands on its head. The attempt to
substantiate this declaration starts with the proposition that a human individual is a threefold being
exhibiting a material, a mental and a social dimension. Accordingly, to meet the needs associated
with the three dimensions a human civilization must feature activities in three corresponding
domains: an economic, a cultural and a socio-political domain. Thereby culture is understood in a
narrow sense as mental culture comprising the mindset that plays a decisive regulative role for the
living together of the humans and their relationship to the natural environment. To speak of a
headstand of today’s civilization means that unrestrained economic thinking and interests have
infiltrated the cultural realm. As a result we see the natural environment as a warehouse to be
plundered and as a place to dump our waste instead of as a home in which we should fit in
respectfully. Two scientists are mentioned that were early critics of this situation: The
anthropologist Roy Rappaport who described it as a case of usurpation in that the economy had
taken over the place of religion, and the sociologist Robert Park who addressed the potentially
dangerous role of science and technology behind the economic system. It will not be possible to
maintain this state of affairs if an eventual collapse should be avoided. The normative threefold
social order devised by the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner presented at the end is not meant to be
an infallible remedy but simply food for thought.
II. Remedy?: Does a "Search for the Primitive" Help to Get on theFeet again?
Abstract
The diagnosis in the first video, that our Western civilization is upside down, leads naturally to the
question what kind of remedy could possibly help to rectify the situation. Stanley Diamond,
anthropologist and civilization critic, recognizes a potential healing power in the »primitive«, i.e., in
prehistoric ways of human existence. It is obvious hat the naming »primitive« here has not a
derogatory meaning. The conventional understanding is that the primitive phase of cultural
evolution, comprising the archaic nomadic hunters and gatherers, ends with the so-called neolithic
revolution which leads over to sedentariness, agriculture, population growth and political
structures. We should, however, acknowledge the additional existence of a longer transitional
phase of village cultures exhibiting egalitarian communities with somewhat more weight given to
the female side and with a strong nature-religious background. We call them socio-cultural,
matricentral societies and regard them as occupying an advanced state of primitive living. To get
an idea about how the humans of these past times may have lived we make use of the results of
ethnological studies on contemporary primitive societies. From the ethnologist Jürg Helbling we
learn that the old conviction concerning an all-time dominance of men in foraging societies is false.
In the sense of a case study providing more detail we resort to the research of anthropologist
Richard Lee on the Ju/’hoansi living in the Kalahari desert. As for the matricentral societies we
have the extensive documentation on the neolithic village cultures by archaeologist Marija
Gimbutas at our disposal. A case study about a contemporary matricentric society is given by the
work of Heide Göttner-Abendroth about the Mosuo in Southern China. Historically the matricentric
phase ended with what I call the »gender revolution«. External and internal factors led to the
emergence of patriarchal societies fostering the subordination of women. Gerda Lerner, historian,
has documented this process for the city states of Mesopotamia. The basic measure to get our
civilization from the headstand back to a foothold must thus consist of an inverted gender
revolution.