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Four Domains of a Healthy Culture
Four Domains of a Healthy Culture by Paul Gierlach
I have great hope in the future because I have faith in the individual human being. I know that the human being has from time immemorial lived in such a way with others that together they have created viable societies. It seems to me that our challenging times need to be understood within this framework. We can experience that not just our beliefs but our very consciousness of self is challenged daily.
Of course there is much that divides us from each other, both as individuals and as members of society, but at the same time one identical cry is heard from all who are participating in the protests, rebellions, perhaps revolution of our times. We hear that “new forms are needed.” What are they? The economic structure of the United States being what it is, I feel completely helpless when following the news in this arena. I act as a consumer, trying to protect a modest savings.
The political structure of the United States being what it is, I feel almost completely helpless when following the news in this arena. Democracy is messy at the best of times and seldom offers immediate relief. Yet, it does work. When law itself is challenged as a legitimate social force, however, the notion of “being in charge” easily replaces the demands of justice.
The cultural structure of the United States being what it is, I feel that I can make a difference. It is in this arena that I can meet other individuals in an honest way. And, more importantly, I can be a co-creator of a “new form.” This actually is what gives me such hope for the future.
Let me share the foundation of that optimism. Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures entitled From Symptom to Reality in Modern History in 1918. In this cycle, and other war-time lectures, he warned us repeatedly that society would continue to experience more and more turmoil and destruction until we human beings created social forms that could respond to the times that environ us. These times, which he calls the Consciousness Soul epoch, are dynamically different from all preceding epochs of human history in that the cognizing activity of individuals comes to the fore: with our intellect, we form our opinions of others and also create the technological world that supports us in our thought-structures. We are in the habit of solving problems with our thinking. We are told to be awake at all times; the very nature of our cities and use of ubiquitous telecommunications seem to further that goal.
In reality, we are not awake to that fundamental component of our societies: other human beings! We take them for granted; we use them for our own ends: they are voters; they are consumers and/or employees; we treat them as if they were ideas; as if their entire existence were a function of one particular issue that they just won’t compromise any more! We might even think that they, and we, are simply clever animals. With all this social baggage, no wonder we are crying out for “new forms.” As we will see, those will arise out of our connections with other individuals and not out of our ideas about them.
In lecture 5 of From Symptom, Rudolf Steiner gave concrete suggestions on how we can work positively in the cultural sphere. He called them the “Four Domains.” At first sight, they manage to seem both commonplace and strange.
The “new form” arises not out of the words on the page but out of the deeds they provoke, and the deed of paramount importance lies in the mystery of the fourth domain. I worked with a group of friends for 14 months on these domains. It was not difficult for us to work with the first three: for the thought that lies behind the first was shared by us all; the actions portrayed in the second we could experience from time to time, especially in its negative manifestation; the inclination to be co-extensive in some way with another we called empathy. But the fourth! Eventually we hit upon self-sacrifice, which was fine. However, when we understood the mandate of the fourth domain as a sacrifice of the self, then we opened ourselves to so much.
Only with that awareness could we make real sense of the domains and, more importantly, our work with them. When dealing with the social, outer, non-personal aspect of the domains, we identified the first as “natural law,” the second as “propaganda,” the third as an “indoctrination,” and the fourth as “egoity.” After we recognized our own “egoity” and began to live in the sequence all over again, we made the most important discovery of all: that our changed-self related quite differently to the challenges of the domains. We did not really begin to see others as spiritual beings until we uncovered our own spirit.
Our personal, human experience in the first domain was to meet many people whom we did not know. We did not want to pass them by. We talked with so many people! And really cared. Within the second domain, we recognized the impulse to listen more carefully when others were talking, and to actually talk only when necessary. We noted the inwardness of this activity. In the third domain, we noticed a different kind of inwardness: a discretion. In particular, those of us who are “naturally empathetic” struggled to be discerning. And the fourth! We did not share much about this domain. At first, I didn’t know why, but I am sure now that it was the result of a kind of privacy, one that speaks of an existential modesty.
I think it is fair to say that working with the domains leads one to a deeper awareness of one’s self as a manifestation of the spirit, which, in turn, strengthens our intention when living with others and trying to see them as spiritual beings. In fact, Rudolf Steiner says that we come in touch with the angels. This is no little accomplishment. But the story is far from over. This contact with the four domains has brought three elements of life into a new focus.
As a student of anthroposophy, I noticed that the four domains correspond to the same spiritual “law” that creates the four-fold human being; the four stages of the Christian Community service; the seasons; human cognition of everyday perception, Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition; the first four planets of planetary evolution: Saturn, Sun, Moon, earth; the last four planets of planetary evolution: earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan; the relationship of human beings to the third hierarchy, of Angels, Archangels, Archai. To name a few. Working within these analogues strengthens one’s conscious relationship with the spirit and spiritual realities.
As a citizen of the United States, I noticed that I could faithfully try to work with the principle contending forces of our times when I included issues of race and heredity in the first domain, a range of diversity issues in the second, inclusivity issues and rampant nationalisms in the third, and bewilderment of intentions and identity in the fourth. Living with the issues in this context helped me bring the spirit gained from my own self-work into a faithful meeting with the individuals I meet. In every society, there are people and there are issues.
I purposely wrote “bring the spirit,” not “bring my idea of the spirit.” It is not hard to have ideas about the spirit, but that is not enough these days. There are many ideas in our social world these days. They quickly become issues. The “new form” that is cried out for will emerge only when individuals bring whatever aspect of spirit they have managed to incorporate into their selves so that they can, consciously, want to sacrifice some part of that self for the benefit of another.
Call it by its name: love. Let it be a love founded on wisdom of our own striving. And let that striving reach out to embrace all whom we meet, all whom we confront, in our social networks; may it stretch us beyond our limits as we “dedicate ourselves in selfless cultivation of the spiritual life.” (The closing words of Christmas Conference, 1924.) This self-same gesture among individuals can consciously create a wholesome, representative society.
Paul Gierlach (paulgierlach@gmail.com) has worked in Waldorf schools since 1979, for most of his career as class teacher and high school humanities teacher. Retired from full-time teaching, he teaches main lessons in different schools, mentors teachers, advises on use of the Waldorf curriculum to teach students with a wide variety of learning styles, and participates in teacher training programs to advance anthroposophical historiography in 21st century high schools.
