At the core of Gilbert’s paper is the argument that a reproducible methodology for ethical and transformational politics lies in the realm of human consciousness. To demonstrate this, Gilbert examines two 20th century Czech leaders—Václav Havel and Tomáš Masaryk—showing how their idealistic visions and positive political transformations developed from remarkable experiences of consciousness. According to Gilbert, humanity can experience two distinct states of consciousness: the analytic state, which characterizes the fragmentary nature of our everyday cognitive experience, and the holistic state, which transcends ordinary consciousness into experiences of self-evident, unified qualities. From these different states, Gilbert argues, emerge fundamentally different political transformations. Changes that foster humanity's rich diversity and relationship to nature tend to stem from holistic consciousness, which perceives the value and interconnectedness of all things. Conversely, changes that neglect these potentials tend to originate from pure analytic consciousness, which cannot perceive such deeper realities and consequently denies or suppresses them. The transformations are inseparable from the consciousness that creates them.

To illustrate this connection, Gilbert shows how the transformative political ideas and achievements of Havel and Masaryk flowed from their active development of holistic consciousness. Through the contemplative study of science, philosophy, art, and spirituality, both individuals cultivated a heightened sensitivity to qualities within their immediate experience, including the essence of their humanity. This self-knowledge equipped them to speak powerfully to untapped democratic and pluralistic potentials among many of their fellow citizens, imbuing political culture with a constructive and moral spirit. Having discovered this potential in themselves, they could see and thus invite into being the latent transformative potentials in others. This is not to suggest that every decision or policy they enacted was transformative or without controversy, but rather that their most significant contributions to political renewal arose from this foundation of self-knowledge.

It is perhaps unsurprising then that both leaders, despite governing during transitions from different totalitarian systems—Masaryk from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Havel from communist rule—drew inspiration from the same philosophical source: German poet, playwright, and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the phenomenological principles underlying his research of nature. As Gilbert argues, Goethe's intuitive methodology for studying natural metamorphoses, which is demonstrated beautifully in this lecture by the Nature Institute’s Ryan Shea, offers humanity a reproducible approach to ethically engage in any field, including politics. By working from holistic consciousness, we can ground ourselves in political events more widely and deeply. Political polarization, poverty, and violence, for instance, need not only be seen as challenges requiring cultural and political solutions beyond ourselves, but also as manifestations of our fledgling individual and collective capacities for deep collaboration.

Gilbert’s account of the relationship between consciousness and political outcomes is as relevant for addressing contemporary crises as it is likely to be misunderstood by those accustomed to purely analytic methods. The analytic state of consciousness is susceptible to discounting what it does not already know, as well as confusing the concept of something, like holistic consciousness, with its direct experience. Gilbert anticipated these challenges and, drawing from his own experience, invites readers to develop first-hand knowledge of how consciousness underlies political transformation. Rather than simply taking Gilbert at his word, which would keep us within the analytic state, we are encouraged to investigate personally how certain cognitive tendencies either cultivate or obstruct our capacity for greater levels of holistic perception. Through this experiential approach, we can arrive at self-initiated understandings rooted in the holistic state of consciousness itself.

In the same spirit, I invite you to read Gilbert’s paper in a contemplative fashion. It may be helpful to imagine his research as a meditation or sacred text; not in the sense of something to be blindly believed, but rather a means to explore and expand one’s consciousness. To this end, I recommend reading slowly and striving to develop a genuine interest in Gilbert’s work, as well as the human personalities of Havel and Masaryk. Pay close attention to any sympathies and antipathies that arise while reading, and return to the text with a mood of equanimity and openness. Allow the desire to grasp every fact intellectually to give way to a feeling of understanding, an honest assessment of what one knows and doesn’t know from one’s own experience of Gilbert’s ideas. This may require re-reading certain sentences and passages to accurately estimate one’s level of understanding before moving on. If done sincerely, a relationship with the text as a whole can form in which we feel the quality of our given attention mirrored back at us. Approaching the text in this way will put us well on our way to “Living in Truth,” as Havel says, and to experiencing life’s greatest transformation: the development of self-knowledge. The renewal of politics rests precisely on our understanding of this metamorphosis of the self.

Havel, Masaryk, and the Political Analyst: The Transformative Methodology of Goethean Science

Robert J. Gilbert
Department of Government and International Studies
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina, 29208

Prepared for Delivery at the Panel "Eastern Europe: Transformation, Change or Stagnation?" Sponsored by the Organized Section on Transformational Politics. 1994 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, The New York Hilton, September 1-4, 1994. Copyright by the American Political Science Association.

I. Introduction

Transformational politics is a new field, one still defining its parameters within political science. What is clear at this point are its foundations; the fundamental changes and paradigm shifts underway in the contemporary world. These shifts are reflected within academia itself: the field of psychology has seen the rise of humanistic and transpersonal approaches; the physical sciences have had their Newtonian assumptions challenged by quantum physics; and political science has entered an era which many refer to as 'post-positivist' (Lapid, 1989). Transformational politics is in the vanguard of this paradigm shift from the purely quantitative to the holistic and qualitative. At this stage of transition we are naturally faced with fundamental questions regarding methodology and academic standards. Most studies by transformational politics analysts are notable for their emphasis on the holistic interrelationships of their subjects rather than a reductionist approach; the tendency is to allow the subject to speak for itself rather than quantify it into abstraction. What remains is to clarify the precise methodology which represents this approach, so that it is reproducible and perceived as legitimate by the larger academic community.

It is hard to imagine a more appropriate subject for transformational politics analysis on the contemporary political scene than the region of Eastern Europe. This area has undergone drastic and fundamental change in the last five years; change which, significantly, was not foreseen or considered possible by 'realpolitik' political analysts prior to that time. For many citizens of Eastern Europe, unfortunately, these changes have been far from ideal. While there are essential structural reasons for this, one of the most central—and unnecessary—factors in this situation has been how these changes and opportunities for change have been cognized, particularly by Western analysts. 'Shock therapy' and other socially disastrous prescriptions for this region are the consequence of imposing old ways of thinking and mental categorization upon these new opportunities. The need for a fundamental rethinking, one which is holistic and not fragmentary, has become painfully obvious.

Within Eastern Europe it is the Czech Republic which is most commonly cited as having the best prognosis for political and economic health; this judgment can be found in the most mainstream of sources, such as the Economist magazine's 1994 yearbook. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is the Czech Republic which has enjoyed the most progressive political leadership in the region through the presidency of Václav Havel. Havel has earned an international reputation for his holistic and deeply ethical political thinking; many people find it difficult to believe that such a man could be the head of state in any country. Although the Czech transition to independence has not been without its problems, prominently among them the political split with Slovakia, Havel can be fairly considered to be at least partly responsible for many of the best aspects of this transition. The virtually bloodless 'Velvet Revolution', the positive perception of the Czech Republic's stability by the international community, and Prague's resurgence as a cultural magnet for the young and idealistic have all been influenced by Havel. It is incumbent upon the field of transformational politics to understand what lies at the heart of this leadership, particularly what is reproducible in it which can help foster similar political ethics and openness elsewhere.

This paper will address two topics which, at first glance, are not directly related. The first is an inquiry into what stands behind the idealistic leadership which the Czech Republic has enjoyed twice in this century; currently under President Václav Havel and from 1918-1935 under the man whom Havel often cites as his spiritual predecessor, Tomáš Masaryk. The second question stems from the background concerns of our field; what methodology is most effective in researching subjects in the process of transformation and how can this be clearly expressed as a reproducible model?

What will emerge from this inquiry is that the two questions have the same answer. Tomáš Masaryk derived his political inspiration from his deep study of science and philosophy; especially, as will be demonstrated, from German writer J.W. Goethe's idea of a scientific 'exact sensorial imagination'. Havel also has derived his inspiration from an eclectic selection of sources, of which we will deal with three in particular: the first is the legacy of Masaryk; the second is Goethe's literary work Faust; and the third is the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, which is intimately related to Goethe's scientific methodology. Goethean science, either explicitly or in the characteristics of its methodology, is one of the most recognizable and reproducible sources of the Czech experience of ethical and transformative political leadership.

This same Goethean science which provides a key to the positive cognitive aspects of Czech political leadership is also the best candidate for a methodology by which to study transformational politics. Goethe's entire approach is based on the study of subjects in the process of transformation, or as Goethe would call it, metamorphosis. The connection between Czech leadership and the methodology of the field of transformational politics lies in the area of consciousness; the Czech leadership has been different from the norm because it is based on the attainment of a holistic state of consciousness by the personal efforts of Masaryk and Havel. Most 'status quo' political leaders operate from a different mode of consciousness, the analytic. Similarly, positivist approaches to political science which have been in vogue in the recent past also are derived from the analytic mode of consciousness, which is inherently incapable of grasping a living subject in dynamic transformation; only the holistic mode of consciousness can accomplish this. Goethean science is the means by which the transformational politics researcher can develop the holistic cognitive skills our field requires.

It is common to find the term 'holistic' used in indistinct, mystical ways today; that is not the case here. This paper will characterize the scientific nature of, and the functional differences between, the holistic and analytic states of consciousness. It will be demonstrated that the holistic mode is a natural capacity of the human mind to grasp the essential unity of organic life. Just as our culture has fostered the one-sided development of the analytic mode of fragmentary awareness in recent history, so can the holistic mode be clearly and consciously developed. This paper will first introduce the Goethean method of science and indicate its capacity to train the holistic mode of consciousness; the sections on Masaryk and Havel which follow will demonstrate the empirical effectiveness of this holistic consciousness and the impact which it has had on the political life of Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic. A final summary will give some indications toward future possibilities for the use and development of the Goethean model by political scientists.

II. Goethean Science

"Man in himself, in so far as he uses his healthy senses, is the most powerful and exact physical apparatus there can be. The greatest mischief of modern physics is that experiments have, as it were, been separated off from the human being. Man wishes to cognize nature only by what artificial instruments show, and would thereby limit and prove what she can accomplish."
—J.W. Goethe (Vasco, 1978:46)

Background Considerations

Johann Wolfgang Goethe is better known today as a poet and novelist than as a natural scientist. While this is unfortunate, it is in some ways understandable; our culture sees art and science as two very different fields which are not interrelated. This was not the case for Goethe, who wrote: "Since neither [empirical] knowledge nor rational thought can create a whole, because the former lacks internal and the latter external reality, we must necessarily conceive of science as an art if we expect to achieve some sort of totality" (Vasco, 1978:81-82).

Goethe was able to express his perceptions of reality through both science and art; both aspects of his work flow seamlessly into one another. An illustration of this is the communication of his studies of unfolding botanical and zoological life in two very scientific works, The Metamorphosis of Plants and The Metamorphosis of Animals. To express the metamorphosis of the human being, however, Goethe chose the literary form, resulting in his classic work Faust. Goethe's success as a novelist should not lead to the conclusion that Goethe was simply an amateur dilettante in scientific research. Rudolf Magnus reported finding over 18,000 different specimens in Goethe's house from his geological studies alone. Magnus stated that "I can testify from personal experience to the extraordinary fascination of repeating Goethe's experiments with his own instruments, of realizing the accuracy of his observations, the telling faithfulness with which he described everything he saw" (Bortoft, 1986:80). Although the primary importance of Goethe's method is the mode of consciousness which it fosters and utilizes, it should also be noted here that Goethe achieved a number of completely new scientific discoveries as well. Among these are the existence of the human intermaxillary jawbone, "the vertebral theory of the skull in osteology [and] the common identity of all plant organs with the leaf in botany" (Steiner, 1988a:1).

Beyond his artistic reputation, the main reason for the lack of general recognition for Goethe's scientific work is because of its roots in the holistic mode of consciousness; his approach to science is qualitative and based on human faculties of perception, and so has been largely overlooked by the dominant mechanistic/reductionist scientific paradigm. However his work is being rediscovered and recognized for what it is; a practical blueprint for an entirely different way of doing science. "The great significance of Goethe's morphological works is to be sought in the fact that in them the theoretical basis and method for studying organic entities are established, and this is a scientific deed of the first order" wrote Rudolf Steiner, the editor of Goethe's scientific papers in the 1880s (Steiner, 1988a:47—emphasis in original).

Goethe's scientific work was in reaction to the reductionist tendencies of the end of the eighteenth century. Goethe saw that these tendencies would result in science losing a direct experience of life's interconnections; he expressed this situation in poetry as "the single parts in our hand; missing, alas, is the spiritual band" (Lehrs, 1958:107). Goethe spent decades studying the transformative processes of organic life to develop his method of following these processes in human consciousness; it was he who coined the now common term metamorphosis in his aforementioned study of plant development (Goethe, 1958). By following Goethe's methods it is possible to understand any living entity in its holistic integrity, including political subjects. But to do this requires (for most of us) changing the way we use our minds; essentially, to follow a living subject in transformation requires a transformation of our own consciousness into an equally dynamic mode of operation. In Goethe's words: "If we want to arrive in some measure at a living idea of nature, we ourselves must remain flexible and open to change, following the example that nature sets" (Vasco, 1978:80). This was not an idealistic homily for Goethe, but a very real scientific process.

To understand how we ourselves can practice Goethe's methodology, we first need to be aware that there is not one state of 'scientific' consciousness, but two. The first is what we have thus far termed (following Ornstein, 1983) the analytic mode, which is what is stressed in Western society (particularly in education and academia). It is this mode which is commonly thought of as 'scientific'; it is based on dividing all phenomena into discrete unrelated parts, which are experienced sequentially in linear order. The analytic mode is sometimes referred to as the 'verbal-intellectual' because it tends to intellectualize about subjects through thinking in words, and because it underlies the structure of human language (Bortoft, 1986:30).

The second mode is what we have termed the holistic, which is commonly thought of as 'intuitive'; it sees phenomena as interrelated and meaningful, experiencing them simultaneously. Robert Ornstein expresses this another way by defining 'intuition' to mean "knowledge without recourse to inference" (Ornstein, 1983:24); in other words, it is a direct and not a reflective knowledge, unlike the analytic process. Another distinction between the two modes of consciousness is that the holistic tends to think in pictures (or even in sounds) unlike the word-consciousness of the analytic.

To further clarify what may seem to some as an arbitrary division of consciousness into two distinct modes, we can reference the large body of literature which exists on bicameral mind (or 'split-brain') theory. Research on the left and right brain hemispheres indicates that the right hemisphere processes information in a holistic and intuitive manner, while the complementary left hemisphere (dominant in Western cultures) engages in linear analysis (Gazzaniga, 1973). Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes demonstrated in his influential work The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1982) that the evolving functions and relationships of the two brain hemispheres constitute an ongoing evolution of human consciousness itself.

Although it is the analytic mode which is considered by our culture to be 'realistic' while the holistic is thought to be abstract, in reality it is the analytic which is more abstract. To better understand why this is, we must clarify the process of perception and conception. Positivism as a movement (in our discipline and others) is based on a basic misunderstanding of the process of cognition; it believes that it is simply recording the 'facts' which the senses take in, but it does not recognize the inherent organization and assignment of meaning that its adherents are imposing on their perceptions (Morick, 1980). This is a crucial point, and it is worth our time to be sure it is understood. To help clarify it, we can recall the discovery made by Edmund Husserl which stands at the heart of his philosophy of phenomenology; that consciousness is directed by intentionality (Bortoft, 1986:24). What this means for us is that consciousness is directed towards an external object, not towards its own act of seeing. This act of seeing is thus transparent, and the positivist thinks that he is simply observing an external 'fact'. The degree to which the mind is already interpreting and classifying this perception is not appreciated. Henri Bortoft in his excellent work Goethe's Scientific Consciousness notes that what the positivist takes to be an observed fact is often instead a condensation of meaning (Bortoft, 1986:27).

A practical example of this tendency is Newton's theory of color; schoolchildren are commonly taught that he 'saw' through a prism that colorless light is made up of all colors of the spectrum. But in reality Newton did no such thing, and if one tries to perform this experiment one will discover, as did Goethe, that it is impossible to perform. What Newton actually did was to interpret what he did see in the refraction of light that way, and that interpretation was then accepted as an empirical 'fact'. Contemporary science provides innumerable examples of this confusing of interpretation with observation.

The fundamental problem is that a scientific discovery usually involves an implicit assignment of meaning. This leads to another important consideration: how to unify individual sense perceptions into a meaningful whole. For an empiricist, this unity must be imposed externally by the mind in an act of abstract intellectualization; however the Goethean scientist consciously experiences the inner unity of the phenomena by mentally participating in its unfolding. This is because the analytical mode of consciousness only possesses an extensive dimension, which is to say that it sees objects juxtaposed externally; Henri Bergson commented on this by saying that "our logic hardly does more than express the most general relations among solids" (Bortoft, 1986:29). The Goethean intuitive approach, on the other hand, penetrates into the intensive, internal dimension of a phenomena.

It is important to emphasize at this juncture that Goetheanism is not a simplistic anti-reductionist, rationalist approach. Goethean science is based on the practical union of empiricism and reason; alternatively this can be expressed as observation and imagination, or science and art. Goethe realized that empiricism needed reason to make sense out of observations of the phenomenal world, just as reason needed empirical observation to remain connected to reality. Goethe saw three possible scientific methods: the first, common empiricism, remains with sensory phenomena; the second, rationalism, builds up theory without adequate observation of the phenomena; and the third, rational empiricism, was his own method, which we can now detail (Steiner, 1988:126-127).

The Goethean Method

The first step in the Goethean method is a highly active observation, which gives tremendous attention to the qualities of the subject; it is not simply a passive reception of whatever details happen to strike us without our participation. Individual qualities are paramount here; no abstraction of perceptions into categories should occur. A well-used analogy for this kind of observation is the kind of intense participatory observation which young children possess, before society straps on the 'reducing valve' of conceptual filters.

The second stage is the heart of Goethe's method; he termed it 'exacte sinnliche phantasie', or exact sensorial imagination. This imagination is not what we would call 'fantasy'; it is the scientific use of the potential of the human mind to create or retain thought pictures which can have the mobile and unfolding quality of organic life. To really understand the practice of exact sensorial imagination it would be optimal to give a detailed explanation of an actual case study; unfortunately space restrictions make this impossible here. The interested researcher is referred to Goethe's aforementioned Metamorphosis of Plants (Goethe, 1952) for a comprehensive demonstration of this methodology; if unavailable, Wolfgang Schad's Man and Mammals: Toward a Biology of Form (1977) or the works by Bortoft or Steiner referenced earlier are good substitutes. Essentially the observed forms of the first step are joined together into a mental picture of the subject as an evolving whole across time; in other words the researcher experiences oneself the course of the subject's life processes. By mentally participating in these life processes the inner unity of the subject becomes self-evident. Although this is an insight which is largely lost among modern scientists, it is likely that it was clearly understood in earlier times. The etymological origin of 'intuition' gives it the meaning 'seeing into' (Bortoft, 1986:34); interestingly, the Greek word 'theoria' itself means 'seeing' (Bortoft, 1986:28). Even the Greek term 'idea' means 'image' (Vasco, 1978:108). Goethe is remaining in the original spirit of these terms when he maintains that the experience of grasping the innate unity of a subject within exact sensorial imagination is itself theory. For Goethe theory is not a simple container for isolated facts as in logical positivism, nor is it a search for some mechanism lying behind the phenomena; theory is the inner integral connections of organic nature.

Goethe makes clear that exact sensorial imagination is not an unclear mystical experience, but an objective path of knowledge: "I do not mean an imagination that loses itself in vagueness and imagines things which do not exist; I mean one that does not leave the firm ground of the earth" (Vasco, 1978:88). Similarly, Goethe emphasizes that the attainment of this knowledge is based on personal effort and not dependent on an idiosyncratic personal faculty: "Not through an extraordinary spiritual gift, not through momentary inspiration, unexpected and unique, but through consistent effort did I achieve such satisfactory results" (Lehrs, 1958:111).

The two steps of intense participatory observation and imaginative mobilization of observed forms resulting in an inner intuitive experience of innate relationships is not a closed cycle. The intuitive insight gained is then checked for validity back in the phenomenal world through observation, and the cycle repeats itself until the researcher is confident of the results attained. This takes the form of a constant rhythmic process, similar to that found in organic life-processes: "We have indicated that a perfectly balanced rhythm, alternating between systole and diastole, must operate in the scientist's mind" wrote Goethe, using the analogy of the beating of the human heart (Vasco, 1978:81).

Quantum physics is perhaps the primary body of scientific thought which validates Goethean work and places it within a framework which indicates its significance and importance. We can begin to see the linkages between the two fields when we recall that the holistic mode of consciousness operates as a simultaneous perception of a subject, not as fragmentary 'snapshots' of one single moment in time as in the analytic mode. It is important to understand that exact sensorial imagination sees this unity of a phenomena across time, not simply across space as the analytic consciousness tries to do (recall the earlier comment by Henri Bergson). Because of this, the Goethean method relies upon, and produces, an expansion of consciousness on the part of the scientist utilizing it. In 1908 Minkowski noted that Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity indicates that our world is not three-dimensional but four-dimensional: Samuel Clarke McLaughlin's valuable article "Physical Dimensions and Higher Consciousness" discusses the idea that this fourth dimension is time and that the experience of a phenomenon as a time-organism—that is as an entity which is only complete across time and not in any one given moment—is the key to higher consciousness:

"Contemporary empirical science is deeply rooted in the assumed primacy of the [first three, spatial] dimensional level[s]...This assumption is totally incompatible with the dimensional structure of the physical universe and of human consciousness. This is not to suggest that empirical observations should be ignored, only that they should be recognized as lower-dimensional phenomena and evaluated accordingly. It is a primitive mode of thought, certainly not worthy of the name 'science', that rejects all observations not rigidly linked to the sensory-material level...the gap between matter and spirit, which is so deep a wound in the individual human psyche and in the body of Western civilization, is an illusion. Matter has its place on the dimensional scale, and spirit occupies a higher (and more inclusive) level on the same scale. The human significance of the higher physical dimensions is that they represent and embody the transcendent element in human experience...Every...object in the universe exists as a four-dimensional figure. The 'attainment' of four-dimensional consciousness is therefore nothing more than the recognition of one's true identity and state of being" (McLaughlin, 1979:81).

From this quantum physics perspective we can see that Goethean science is not simply an alternative method of science, but a considerable advance. Exact sensorial imagination is the process by which we attain a clear experience of the fourth dimension of time in which all phenomena reveal their essential unified nature. The union of matter and spirit at the fourth dimensional level—the consciousness of which is also a recognition of one's own essential being—provides a scientific explanation of the cognitive experiences which we will see evident in Masaryk's spirituality and Havel's phenomenology. Further connections between Goetheanism and quantum physics are too involved to discuss here, but it is worth noting that much quantum theory—particularly the statements of prominent physicist W. Heisenberg—often reference Goethean science (Lehrs, 1958:33-34).

One last comment for those who would use the Goethean method: it is a common experience of those first attempting to do Goethean science that a tremendous internal resistance is encountered. This is due to the fact that most of us have become mechanical in our thinking due to our years in the analytical mode of consciousness; this is particularly true of academics. Bortoft discusses in his work the way that practicing Goethean science produces a deautomatization in us. The cybernetic process of short-circuiting our sensory awareness and bringing to mind in its place a sequence of dead, already thought-out mental abstractions is challenged by active seeing and sensorial imagination. The weight of our psychic inertia can only be overcome by repeated effort and an intense awareness of the problem. Above all what must be avoided is trying to intellectualize Goethe's method, to think about doing it with the analytical mode of consciousness—which is innately incapable of understanding it—instead of actively engaging in the process.

The operative question for political scientists, of course, is how all these considerations really apply to our field. By turning now to empirical case studies of Masaryk and Havel the utility and positive impact of the Goethean method will become apparent.

III. Tomáš Masaryk

"I, to whom the connection between politics, statecraft, and poetry has always appealed, have sought deliberately to refine my power of imagination by reading the best poetry, and have striven, as a realist in art, to attain Goethe's 'precise imagination' (Exacte Phantasie). The statesman is akin to the poet. In the true Greek sense of the word he is a 'creator' (poetikos); and, without this imagination, no creative, world-wide policy on big lines is possible."
—Tomáš Masaryk, 1925 (Lawrie, 1991:66)

This remarkable statement may appear to many contemporary political scientists to be at best meaningless and at worst absurd; neither positivism nor realpolitik has any use for poetry or 'imagination'. But Masaryk is revealing in this quote something of inestimable importance; his use of a Goethean methodology to understand and work creatively within the political sphere. It is unfortunate that Masaryk has been all but forgotten by the majority of today's political scientists, because he is a seminal figure in modern progressive politics. In this brief study of Masaryk, and that of Havel which is to follow, their empirical effectiveness will be considered first, followed by a look at the political concepts which shaped their actions, concluding with the process of cognitive development which gave rise to these concepts.

Masaryk: Political Efficacy

Tomáš Masaryk—born 1850 in Bohemia—did not begin his direct political activity until 1891, at which time he was elected to the Vienna Parliament running on the 'Young Czech' party ballot. His support for local autonomy, social benefits, and educational reform brought him immediate attention; however he resigned his seat two years later after disagreements with his party's leadership. In 1900 he helped to found the 'Realist Party' and returned to Parliament on its ballot. Masaryk resumed his earlier activities, particularly stressing the cause of educational and academic freedom from state interference (Van Den Beld, 1975:10-11).

Masaryk first attracted international attention in 1908. Austria had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, and fifty-three Croats had been put on trial for treason. Masaryk personally intervened, exposing the role of the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs in staging the affair, and stopped the trial. From that time on Masaryk became known for his steadfast opposition to all aggressive 'realpolitik' policies pursued by the Austrian government against other territories (Van Den Beld, 1975:12).

Masaryk decided upon the outbreak of World War I to renounce his ties to Austria and to work directly for an independent Czech and Slovak state, one in which he could actualize his ideas regarding moral and ethical political governance. He traveled throughout France, Britain, and the United States to gain political support for this new state. In 1917 he was asked by Czech and Slovak exiles to lead them as an army to help gain the independence of their homelands. He consented and used his diplomatic skills to arrange safe passage for his army through Russia (Masaryk, 1972). En route through Russia Masaryk wrote his book The New Europe, which elaborated his vision for the democratic development of all European states; this book was later to serve as background reading for delegates to the Paris Peace Conference. Oxford Professor Seton-Watson was later to note that "Masaryk was the only statesman in Europe who by the first Christmas of the First World War had a clearly defined programme for the future of Europe..." (Lawrie, 1991:64).

By war's end Masaryk was back in the United States gathering political support for his new state; it was there that he was notified that he had been unanimously elected by the National Assembly in Prague to be the first President of the modern state of Czechoslovakia (Masaryk, 1972).

Masaryk then, by most accounts, succeeded in bringing to life his vision of a democratic state founded on the principles of humanity and ethical action. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi was so impressed after talking to Masaryk in 1920 that he wrote: "Talking to him reminded me of Plato's maxim that the world would only be happy when wise heads were crowned or crowned heads were wise. Here, in Czechoslovakia, the wisest citizen became King" (Lawrie, 1991:65). Contemporary political scientists essentially agree with this statement—although they tend to express themselves less philosophically: "The fact that Czechoslovakia was able to develop itself in Central Europe between the two world wars into an exemplary democracy is largely due to the person and the work of Masaryk over the years; both before and after independence" (Van Den Beld, 1975:13). By any estimation, Masaryk was an extremely effective political actor. He had gone from being one of the foremost political opposition leaders in the Austrian Empire to being the founder and President of a model democratic state.

Masaryk: Political Concepts

Masaryk's political ideas were highly progressive in his own time; even today they seem completely contemporary. Roman Szporluk sums up the policies of Masaryk's First Republic as:

"Freedom of conscience, of association, of assembly; a multiparty system that allowed...[all groups] free operation; cultural pluralism, openness toward foreign cultures, contacts with East and West without restrictions by the state; protection of religious, political, ethnic and other minorities; the rights of labor; independence of the courts, and much more...." (1981:167).

The key to Masaryk's political philosophy is his slogan, which became the motto of Czechoslovakia: 'Truth Prevails' (Lawrie, 1991:65). Masaryk had demonstrated this principle when he exposed the Austrian Foreign Minister's machiavellian plot involving the Croat defendants; as head of state he made it the guideline for all his political actions. Masaryk called his approach 'realism', just as he had named the party he helped to found in 1900 the Realist Party. Masaryk's realism was the opposite of realpolitik's 'realism'—it rejected all power politics and subterranean maneuvering. Masaryk's realism was the realism of the holistic view of humanity, in which all things are interconnected and the ends are the means. As Antonie Van Den Beld summarizes:

"What kind of method is realism?...Masaryk answers as follows. The goal of humanity can only be reached by using humanitarian methods. That means primarily not by force but by peaceful means. Not by the sword, but with the plough. Not by blood-letting, but by letting live. Not by killing, but by working. In short, by love in action" (1975:45).

Spirituality (or as Masaryk always referred to it, 'religion') was central to Masaryk's philosophy. One of his most famous quotes is "Jesus not Caesar—that is the meaning of our history and of democracy" (Szporluk, 1981:79). By this he did not mean any form of theocracy—he made abundantly clear in his writings that theocracy and democracy were diametrically opposed (Van Den Beld, 1975:118)—but rather that the spiritual nature of the human being, that part which is in holistic unity with the larger world, is central to democracy. Masaryk devoted much of his life to understanding the practical nature of spirituality and its foundation in direct experiential knowledge. Raised a Catholic, he split from the church over the issue of papal infallibility; his conversion to Protestantism effectively ended with his realization that "Goethe is right when he insists, as he does more than once, that no one can return to faith, but only to conviction...one...can no longer 'believe'; he must know, must seek, and find conviction" (Warren, 1941:161—emphasis in original). From our introductory quote we can see that Goethe's exact sensorial imagination became a way for Masaryk to know the internal dimension of life which he was seeking. Masaryk strove to actualize his experiences of a higher consciousness in practical ethics; his attitude is apparent in the title he chose for the chapter on Kant in his book Modern Man and Religion: "Religion is Morality" (Warren, 1941:163).

Masaryk's belief in the central importance of free human choice in a democracy explains his support for socialism yet his rejection of Marxism. He disagreed both with historical materialism and with forced collectivization. For Masaryk socialism was the result of actually experiencing the spiritual reality of another human being and striving to help in whatever way possible (Bernard, 1989:36). This striving was the result of 'ethical individualism' (Pynsent, 1989:71) and a free and conscious moral choice (Szporluk, 1981:75); it was not compelled by an inexorable historical trend nor could it be implemented in a coercive way by governments. It is significant in light of the later Communist domination of Czechoslovakia that Masaryk was one of the first—some say the first—scholar to really take Marx's philosophy seriously; his opposition was important enough that Lenin actually named Masaryk in 1919 as his most serious ideological opponent (Van Den Beld, 1975:4). Through his expanded awareness of the inner tendencies of social forces Masaryk had foreseen the destructive effects of Communism; later his nation would come to experience these effects in physical manifestation.

Masaryk: Cognitive Development

Masaryk's path of cognitive development began in earnest while he was still quite young. He had just entered the fourth Gymnasial grade when he first discovered the writings of Goethe, but his recognition of their importance was virtually immediate; Masaryk began at that time to save what little money he had in order to buy a six-volume set of Goethe's works. Masaryk was deeply affected by these books; "Goethe has had a strongly formative influence on my development" he recalled in his eighties (Warren, 1941:77). In high school Masaryk tutored the son of the Director of Police in Brno, capital of Moravia. He was allowed use of the father's library, wherein he read Schiller, Lessing, the latest scientific journals, more Goethe, and a wide range of classical literature; but more importantly he observed the way his pupil's father made use of these works in his daily life. It was from this man's example that he realized that in his own life it would be "possible to combine knowledge and political activity—finding in this human justification" (Szporluk, 1981:13—emphasis in original).

Upon entering the University of Vienna in 1869, Masaryk chose Plato as the primary subject for his philosophical studies. His understanding of Plato was deepened by his relationship with philosopher Franz Brentano, who at that time was lecturing in Vienna on the topic of the immortality of the soul. Masaryk was later to note: "In my student years in Vienna, the person who had the greatest influence on me as a teacher and a man was the philosopher Franz Brentano...I became aware in my relations with Brentano...who was altogether the Aristotelian type...that Platonists and Aristotelians are, in fact, two types" (Lawrie, 1991:66). Several years after this realization, Masaryk wrote that "Platonists are more like poets, the Aristotelians are more like scientists. Both opposites seem to complement each other...whom shall we, can we, love more; Plato or Aristotle?" (Lawrie, 1991:67). It was at this time that Masaryk recognized the interaction of the artist and the scientist throughout history, and the manifest compatibility of their respective attributes.

Masaryk's understanding of the Platonic and Aristotelian tendencies was a dynamic, living perception, not a stereotype. He believed that these two types represented modes of expression, and not completely one-sided activities. Masaryk's 1876 Doctoral thesis The Nature of the Soul according to Plato noted that "the main principle in Plato's conception of political life may well be called action"; in other words, the Platonic artistic impulse can be expressed in worldly activity. This is significant in light of Masaryk's later statement that "I am a Platonist in so far as I seek ideas in the cosmos, that in what is transitory, I seek what is enduring and eternal" (Lawrie, 1991:67—emphasis in original). Masaryk is here again expressing his Goethean capacity to see an immediately-visible 'transitory' phenomenon as a reality across time (in its 'eternal' being); the Platonic context of his statement demonstrates that this capacity can be put into tangible political action.

Part of Masaryk's college experience was spent in Leipzig; it was here that he became friends with Edmund Husserl, the future founder of phenomenology (Van Den Beld, 1975:10). We have already mentioned Husserl and his philosophy in the opening section on Goethean science; phenomenology will reappear in a highly significant context in our study of Havel which follows. Another intellectual figure who influenced Masaryk in Leipzig was Gustav Theodor Fechner. Fechner taught a doctrine he called 'psychophysics' which emphasized the immortality of the human spirit and the inherent compatibility of religion and science. Masaryk was no stranger to esoteric ideas by this time; he had already studied a great deal of 'occult' literature and had a deep knowledge of spiritualism and hypnotism, all of which contributed to his keeping an open mind about topics that the materialistic science of his time dismissed. Fechner's main impact on Masaryk was to strengthen his belief in the possibility of personally discovering a spiritual conception which would be fully in accord with science (Szporluk, 1981:28-29). By recalling the McLaughlin piece correlating the expansion of consciousness into the fourth dimension of time to spiritual awareness, we can see that for Masaryk the practice of Goethe's exact sensorial imagination was at least a partial realization of his desire to unite spirit and science.

To summarize, these seminal events left Masaryk with several interrelated convictions: that knowledge, art, and spirituality are completely compatible with politics and science. Masaryk recognized in Goethe's scientific works the method he required to actualize his philosophical understanding. From this brief overview we have seen how effectively his practice of exact sensorial imagination allowed him to work politically.

IV. The Interim Years: Fascism and Communism in Light of Masarykian Ethics

Masaryk had founded Czechoslovakia on his vision of a humane political order with a democratic adherence to the highest ethical standard, confident that inevitably 'truth prevails'. Mercifully, Masaryk's death in 1937 prevented him from seeing what a lack of adherence to ethics and the truth brought to his nation. Both the fascist and the communist eras in his country can be directly related to violations of Masaryk's holistic political vision. How this relates to the fascist era is comparatively easy to see; the facts of the case are well known. The Munich Pact of 1938 which allowed Nazi Germany inroads into the country, inroads which were to become direct domination during the following war years, has become a synonym for the betrayal of the ideals of a small nation to the demands of a powerful but immoral state.

There is an equally powerful and important, but much lesser known, moral behind the years of communist domination. That the following story is so little known, even by the peoples it has affected the most, is a tragedy; perhaps it and its meaning will find a larger audience in the years ahead. The story begins with events that are generally known. In 1948 the Gottwald government declared Czechoslovakia to be a Communist state in a bloodless coup. This did not go over well with citizens; they understandably saw the coup as illegitimate. They began mass protests, which the Communist police worked to prevent. Czechoslovakian Communist Party first secretary Rudolf Slansky pushed for a hard line against the demonstrators—he suggested forced labor camps—but was overruled by Gottwald who insisted that Socialism didn't mean a police state. The situation was tense, but the possibility of dialogue between different societal groups remained open.

This situation was to end when Colonel Swiatlo of Polish Security stated that Czechoslovakia was a hotbed of conspiracy against the Communist states of Eastern Europe and that the conspirators had to be rooted out and destroyed. This caused increasing pressure to be put on the Czech authorities to clamp down hard on dissent, leading to the invitation into the country of Soviet advisors, show trials, and the institutionalization of all the machinery of a repressive police state.

The next part of the story is not well known. This descent of the post-World War Two Republic of Czechoslovakia into a Communist police state is fittingly an illustration of the consequences of the political lie and the violation of Masaryk's creed of a politics based on truth. Stewart Steven's 1975 work Operation Splinter Factor revealed that the agitation of Colonel Swiatlo (which resulted in the creation of the Czechoslovakian police state) was done at the behest of Allen Dulles, then head of the American C.I.A. Dulles had conceived of 'Operation Splinter Factor' as a program to convince the Soviets that moderate leaders and social democrats in the countries of Eastern Europe were all anti-Soviet conspirators; he anticipated that the police states to follow and the polarization of political leadership toward the worst excesses of Stalinism would make life so painful and unbearable for the citizens of Eastern Europe that they would then rebel against the soviets. Colonel Swiatlo was Dulles' agent, assigned to discredit and destroy all moderate leaders who could hinder the progressive development of this extreme suffering.

In Stevens' words the means chosen to attain the goal of the operation were for "a new dark age to descend on the peoples of Eastern Europe. Truth would be a political liability, the lie an instrument of state policy. Torture and death would be an everyday norm..." (Stevens, 1975:195). In contrast, Masaryk's policy was that the means were the ends, that only through truth and ethical conduct could political good result. Dulles believed that the end justifies the means, and that the lie is an acceptable standard of pragmatic conduct. The result of Dulles' belief was the violent repression of Czechoslovakian independence and tremendous human suffering throughout the nations of Eastern Europe. The means of the lie had achieved the result of slavery, not freedom. Stevens summed up the result of Dulles' C.I.A. operation:

"It would be foolish to pretend that Operation Splinter Factor caused the Cold War. But it did unquestionably give it that special tone of savage, all-consuming beastliness...it destroyed the dreams of a generation and made the world a safer place for its secret police...[it] destroyed any hope of a genuine political dialogue between the governor and the governed in Eastern Europe for years..." (1975:197).

Instead of the belt of free nations which Masaryk had envisioned in his The New Europe, the Warsaw Pact system of Soviet satellite states developed.

Arnost Lustig, a Czech Jew who survived three years in the Nazi's Buchenwald concentration camp and then escaped from a transportation train en route to Dachau, made his way back to Prague. There he was to observe the impact of the Czechoslovakian communist police state on its citizens:

"Two generations were born under Communist rule. Of all the features of the national character, it was opportunism that blossomed most. In people's effort to survive, morality became amorality, if not immorality. Life resembled more and more the surreal world of Franz Kafka; it lacked beauty, meaning, and stability. It became merely 'existence.' The soul of the nation was badly damaged. Poisoned. Deformed. Diminished." (Lustig, 1991:82).

But Masaryk's holistic vision of an ethical political culture was not dead; it simply needed a new spokesperson. Which brings us to Václav Havel.

V. Václav Havel

"It is paradoxical: people in the age of science and technology live in the conviction that they can improve their lives because they are able to grasp and exploit the complexity of nature and the general laws of its functioning. Yet it is precisely these laws which, in the end, tragically catch up with them and get the better of them. People thought they could explain and conquer nature—yet the outcome is that they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it...The fault is not one of science as such but of the arrogance of man in the age of science...Man has abolished his personal 'pre-objective' experience of the lived world, while relegating personal conscience and consciousness to the bathroom, as something so private that it is no one's business. Man rejected his responsibility as a 'subjective illusion'—and in place of it installed what is now proving to be the most dangerous illusion of all: the fiction of objectivity stripped of all that is concretely human..."
—Václav Havel, "Politics and Conscience", 1984 (1991:222)

Havel: Political Efficacy

Václav Havel was born into a wealthy Czech family in 1936. His family's affluence was to be a disadvantage to him in his adolescence, when the Communist regime which had taken over the country penalized him for his bourgeois background; he was denied normal entry into high school and had to earn his diploma at night while working by day. He performed his first major political act at the age of twenty when he disrupted a writers conference by demanding official government recognition of writers whose works had been banned for being anti-communist. This 1956 incident was the beginning of Havel's dissident activities (Havel, 1988:13-14).

Between 1963 and 1965 Havel wrote two full-length plays; these works began his reputation in Czech literary circles as a developing talent. In 1965 Havel joined the Czech Writer's Union and became an editor of the non-Communist literary magazine Tvar. Havel reacted to the inevitable banning of Tvar by leading a vocal campaign in the Writer's Union for its survival. Although he lost this battle, he realized an important political principle: "We introduced a new model of behavior: don't get involved in diffuse, general ideological polemics...fight 'only' for...concrete causes, and be prepared to fight unswervingly to the end" (Havel, 1988:14).

Havel became a major figure around the time of the 1968 'Prague Spring' period. In 1967 he spoke at the Czech Writer's Congress and strongly criticized the lack of democracy in the Writer's Union. He then helped to found, and became the chairman of, the Circle of Independent Writer's within the Union. He then published his influential article "On the Theme of an Opposition" which demanded the establishment of a non-Communist political party based on the pre-Communist Czechoslovakian democratic tradition (Havel, 1991:25-35). Havel gained the reputation of being a voice for his entire generation; liberal journalist Antonin J. Liehm wrote at the height of the Prague Spring that "[Some] people...had deluded themselves into believing that Havel was an exception...That is a mistake...Havel expresses the feelings of his generation with absolute clarity across the lines of politics and other loyalties. And he speaks for the generation that follows him, too" (Liehm, 1968:393-394).

The entrance of Russian troops into Prague and the end of the Prague Spring began Havel's long period of being persecuted by the Communist government. In 1969 he discovered a listening device in his Prague apartment; soon thereafter the Writer's Union was dissolved and Havel's plays banned from the stage. Nonetheless, Havel continued writing. After finishing several plays, Havel's next public statement did not come until 1975, when he wrote an open letter to General Secretary Husak of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. In it he indicted the Communist system for replacing the true cultural life of the country with a 'death principle' (1991:50-83).

In 1977 Havel helped to found what was to become internationally known as the forum for dissident activity in Czechoslovakia, Charter 77. This was followed by the formation of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted (VONS) in April 1978. In addition to serving as a spokesman for these groups, Havel wrote in 1978 what was to become his most famous work and the seminal document of the Eastern European dissent movement, The Power of the Powerless. This essay had a profound impact on Eastern Europe; Polish Solidarity activist Zbygniew Bujak noted that:

"This essay reached us...at a point when we felt we were at the end of the road...Why were we doing this? Why were we taking such risks? Not seeing any immediate and tangible results, we began to doubt the purposefulness of what we were doing...Then came the essay by Havel. Reading it gave us the theoretical underpinnings for our activity. It maintained our spirits; we did not give up, and a year later...it became clear that the party apparatus...were afraid of us. We mattered...When I look at the victories of Solidarity, and of Charter 77, I see in them an astonishing fulfillment of the prophecies and knowledge contained in Havel's essay" (Havel, 1991:125-126).

Havel was imprisoned along with other prominent VONS members in 1979. He was released in 1983 after a near-fatal illness precipitated an international demand for his release. The government had hoped that prison would break his spirit and stop his dissident activity, but Havel was not so easily dissuaded; as Jiri Dienstbier relates, Havel's "very decent and polite manners may have first persuaded the warden and some of the guards that he was soft and easily broken. It was a wrong impression. Havel was visibly ill at ease in the presence of crude and threatening behavior, but instead of the expected submission, this was usually followed by a quiet and persistent refusal to back down" (Havel, 1988:7). Havel's imprisonment only served to strengthen both domestic and international recognition of his moral leadership.

The political climate began to change throughout Eastern Europe in the mid-1980's as a result of Gorbachev's reforms. By 1989, the political situation in Czechoslovakia reached critical mass. Havel was again jailed for participating in an anti-government demonstration, but international protest was so great that he was released after serving less than half of his eight-month sentence. Havel helped to found an overtly political opposition movement, Civic Forum, which led a takeover of the government which was so peaceful and idealistic it became known as the 'Velvet Revolution'. On December 29, 1989 Havel was unanimously elected President by the Federal Assembly. International reaction was overwhelmingly favorable; J.F. Brown in his history of the 1989 Eastern European revolutions commented: "For the first time since Masaryk, not just the Prague Castle, but the whole of Czechoslovakia was back in good hands" (1991:179).

Czechoslovakia split in 1992 into two separate Republics; Havel resigned the Presidency in protest. But Havel's moral authority remained undiminished, and there was a widespread feeling that he was still the best man available to lead the now separate Czech Republic. Erazim Kohak wrote at the time that "Havel, ironically, might well prove more powerful out of power than in power...when the Czechs and the Slovaks wake from their post-communist dreams, they will find themselves coping with a reality far more in line with Havel's ideas than those of their present elected representatives" (1992:444).

Havel consented to take the Presidency of the Czech Republic, a post which he still holds as of mid-1994. Under his leadership the Czech Republic enjoys the best reputation of any post-Communist Eastern European state; Prague has become an international center for young idealists and the international business community considers the Czech Republic to have the best economic prospects of any former Warsaw Pact state. While this state of affairs cannot be attributed solely to Havel, there is no doubt that he has been instrumental in its actualization. As with Masaryk, it is clear than Havel is a highly effective political actor. Hopefully, Havel will continue to be effective and innovative, because the Czech Republic is now faced with the kinds of systemic economic problems common across Eastern Europe.

Although Western media has been highly enthusiastic about Havel as an anti-communist dissident figure now in power, it is remarkable how often coverage of his political thought is either uncomprehending or presents him as a novice in need of 'enlightenment' about the cold realities of governance. The condescending attitude of the press in this regard is evident in comments such as those which Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times made on the Feb. 23, 1990 "Washington Week in Review" program: "You know, it's great to have a playwright up there, and it was all wonderful symbolism...But politics is not about poetry, it's about power, and it's about making hard choices, and not very pure choices sometimes" (Rosen, 1990:28). Havel often refers to the 'condescending smiles' on the faces of foreign journalists as they hear him speak. Our overview of his career makes it clear that he is not ignorant of what it means to face the hard realities of political power, and that his political activity has been more positive and effective than the vast majority of 'realpolitik' politicians; so why the doubting of his awareness of political reality? The answer lies in the very nature of his ideas and their origin in the holistic mode of consciousness, which the media is inherently incapable of grasping in their analytic mode of consciousness. To clarify this, we need to take a short look at exactly what some of these ideas are.

Havel: Political Concepts

Just as Masaryk's keywords were 'Truth Prevails', so Havel's are 'Living in Truth'. The most forceful statement of this idea occurs in The Power of the Powerless. There Havel emphasizes that any oppressive government can only function through the implicit acquiescence of its citizens. He gives the example of a greengrocer who puts communist slogans in his store window; it helps him to get along in the system, but it is a lie which he does not believe. Havel emphasizes that simply by citizens speaking and acting out their true beliefs an oppressive political system cannot continue to function: "...living within the truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities that work against the automatism of the system" (Havel, 1985:45).

This essential unity of self and action bears a strong resemblance to Masaryk's policy of 'realism' where the ends and the means are one; this is particularly evident in Havel's comment that "there is only one way to strive for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility, and tolerance, and that is decently, reasonably, responsibly, sincerely, civilly, and tolerantly" (Havel, 1992d:8). This is a Goethean vision in that it sees an essential unity which exists in the subject itself, not imposed intellectually from outside; nor does it get lost and obscured by intellectual abstractions. It is also a holistic vision in which all the truly human elements of life work synergistically: "I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time build a state that is—regardless of how unscientific this may sound to the ears of the political scientist—humane, moral, intellectual, spiritual, and cultural" (Havel, 1992d:18). Havel is of course correct in his general estimation of political scientists, but once again that is because of a reliance on the analytical mode of consciousness by so many in our field.

Havel has made clear since the time of the Prague Spring that he pursues a political vision which, like Goethean science, observes living connections without imposing preconceived categories on the subject; in relation to his plays he noted:

"The older playwrights seem to have started with an a priori political viewpoint...[this serves] first of all as a filter through which reality is perceived, then as a principle on the basis of which reality is rearranged, and finally as part of the message which the artistic work is designed to transmit...[however] my presentation of reality naturally involves a certain amount of interpretation, but it is based solely on contemporary life without any preconceived ideological framework" (Liehm, 1968:374).

This avoidance of preconceived categories is evident throughout Havel's political writings: "I have never espoused any ideology, dogma, or doctrine—left-wing, right-wing, or any other closed, ready-made system of presuppositions about the world. On the contrary, I have tried to think independently, using my own powers of reason..." (1992d:62). Havel's perception of capitalist economics is also informed by this perspective; although he makes it clear that "the market economy is as natural and matter-of fact to me as the air" (1992d:65) he goes on to place this observation within a highly Goethean context:

"The cult of 'systematically pure' market economics can be as dangerous as Marxist ideology, because it comes from the same mental position: that is, from the certainty that operating from theory is essentially smarter than operating from a knowledge of life...As if a general precept were more reliable than the guidance we get...from knowledge, from judgment unprejudiced and unfettered by doctrines...from our understanding of individual human beings and the moral and social sensitivity that comes from such understanding" (1992d:66—emphasis added).

All of Havel's political concepts demonstrate his Goethean ability to perceive directly and to grasp holistically. Our final considerations in this section of the paper will be devoted to surveying a few of the factors which helped him to attain these abilities.

Havel: Cognitive Development

Havel's earliest influence was that of the ideals of Tomáš Masaryk; he noted in a 1975 interview: "I grew up in the spirit of Masarykian humanism. The first books I found in our library at home and read were books from that tradition" (1991:98).

There is no evidence that Havel was directly influenced by Goethe's 'exact imagination' the way Masaryk was. However, in addition to receiving that impulse from Masaryk's example, Havel also approached the same idea from another angle: that of phenomenology. Havel was introduced to this philosophy through the philosopher Jan Patocka, a student of both Husserl and Heidegger. Again Havel's course intersects with that of Masaryk; earlier we noted Masaryk's friendship in Leipzig with Husserl when both were still students. Patocka would come by the theatre where Havel spent much of his time in the 1960's and hold long conversations with the actors and writers there. Havel remembers that "these unofficial seminars took us into the world of philosophizing in the true, original sense of the word: not the boredom of the classroom, but rather an inspired, vital search for the meaning of things and the illumination of one's self, of one's situation in the world" (1988:18). Havel and Patocka both served as Charter 77 spokesmen. Both men were arrested at one point and were seated together in prison awaiting interrogation; Havel recalls Patocka's devotion to philosophy: "At any moment they could have come for us, but that didn't bother Professor Patocka: in an impromptu seminar on the history of the idea of human immortality and human responsibility, he weighed his words as carefully as if we had all the time in the world ahead of us" (1988:18-19). Havel's recollection is particularly poignant in light of the fact that Patocka died two months later of a brain stroke after an intense police interrogation.

Havel's immersion in Patocka's philosophy of phenomenology is evident throughout the letters he wrote in prison from 1979 until 1983, collected in Letters to Olga. Throughout he uses Heideggerian terminology such as 'Dasein' and 'thrownness'. He differs, however, from Heidegger in his belief in a higher order in the universe beyond the personal 'I' (Gubser, 1993). At the end of his letters, his Heideggerian existentialism has come full circle back to a Masarykian spirituality:

"Yes: man is in fact nailed down—like Christ on the cross—to a grid of paradoxes: stretched between the horizontal of the world and the vertical of Being; dragged down by the hopelessness of existing-in-the-world on the one hand, and the unattainability of the absolute on the other, he balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious, but by virtue of his defeats: through perceiving absurdity, he again finds meaning; through personal failure, he once more discovers responsibility...he returns at last—having rejected none of his 'otherness'—to the womb of integral Being" (1988:375).

In his introduction to Havel's Letters to Olga, Paul Wilson remarks that Havel's reflections in this work are symptomatic of a larger phenomenology movement:

"...phenomenology is now a symptomatic, or typical, feature of the independent intellectual landscape in Central Europe today...Phenomenology offers a way of describing the world that frees thought (and, by implication, action) from the assumptions of the mechanistic determinism that still lie behind much of our scientific and political thinking. It seeks the meaning of things, beings, relations and events in how they present themselves to us; not how they are mediated to us by an ideology or a scientific theory. Phenomenology's stress on personal responsibility is an implicit critique of the predispositions of ideologies to see responsibility for the state of the world primarily as blame to be assigned...rather than as an obligation to be assumed by each individual" (Havel, 1988:18—emphasis added).

Wilson's concise summary of phenomenology demonstrates two things of importance for this study: first, that phenomenology is practically identical in its general approach to Goethean science; and second, that Havel has the capacity to elucidate things which are larger symptoms of evolving human consciousness. This latter ability is also evident in our next topic. Although Havel cognized his direct perception skills primarily by means of phenomenology rather than explicitly through Goethean science as Masaryk had done, there was an essential part of his cognitive education which Havel owed explicitly to Goethe. This was his contemplation of the picture of the human condition contained in Goethe's Faust, which we earlier discussed as the literary work which represented Goethe's study of the metamorphosis of the human being. Eda Kriseova in her biography of Havel relates how Havel in 1977 read this work and then borrowed several books on magic from her. He read and meditated upon them for several months, then resolved to write his own version of Faust for the stage. Kriseova's description of Havel's method of writing this play (and its aftermath) is significant:

"[Havel] drew graphs of the individual actions,...represented the characters graphically, and drew in dots that determined the length of their future speeches...[He] first writes his plays in a sort of musical score and then, when he sees that they have structure and rhythm, rewrites these scores into words...he wrote Temptation in ten nights...When he finished...he was so physically and psychically drained that he fell down the stairs...and cracked his head. He came down with a fever...When he returned to Prague, he said that he had slipped away from the devil by the skin of his teeth" (1993:216).

This is a remarkable description of the imaginative mobility of Havel's thought processes—and of the intensity with which he engages in creative work. Kriseova's description of Havel's cognitive process is another indication of his advanced ability to work in the holistic mode of consciousness: to write this play he began not with words—which we discussed earlier as indicative of the analytic mode of consciousness—but rather with both pictures and sounds, demonstrating the depth of his holistic cognitive skills. Temptation is a disturbing play, Faust in a modern Czech setting. Havel's Faust is named Foustka, a former believer in Marxism who is now spiritually lost; secretly he engages in psychotronics, a Czech union of magic with technology (a remarkable true phenomenon discussed in Ostrander and Schroeder's 1970 work Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain). The play is remarkable for its disquieting effect upon audiences. Havel's friends responded to this work by writing essays on the subject of humanity bartering its soul to the Devil; they were published under the title of Fausting with Havel. Kriseova notes that the subject had elemental power as a psychological archetype, and that it is typical of Havel that he brought it into focus, as we noted earlier was the case with Havel and phenomenology:

"As on many previous occasions, Vaclav was the first to recognize what was in the air. He has the gift for looking at individual events from a bird's eye view, seeing them all at once, describing the links between them, and giving meaning to the whole. The Faustian theme was hanging in the air and he was the first to feel it, grasp it, and bring it down to earth" (1993:220-221).

In summary, Havel's process of cognitive development led him to develop the same holistic mode of consciousness which we have also seen in Goethe and Masaryk; it is this mode of consciousness which is responsible both for the positive transformative effect of his political activity and for the lack of comprehension which so many societal commentators show toward his ideas.

VI. Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated the existence of two modes of consciousness—the analytical and the holistic—underlying two different approaches to scientific inquiry. The holistic, intuitive mode of consciousness has been shown to be the optimal mode in which to investigate subjects in the process of transformation, thus making it the natural state in which transformational politics specialists can conduct research. Goethean science has been indicated as the clearest formulation of the holistic approach into a scientific methodology. In addition to Goethean science's utility for the political analyst, it or the consciousness which it represents has been the most recognizable factor in the Czech practice of transformational leadership by Masaryk and Havel. Goethean science is the scientific key both by which the transformational political analyst may study the field and by which the political actor who wishes to have a positive transformative impact may determine optimal political activity.

Research into political manifestations of the holistic mode of consciousness has been going on for some time; what has usually been lacking is an explicit connection between these manifestations and their underlying consciousness. Since the new field of transformational politics is devoted to "studying, analyzing, researching, and discussing" such topics as "feminism and ecofeminism, environmental protection, nonviolence and conflict resolution, participatory democracy, human and spiritual growth..." (Becker & Fishel, 1991:2)—in other words all the political manifestations of the societal emergence of a holistic consciousness—it follows that transformational politics has the most to gain of any political science subfield by clarifying the connection between these diverse impulses and the evolving consciousness of which they are a symptom. This clarification can take many forms: a retrospective look at past movements which manifested holistic consciousness; an inquiry into present progressive movements such as the Mondragon communities of Spain (Morrison, 1991) and other cooperative initiatives, as well as all the fields which Becker and Fishel list, and the vision of holistic interconnections which spawned them; further research into the interconnections between the 'new sciences' (such as quantum physics) and transformational politics by means of similarities in their cognitive processes and worldview; and of course many more topics of importance beyond enumeration here.

For the progressive development of transformational political analysis itself, further theoretical clarification and individual application of the model of Goethean science is needed. Goethean science, as previously noted, is the best means by which to get the transformational politics subfield recognized as legitimate by the discipline as a whole. The Goethean method is also in need of elaboration as a means of training our own abilities in holistic analysis; a few comments about this training are in order to conclude this paper.

The Goethean method is based on the development of the potential higher cognitive capacities of the human mind to see qualitatively and holistically; because of this the Goethean analyst must engage in a thorough process of self-study and cognitive exercise to both clear and train the mind. This process of self-study to clarify one's own sympathies and antipathies which may cloud the objectivity of exact sensorial imagination is often uncomfortable. Although to truly 'know thyself' is an ancient teaching, it will doubtless be resisted by those political scientists who are much more comfortable in reductionist analysis of external subjects than they are in self-reflection. A key principle to recognize here is the intimate connection between a political analyst's own psychological character structure and the worldview which is imposed in analysis; from this perspective 'realpolitik' is the projection of a pathological psychological state, as has been explored by Norman Cousins' The Pathology of Power (1987) and Erich Fromm's classic May Man Prevail? (1961). The kind of difficult self-analysis which is necessary as a preparation for Goethean research is observable in Václav Havel's Letters to Olga (1988) in which he gives a merciless accounting of his own character flaws which may influence his objective perception, such as his fifteen different 'bad moods'.

As a first step to both self-study and the development of higher cognitive skills the exercises provided in a work like Jorgen Smit's How to Transform Thinking, Feeling, and Willing (1989) are ideal. Further understanding of the transformation engendered in one's own awareness by such exercises can be found in Georg Kühlwind's books, particularly his excellent Stages of Consciousness (1984), or in Henri Bortoft's excellent work on Goethean science which was discussed earlier. For those wanting to see what kind of political or economic analysis can result from such a development of consciousness as has been the focus of this paper, Rudolf Steiner's Towards Social Renewal (1977) and Folkert Wilken's The Liberation of Capital (1982) are thought-provoking examples of how innovative such analysis can be.

Hopefully this paper has conveyed the message that Goethean science is not an abstract philosophical notion or a methodological issue suited only for rarefied academic debate; it is an evolutionary advance in cognitive development which is of great practical significance. The holistic mode of consciousness can become a recognized societal principle if it is presented logically and persuasively by concerned academics. Perhaps the result could be the kind of positive political transformation which Tomáš Masaryk and Václav Havel brought to their nation becoming commonplace throughout the political world.

References

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Last month, I gave a talk at the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness retreat about the emerging science of ecosynomics (the study of human agreements) and its embodiment of principles also found in Goethe’s natural science. I hoped to show how an ecosynomics approach can help us come to experience—and, I believe, finally understand—how perception relates to social life and shapes the health of our relationships.

In an increasingly complicated world filled with suffering, we have the opportunity to develop a social science that truly reflects who we are as human beings. An approach that recognizes the inalienable gifts, purpose, and collaborative possibilities within every human being, regardless of where they come from, their background, or their beliefs. A science coherent with our humanity.

Although I don’t mention it in my talk, I see in ecosynomics the promise of a generative social science, one that complements and expands the research of social scientists, past, present, and future, with greater insight into our role creating the shared realities from which our knowledge systems and social initiatives arise. A science that evolves our understanding of social phenomena beyond purely abstract models of statistically significant correlations towards the meanings inherent in their manifestation.

How we seek to measure, analyze, and engage social phenomena is fundamentally a window into our understanding of the human being and our potential capacities. Ecosynomics helps illuminate the full landscape of inner experience so that we can study and participate in social life from an awareness of the correspondence between our agreements and our experience. We then study and meet our shared problems in the context of deeper capacities. Many of these ideas are what inspired me to create Common Light, an impact consultancy dedicated to renewing human agreements.

Below are the notes from my talk, edited for clarity, with slides for each section. And here are some of the main points:

• Goethean science recognizes the intertwined relationship between observer and observed, recognizing all knowledge is mediated by human beings

• Ecosynomics takes a Goethean approach to social life, studying the human agreements or assumptions that underpin human interactions and experience

• The landscape of human agreements reveals the paradigm of abundance and scarcity and our ability to choose positive and negative agreements along a spectrum

• Three realities of perception lie within this spectrum of abundance: things-matter (seeing nouns), development-motion (seeing verbs), and possibility (seeing light)

• We experience the three levels of perception across five major relationships: self, others, groups, nature, and spirit

• Ecosynomics helps groups examine their current agreement structure and move to create new abundance-based agreements that better achieve collective goals

Ecosynomics: A Goethean Approach to Beholding and Healing Social Life

Thank you all for coming. My goal with today's talk, "Ecosynomics: A Goethean Approach to Beholding and Healing Social Life," is to explore how the burgeoning field of ecosynomics, a social phenomenology or science of the agreements that guide human interaction, embodies Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s understanding of the self-mediated and transpersonal nature of knowledge that he found through his investigations of nature. In drawing these connections, I want to suggest how a recognition of this fact may offer insights for societal healing.

In keeping with both Goethean and ecosynomic approaches, I'd like to begin this exploration with an investigation into immediate experience and to recall our shared capacity to meet, understand, and navigate the complexities of life in both original and unoriginal ways. The encounter of both habit and novelty in experience. 

Many of us here have at one time or another observed ourselves responding to a familiar circumstance in a new way. Perhaps we laid to rest a recurring judgmental thought, or we sacrificed something dear so that another might benefit, or we simply chose to take an eco-friendly mode of transportation. We broke from tendency. These moments of clarity and original action—mental and physical—illustrate a germ of the human capacity that Hungarian philosopher, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor Georg Kühlewind calls the power to “begin.”1

Ecosynomics approaches social life out of this awareness by studying human interactions in light of our collective capacities to begin. Like Goethe, who viewed knowledge of archetypal phenomena as mediated by the perceptive capacities of the investigator, ecosynomics sees social interactions and their potential to realize ecosystem-wide flourishing as mediated by our social capacities to begin.

And it's here where I hope to show that the healing potential of ecosynomics lies. We meaningfully engage our collective challenges when we experience them in the context of our shared capacities to begin. To behold originality together. This collective beginning—a love for and collaboration with what might initially appear as nothing—brings us to the experience of knowing who we are in light of who we are becoming. Only when we behold the totality of another being, absent all labels and expectations, can we experience our capacity to heal. The health of our social life then depends on our capacities to work from seemingly nothing together.

What is Goetheanism and its essence? Goetheanism is a term popularized by Rudolf Steiner that describes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s approach to nature, a science of ideas within the natural world. Through the study of natural phenomena, such as plants, minerals, the weather, light, and colors, Goethe sought to discover the archetypal idea within phenomena under varied conditions. His methodology demonstrated the interconnected relationship of observer and observed, subject and object, clarifying how knowledge results from the relations we propose to a phenomenon, reflected back to us through perception. Goethe summarized this idea when he said, “We see only what we know.”2

In practice, Goetheanism emphasizes the cultivation of an active receptivity or openness to phenomena as themselves—and a sensitivity to the human tendencies that hinder our perception of phenomena on their own terms. These include the propensity to jump to conclusions, mistake initial appearances for conclusive realities, and impose preconceived ideas onto phenomena. Critically, Goetheanism does not discount other scientific approaches; rather it suggests only that all science is an experiential process, and one’s chosen method of investigation inevitably shapes the character of the results. When we account for the observer’s relationship to the observed, like Goetheanism insists, we become more aware of the ways we shape the knowledge we gain.

With this background, I want to highlight three core features of Goetheanism that I hope to show are present in ecosynomics:

• first, to understand phenomena, investigators remain phenomena-bound, reporting only what they find directly from the observed, avoiding speculation, explanation, and abstraction;

• second, the ‘self’ is perpetually bound up in phenomena; we are, as it were, inseparable from the phenomena we experience, illuminating our role as co-creators in their manifestation;

• and third, an understanding that all knowledge, however obtained, is mediated by the human being, which is to say that the character of knowledge corresponds to both the method of investigation and the capacities of the investigator.

Taken together, we arrive at what Steiner describes as a safe and general rule for phenomenological research: to regard “everything as phenomena emanating from yourself.”3 Our experience of poetry, objects, touch, ideas, others, nature all derive their meaning through our being. We are responsible for how we perceive the world.

The social phenomenology of ecosynomics was introduced in 2014 by a book of the same title.4 The book’s findings drew upon nearly twenty years of management research and practice, and is inspired by an ecology of scientific disciplines, diverse wisdom traditions, environmental perspectives, and systems theory.

The roots of the term “ecosynomics” are “eco,” which has the contemporary meaning of relationship but is derived from the Greek word “oikos,” meaning household, “syn” meaning together, and “nomos” meaning rules. The rules of relating together, or the principles of collaboration.

The field has many influences and practitioners, chief among them is Dr. Jim Ritchie-Dunham, a petroleum engineer turned management scholar at UT Austin's McCombs School of Business. Dr. Ritchie-Dunham has spent three decades studying human agreements and advising global leaders, and his work in Mexico and Central America, particularly his learning from Guatemalan Mayan leaders about cyclical time and agriculture, has deeply influenced his approach to humanistic management and consulting. He’s also a former board member of the Austin Waldorf School.

Orland Bishop represents another significant influence in the field of ecosynomics. His offerings draw from African Gnosis, Anthroposophy, and Indigenous Cosmologies, including the South African tradition of Indaba, or "deep talk.” He played a critical role in introducing the concept of "human agreements" to ecosynomics, which he elaborates in depth in his book, The Seventh Shrine: Meditations on the African Spiritual Journey: From the Middle Passage to the Mountaintop.

And finally, Annabel Membrillo, a systems thinker educated at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, brings over twenty-five years of business consulting experience to ecosynomics. As the Sustainability Business Faculty Director at the Universidad del Medio Ambiente, she continues to collaborate with Jim Ritchie-Dunham in developing and refining ecosynomics principles.

Many other contributors and influences exist, and just to name a few more here: the French philosopher Henri Bergson, feminist epistemologist Mary Field Belenky, physicist Lee Smolin, and West African elder Malidoma Somé.

Ecosynomics begins its study of social life through an investigation of group experience. Sometimes we have great group experiences, like a retreat that rejuvenates our soul. Other times we have awful group experiences, like a meeting that tests our patience. Ecosynomic researchers stay phemomena-bound to name these two types of experience: one characterized by abundance, where you and others feel recognized and enlivened by the possibilities in front of you; and another characterized by scarcity, where you and others feel disengaged and dispirited about the future.

We all have access to both experiences, and we clearly favor the energizing experience. Yet, we rarely investigate the role, if any, we play in manifesting them. We assume they just happen to us. This raises the question: Is it possible to intentionally live in a more abundant world amidst greater levels of harmony? According to the 2023 World Agreements for Ecosystem-wide Flourishing Report, analysis of a survey of 164,000 groups from 126 countries, managed by Dr. Ritchie-Dunham’s Institute of Strategic Clarity, a small group of outliers report consistently living from a perspective of abundance. They resonate with experiences like, “Our group looks for inspiration in everyone, in everything, all of the time,” “I step further into my aspirations and gifts because of this group's support,” and “I am aware of talents and deeper gifts other members can contribute.”

What makes these outliers remarkable is that they have a different relationship with their resources. They question the dominant agreements society holds and choose to host agreements that create value for others. It’s not that they never experience scarcity. Rather, when they do, it’s in light of abundance.

To understand what’s happening here, let’s take a look at how ecosynomics describes the three primary ways people can relate to a single dimension of experience—the self—along a spectrum of vibrancy.

At the lowest perceived level of reality—the Things-Matter level—one experiences a collapsed state where little of the self is available, feeling vulnerable and largely withdrawn. We see the world as Noun. “I am an adult.” Meanings are pre-given, largely static, and intrinsically devoid of dynamism.

The middle grade—the Development-Motion level—involves standing tall and acknowledging one's gifts and abilities. We see the world as a Verb, a realm of movement towards the realization of expectations. “I am learning and growing.” Meaning is experienced primarily through journeying and achievements along the way.

At the highest level of vibrancy—the Possibility-Potential level—one is fully open, participating, and sharing their gifts, experiencing great strength and happiness despite apparent vulnerability. “I am sourcing possibilities.” We see the world as infinite Light, holding space for the new to arise in every interaction.

How much of oneself is available in any given situation—Noun, Verb, Light—is an agreement, an implicit or explicit assumption that guides our interactions with ourselves and others. These varying agreements with our own self—from withdrawn to fully open and participatory—are all aspects of our being. We are Homo Habilis, Homo Sapien, and Homo Lumen. Each state is available to us. 

The key insight is that the degree to which we express ourselves in any situation is an agreement we make. Even when we’re unconscious of it, we’re consenting to a particular level of self-expression or interpretation. Our self is thus always bound up in phenomena we experience. This realization can empower us to choose different agreements, knowing that consciously shifting how we relate to ourselves changes our context.

Ecosynomics aims to study these agreement structures within five primary dimensions of human experience: our relationships to self, others, groups, nature, and spirit.

In our relationship with others, at the Things-Matter level, one doesn't truly acknowledge the other's being, seeing them as a disturbance or thing to be managed. The Development-Motion-level involves recognizing the other as a separate individual with unique qualities and contributions. At the Light level, there's a profound mutual recognition where each person sees the other's infinite possibility and experiences a sense of expanded potential together.

With groups, at the lowest level of vibrancy, one feels subsumed by the group, merely following orders without contributing uniquely. The middle level involves embracing the role of a contributing member, recognizing and supported for one's skills and growth. At the highest level of vibrancy, there's a deep collaboration where individuals experience being "in the groove," achieving outcomes previously thought impossible.

With regard to nature or "what is real," at the lowest level, reality is perceived at the tangible-things level (“the water table is a zone of groundwater”). The middle level includes processes and changes over time (“the water table is increasing or decreasing”). At the highest level, individuals experience nature as the manifestation of possibilities, where ideas become real before they are tangible (“the water table is infinitely lifegiving”).

And regarding spirit or the source of creativity, at the lowest level, spirit is experienced as coming solely from an external, established source, often in the form of rules or traditions. The middle level involves experiencing spirit flowing through oneself and others, allowing for personal creativity and interpretation. At the highest level, spirit is perceived as radiating from everything, with the individual acting as a co-host of this universal flow.

According to the 2023 World Agreements for Ecosystem-wide Flourishing Report, when we experience abundance in one area of our lives, it positively correlates with the experience of abundance in another area. The correspondence between relationships implies that when we act as Homo Lumens towards, say, Self or Spirit, we do so also towards, Others, Nature and Groups. This supports the idea that what we come to know about social life is mediated by how we come to know it.

How is this all put into action? From an awareness of the three perceived levels of reality and the five primary relationships, ecosynomic practitioners investigate the experience of their interactions to uncover and realign the agreements shaping them. 

Researchers first invite practitioners to understand why their group exists. What is the deepest purpose motivating their activities? When practitioners identify this purpose, they invite others into it, the contributions needed to achieve that purpose, how those contributions add to the lives of those serving their own purpose through these contributions (including nature), and ultimately how their purpose is realized through their contributions to the whole. 

Naming this ecology of purpose allows practitioners to investigate their current activities and the agreements informing those activities, against this higher ordered, shared purpose. The identification of gaps between the present and the future invite practitioners to form new abundance-based agreements to bring about interactions that realize their shared purpose. And then continue the cycle again.

I want to take a little detour here to explore the process of realigning one’s agreements from the perspective of Martinus, the Danish dairyman turned philosopher, and this symbol (shown above) he created titled “The finished man in God's image after his parable.” This is Martinus’ description of the image:

The finished human being in God’s image is a being that has passed through the entire dark zone of the spiral cycle, has mastered this zone entirely and is now a perfect being of light. Its greatest emanation is pure neighbourly love, quite regardless of whether this neighbour is a plant, an animal or a human being, and quite regardless of whether this neighbour is a friend or an enemy. It is thus in contact with the keynote of the universe, which is love. It can take on suffering and give its life for others. … The large orange arc is a returning arc of fate that the being itself originally sent out. The heart figure symbolises that the being has a perfect ability to love; the two joined hands in the heart figure symbolise its perfect ability to forgive. The large yellow arc shows that the human being receives the dark arc of fate with great friendliness and thereby sends out a light arc of fate.

Here, in Martinus’ view of the moral unfolding of universe, we can see the process of choosing abundance-based agreements. Both Martinus and ecosynomics (and Goethe) are pointing towards the same reality in different ways: the fact that we are ultimately responsible for the reality we perceive.

Ecosynomics can appear like it can too easily discount the immense facts of scarcity in favor of working with only the Light and Development levels, or yearn for an abundance not genuinely experienced (working from abundance out of a Verb level), or bypass the realities of Development and Things.

These are fair critiques and to avoid this ecosynomics strives to integrate all three perceived levels of reality from the direction of Light to Verb to Noun—so that we meet scarcity in the context of other-than-scarcity. The fact that we can choose otherwise illuminates the potential of freedom, however distant or unrealizable it may feel. Ecosynomics invites us to wrestle with this possibility under different conditions. In the end, we never escape scarcity. Nor are we trying to. Instead, it’s about engaging it in light of more possibilities.

Orland Bishop once asked, “For the love of what future do you give your will?”

Ecosynomics offers a similar question. Just as Goethe developed a contemplative method for beholding the natural world before him, we have the opportunity to develop a contemplative method for beholding the social ecologies we inhabit. This act of conscious beholding—of truly seeing and understanding others—is as necessary as it is healing. When we behold, we heal, and we initiate new beginnings together. Ecosynomics reminds us that the choice to engage these new possibilities remains available in each of us.

In 1910, a pair of French doctors documented their surgery that gave sight to an 8-year-old boy who had been blind since birth due to cataracts. Once the boy had healed, the surgeons removed his bandages, anticipating a miraculous moment of newfound sight.

Yet, when they waved their hands before the child's newly functional eyes and asked what he saw, the boy could only muster a bewildered "I don't know." Even when pressed about their hands’ movement, his answer remained unchanged. Though his eyesight was functioning, the boy could only recognize changes in light. He couldn’t perceive shapes or motion—even the moving hand in front of him.

Only when allowed to touch the moving hand, the boy exclaimed with certainty, "It's moving!" What was once unintelligible to the child—the sighted movement of hands—disclosed itself through his capacity to intuit new relationships in his immediate experience. Bringing his conception of (unsighted) “movement” to the raw sensations of his senses—touch, hearing (he said he could “hear it move”), and now vision—the boy transformed his undifferentiated experience into meaningful perception.1

We often think of perception as mere passive reception. Our eyes see something, then we understand. But as this case suggests, an optically healthy eye on its own is insufficient for sight. Perception calls for activity on our part. The boy had to think the new relations to perceive them. Without this thinking activity, the moving hands would have remained an indistinguishable riddle in his visual field. Only grasping the idea of “movement” allowed him to see it. (This phenomenon is often associated with the Molyneux's problem and I’ve listed more research accounts of it below.2)

For those with functioning vision, let's examine three visual experiments to experience how we participate in our perception. Spend a few minutes looking at Figure 1. You might first recognize either a duck or a rabbit, but never both at the same time. If you need help seeing them, try glancing to the left to see the beak of a duck, and glancing to the right to see the mouth of a rabbit.

Once you’ve seen both the duck and the rabbit, fix your eyes on its eye, widen your attention to the whole image, and practice shifting between the two representations. Pay attention to your inner experience just before the duck becomes the rabbit and the rabbit becomes the duck. What is happening? One of the immediate insights is the active nature of our perception. To see the duck, we mentally intend “duck-ness”—to see the rabbit, we intend “rabbit-ness.” To recognize a certain figure, we must look at the image in a certain way. We bring specific relations to it. Shifting back and forth increases our awareness of the (usually) unconscious process that prepares our everyday perception.

Let’s try something more abstract. Take a look at this image created by Italian psychologist Gaetano Kanizsa (Figure 2). You might immediately recognize a white square atop four black circles. However, looking closely, no lines delineate a white square; our mind unconsciously prepares that representation for our perception. Now, try to see only “four black, three-quarter circles.” It’s a bit harder, but the whole image changes. Practice shifting again to consciously experience our active role in perception.

Let’s look at a final example, more challenging than the previous two. Consider Figure 3, designed by psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka. You may initially see red appearing in front of blue, or the reverse, blue appearing in front of red. Others might see red and blue appearing flush. Now, try intentionally switching between each of these representations. This may be difficult, but I promise it’s possible. By intending different relations, we perceive different images.

The experience of shifting representations clarifies how we participate in perception. The relations that arise in our perception (e.g., a duck, a white square, blue behind red) are evidence of the relations we intend to see (e.g., “duck-ness,” “white-square-ness”, “blue-behind-red-ness”) even when we’re unconscious of that activity. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spoke to this idea when he said, “We see only what we know.”3 What we “know,” from Goethe’s perspective, are the relations we propose to a phenomenon under observation, mirrored back to us in perception. In everyday experience, this happens instantaneously, seemingly independent of our participation; we see the relations we first (unconsciously) intend. When we intentionally see an image in multiple ways, we bring to our awareness the usually unconscious activity whereby a phenomenon becomes intelligible.

Without the right intention, or any intention at all, we cannot grasp the relations that reveal something to our perception. Consider the experience of a "double-take." We encounter something we don’t understand at first glance and need to look again. Once we recognize the correct appearance, we understand that the thing was always itself and we just initially misperceived it. We thus become aware of our causal role in the initial failed glance but rarely the correct second. When we propose ideas that don't align with reality or its possibilities, we further illuminate the ways in which our experience is mediated by how we perceive.

Experiencing our causal role in perception can help us reappraise our everyday thoughts and observations. The world gradually transforms itself from a mere presentation given to our senses to a living conversation. What we “say” to the world is “spoken” back; like a conversation with a good friend, the world and ourselves start and finish each other’s sentences. The knowledge we derive from these conversations is a correlation between what is seen and how it is seen. Indeed, as we experienced above, the distinction between the two collapses; they are identical in nature yet represent different “ends” of experience (subject and object). All of (our) experience then depends on how we choose to speak to the world.

The possibility to contribute original dialogue with the world hinges on our capacity to intuitively perceive newness in experience. Einstein described intuitive perception in this way: “There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap."4 The “leap” our minds take to perceive something new—like the boy recognizing "sighted movement" or the seeing of “red behind blue” for the first time—reveals how we comprehend newness from experience rather than create it from nothing. Just as “movement” and the “duck” existed as ideas before they were recognized, so too did humanity’s great achievements. As J.R.R. Tolkien said of the epic tales within his Lord of the Rings universe: “They arose in my mind as “given” things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew…yet always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there,’ somewhere: not of inventing.”5 Intuition empowers humanity to perceive what is inherent yet unrevealed in experience.

The intensity of our intuition corresponds with our attentiveness to originality in experience. When we shifted between image representations, we noticed the process of intending the ideas that we come to see. Intuition works similarly, but instead of proposing preconceived notions, we offer a gesture of genuine receptivity: beholding. In doing so, the phenomenon reveals itself to our thinking, like presenting a gift. Place an ordinary pebble in front of you, and make note of its shape, features, and lighting for several 30-second intervals. Notice the new, seemingly endless details flowing forth in your mind. Devoting our attention to the revelation of another gives rise to the new, the fundamental quality of existence. This intuitive capacity can be strengthened with practice, and as it develops we can distinguish the immense difference between intuitive knowledge (derived from phenomena) and intellectual facts (abstract constructions). We can even experience the birth of new ideas. As Simone Weil noted, "Extreme attention is what constitutes the creative faculty in man and the only extreme attention is religious."6

None of this is to suggest we abandon our critical thinking, deny the world’s injustices, or discount the (daily) errors of our thinking. Nor is it to suggest our brains play no role in perception. Rather, this is an invitation to contemplate the totality of our immediate experience, setting aside our favorite scientific theories and personal stories just for a moment. By doing so, we can encounter for ourselves the possible intensification of thinking, moving through the intellect to greater levels of sensitivity, curiosity, and understanding. These capacities aid our everyday thinking, awareness, and problem-solving. I may never overcome my habits of jumping to conclusions or judging another’s character, but I can become more aware of their destructive quality. The north star is active receptivity to phenomena as they are.

There’s plenty we can all say about perception and social life. For now, I will only share the importance of preserving in our perception both humanity’s highest potential and our infinite source of creativity—the nature of our being. Doing so helps us recognize this highest potential in ourselves, other individuals, and whole groups of people—and avoid foisting our narratives onto others. Sensing the abundance of our creativity helps us also recognize the abundance in Earth’s resources (assuming we learn to live within its boundaries). Many influences seek to diminish, deny, or obscure our potentials as well as the abundance in our creativity and nature. The temptation to host these influences constrains our experience, and in doing so hinders our ability to perceive the capacities our social challenges invite us to develop. We meaningfully engage our challenges when we (finally) experience them in the context of our capacity to grow. Indeed, this is where the healing nature of perception lies. Only love in its deepest sense—the sacred hosting of another’s being—brings us to the experience of knowing who we are in light of who we are becoming. Like the boy who perceived movement for the first time, humanity itself is the potential to recognize new capacities lying dormant in experience.

An appeal to the idea of “restoring” amid the unraveling of our social fabric may evoke a range of impressions. To some, it might call to mind returning outdated and ill-conceived institutions to their former state. To others, reviving a mythic “lost” past or traditional values. More might even see rebuilding consensus among the usual players. These meanings, however, all point to the past. A retrospective feeling.

There is another perspective on “restoring,” oriented out of and within the present, that may offer helpful insights for addressing our contemporary circumstances. This “restoring” refers to the experience of understanding hitherto unapprehended, living relations in ourselves and the world. Unseen connections felt for the first time. Immediate experience revealed and deepened by itself.

Recall a moment when something familiar appeared brand new. Maybe you thought, “I hadn’t noticed that before,” or “I have a completely new relationship to it.” Whatever you experienced, you only just noticed. Yet it was there all along, unintelligible, until you developed the capacity to see it. Its idea needed to be known first.

This “restoring” is like a more comprehensive perspective. Not reliving the past, but grasping the present whole. The difficult co-worker becomes an exhausted parent and dedicated colleague. The feeling of envy, an illusory self-image and guidepost for healing. The sun, a cosmic process and being. Restoring doesn’t negate our existing connections, but expands and clarifies them through the discovery of new ones. All relations are embraced—our warts and blessings alike.

The experience of restoring is akin to the experience of originality, the felt surprise of a new insight, idea, or intuition. The “new” enters into the world this way as a living metaphor with total certainty. Once recognized, we can distinguish our mental experience of innovation, which follows mostly from actively reassembled (past) experience, from genuine creation, which springs from a spontaneous (present) source of human experience. Originality announces itself as a dynamic many-in-one, like Homer’s elusive and shapeshifting “Old Man of the Sea.” It has a sure, poetic quality.

Why attend to restoring in community now? The world is alight with crises, and perceiving one- or many-sidedly, together or alone, mirrors how we navigate them. Whether in politics, markets, and culture—or more intimately in nature, work, relationships, self, and spirit—our shared narrowness and wholeness charts the course. We all hold unique yet incomplete perspectives of the world, and by consciously tending to our perception together we can experience the fruits of many-ways-of-seeing. When wholeness is set as a shared destination, we encounter a collective ability to work from both our life-affirming qualities and a peace made with their shadows. Like artists, scientists, and botanists train each other to be like themselves, we too can ensure that the cultivation of perception is a community-wide effort that trains people to become themselves, preserving the individual’s freedom out of and within community.

Many paths lead to this experience. For restoring relations, an aim is to cultivate a different mode of thinking by gently engaging with and perceiving everyday life as it manifests in our thoughts. A gravel path, feelings over lunch, the movement of a seagull. This type of thinking relies on a receptive capacity innate within every individual. Restoring is less analytical and judgmental—and more relaxed and transparent—than our everyday, hard-willed thinking. A soft tending to our thoughts’ unfolding, like delicate omelet making. Acts of contemplative perception.

These acts reveal the world, including our attention, as ever-becoming in meaning and reciprocity, new pathways and possibilities. Amid these sensations of abundance, we still remain tethered to our woes and previous understandings of the world—nothing is erased or negated—yet our problems offer to remake themselves. Newfound relations heighten our capacity to experience more feelings more distinctly, which enliven our perception of what was once motionless with vitality. Like Jeremy Bishop’s photograph showing the Earth’s unseen rotation, they reveal the intrinsic movement always there, just undisclosed to our perception.

Choosing to engage the world restoring-ly is a challenging task to take up individually, let alone in community. Socially, we face countless structural and ideological influences opposed to integration. Individually, we encounter all our unique habits of thought, memories, prejudices, and preconceptions that constrain our perspective, many of which are painful to accept and separate ourselves from others. Even as we work with these experiences, we risk developing an inflated sense of self and a disinterest in others. Delusions of purely material and immaterial natures abound. Irony, however, is a trustworthy companion. It keeps us in good, modest spirits as we work on the quality of our attention. So can community.

My goal for “Restoring Relations” is to collaboratively research these themes and others, including epistemology and language, psychology and politics, race, class, gender and sexuality, ecology and economics, and religion and spirituality. I strive to approach all things from a place of deep interest, awe, gratitude, and reverence—and I want to do the same with topics explored on this page. I’m also interested in reporting on concrete initiatives that respond to the question, “What can we do together from a basis of restoring relations?”

Where is all this coming from? I’m inspired by “Goetheanism,” an approach to knowledge developed by poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that marries subject and object through the careful use of the imagination. This participatory approach to science goes by many names and has connections to various traditions and fields such as transpersonal psychology, participatory theory, phenomenology, integrative medicine, esotericism, shamanism, Zen Buddhism, spiritual science, and more. What fascinates me most is a turn toward direct human experience.

Reflecting on humanity’s response to global challenges, the philosopher and poet Bayo Akomolafe raised this question in his essay “A Slower Urgency”: "… what if ‘crisis’ is the ‘wrong’ way to think about the challenges we face?” Akomolafe recognizes the connection between the style of our thinking, our concepts, and our capacities. We perceive a crisis by recognizing something catastrophic. By “slowing down” together, as Akomolafe advises, we can restore relations within that something, develop new connections and concepts, and act out of them in original ways. Hidden then within a crisis lies an invitation to develop original capacities that can heal and prevent their recurrence. Rewording Akomolafe’s question to echo the spirit of this page: "… what if ‘crisis’ is the ‘preliminary’ way to think about the challenges we face?” What thinking can come next? Our world is filled with invitations.

If you are interested in collaborating, please reach out:

You can check out my latest post here for a taste of what I’m up to:

On March 15, I gave a lecture and a workshop on the theme “Reimagining Policymaking as a Community-Wide Cultural Practice” at the Practical Threefolding Conference in Viroqua, Wisconsin. The event was attended by local organic and regenerative farmers, agricultural co-op leaders, private and public school teachers, entrepreneurs, retirees, activists, writers, podcasters, and individuals from different spiritual traditions—all of whom were interested in exploring concrete ways to heal and enliven our social fabric. The event was not recorded, so I’ve shared an outline of my remarks below.

My aim with both talks was to invite people into a new, living relationship with policymaking. The activity of creating legislation with and out of community holds enormous potential to bring about a healthier and more harmonious world. But the barriers to reappraising it are enormous. The process itself is mired by a history of exclusion, shared preconceptions, and structural barriers to participation that make it difficult to relate to and reform for those who might otherwise want to become more involved.

To co-identify the essence of policymaking and its potential—an inclusive, recurring practice that empowers all community members, regardless of background, to bring forth their policy ideas and challenges—I invited participants to create a basis for perception within themselves to experience this new relationship. Through this contemplative process, we took care not to discard present realities, such as our hyper-polarized political culture or our ecological crisis, but only to live with and through them in order to experience alternatives.

I wrote my lecture to be participatory in nature, revolving around invitations, or open questions to the audience, and protocols for publicly sharing experiences to bring people into contact with the germ of a shared impulse (policymaking as a community-wide cultural practice) while simultaneously enlarging their sense of their own capacities and potential.

By the end of the weekend, one participant shared her commitment to write a new constitution and another emailed me afterwards with a proposal to waive the camping fees at National Parks for indigenous people. It’s my hope that what I’ve shared below can be taken up and improved by others, so that more people can begin to experience policymaking anew.

Finally, this talk was for a group studying Social Threefolding, a political philosophy developed by social reformer and esotericist Rudolf Steiner, whose thoughts on social life can be explored here and here. In no way does my approach apply only to threefolding efforts, however I believe it is suited to bring about many of the same “inner” capacities sought by Social Threefolders, such as more receptive, collaborative, and compassionate thoughts and actions.

I’m grateful to the event’s organizers, Seth Jordan and Robert Karp, for inviting me to participate in this conference and to the work of Liberating Structures, whose methods I recommend for drawing upon the wisdom of an entire group and generating feelings of community-ing.

Workshop Outline

Introducing Policymaking Through Experience

• Goal: To bring to the group's attention the variety of experiences people have related to policymaking.

• Invitation: “Who here has had a good / bad experience with policymaking? Who here has participated in advocating for a law? Who here has written a law? Who has no experience with the policymaking process?”

Uncovering Shared and Unique Experiences

• Goal: To bring to mind each individual's past, personal experience with policymaking, share it with others, and notice common themes and differences.

• Invitation: “What’s your experience with policymaking?” (1-2-4-All)

Becoming the Policymaking Practice You Want to See

• Goal: To help participants recognize the relationship between their past experience with policymaking and their own actions regarding policymaking, while identifying concrete steps to change one’s experience with policymaking and thus policymaking itself.

• Invitation #1: “How would you design the worst policymaking process possible? Make a list of attributes of the most inefficient, exclusionary, policymaking process.” (1-2-4-All)

• Invitation #2: “What are you exhibiting now that models the first list we just created?” (1-2-4-All)

• Invitation #3: “What is one thing you can do to change this?” (1-2-4-All)

Generating Policy Ideas for Social Threefolding

• Goal: To gain experience developing and deliberating policy ideas. Now that participants have experienced a taste of their own potential to remake policymaking, I invite them to begin sharing policy ideas and practices that would bring them closer to a reality where policymaking felt like a community-wide cultural practice. Because this group was working out of a specific policy framework (see the note re: “social threefolding” above), they were split into three groups that were each assigned a social realm—political, economic, and cultural—and spent 10 minutes in each realm, for 30 minutes total, developing ideas on post-it notes. 

• Invitation: “What policy ideas or practices would you like to see in each sphere of social life?”

Prototyping a Policy Campaign

• Goal: To learn how a traditional policy advocacy campaign is run. I invite the group to select 2-3 policy ideas and practices from their policy generation session and then walk them through the policymaking process to help them get a sense of the work involved. I shared a policymaking process developed by my friend and Democracy Policy Network co-founder Pete Davis, which I’ve used in Los Angeles, that flows from Problem and Community Identification, to Solution Elaboration, to Coalition Championing and Watchdogging. There are other policymaking frameworks one can use. Phoebe Tickell’s “Imagination Activism” is a compelling alternative that stresses vision and imaginative capacities. If I were to articulate my own policymaking process, I’d incorporate elements from both Pete’s and Phoebe’s processes through the following method: (1) Identifying the Potential Among Individuals and Community Members; (2) Surfacing Shared Barriers to Realizing Potential; (3) Co-Developing Plans to Addressing Those Barriers; and (4) Reflecting on the Process. I’ll plan to write a blog post that outlines this in more detail.

• Invitation: “Which ideas would you like to explore through a policymaking process to understand how an idea becomes a law?”

Lecture Outline

Introduction

• Goal of talk: To (re)enliven our relationship with policymaking as “a community-wide cultural practice” using the imagination

• Approach: Using a Goethean-style method to collective investigation: examining phenomenon through the use of (1) introspection, (2) imagination, and (3) reflection.

• Agenda overview

• Caveat: I’m only one person with my own limited perspective; what’s needed is a shared effort of co-investigating policymaking. This talk will not touch on the realities of organizing and coalition building. This is a work in progress and I welcome feedback.

• Definition of terms within the title of the talk:

  • Re-imagining: the activity of restoring hitherto unapprehended relationships between phenomena

  • Policymaking: the activity of developing policy, which includes legislation (the focus of this talk) as well as organizational governance policy such as articles of incorporation and bylaws

  • Community-wide: a state of maximum inclusivity along every conceivable dimension

  • Cultural: a state of representing or bringing forth the genuine perspectives and gifts of every individual

  • Practice: a recurring activity, like an artisanal craft or music practice, which one develops over time

• My biography

Experiencing Biographies

• Goal: All social activity, including policymaking, can be expressed in terms of human biographies, the ideas and actions of individuals and communities situated within living ecological systems. Any investigation into social phenomena must begin out of direct human experience. Our biographies are one way into the human experience. We can notice relationships between different ideas and actions expressed through ourselves and others, especially as we work towards building a community practice. Biographies can become the raw materials for any social activity.

• Invitation: Break into groups of three and take 15 minutes to share your story as it relates to policymaking with another person, with each person taking 5 minutes. As you’re sharing your biography, notice the stories that come through and those that don’t. As you’re listening to others, notice the significant ideas and actions in their life and begin drawing tentative relationships between them. Reflect and share (15 minutes).

Exploring the Imaginative Process and Its Barriers

• Goal: The aim of studying a social phenomenon is to experience it as it is, free of our own projections, so that we may understand its essence and experience it as an expression of collective human self-existence. To perceive this fundamental character, we first have to practice introspection to identify barriers to our imagination. In the realm of policymaking, these often include one’s political ideology, party affiliation, religious/spiritual beliefs, academic frameworks, past experience, as well as our personal fears, insecurities, and habits of thought (e.g., our tendencies to jump to conclusions or discount certain viewpoints). All have a tendency to block the imagination from perceiving what is by thrusting our own thought-content upon the observed phenomena. We are not discarding any of these attributes, we’re merely calling them to mind in order to see with and through them (transcending) to consider alternatives (the social phenomena themself). 

• Invitation: “Take one minute to contemplate the barriers or blocks to your own imagination. Then, in groups of three, take several minutes each to share your barriers with each other. Listen to notice differences and similarities.”

Perceiving Policymaking

• Goal: Here I point out that due to the time constraints, we’re going to jump straight to the results of my Goethean investigation into policymaking: the activity of developing rules, instructions, or guidelines through which human behavior is regulated. To clarify what I mean by “rules, instructions, or guidelines,” I printed out the following examples of policy language and asked individuals to stand and read them aloud. My aim is to demonstrate that policy is ultimately “words on a page” and that policymaking is the process by which humans arrive at those words and give them meaning for others.

  • “This law requires individuals to maintain minimal essential health care coverage beginning in 2014. Imposes a penalty for failure to maintain such coverage beginning in 2014, except for certain low-income individuals who cannot afford coverage, members of Indian tribes, and individuals who suffer hardship.” (2010 Affordable Care Act)

  • “All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.” (1964 Civil Rights Act)

  • “Requests the President, upon the recommendation of the Attorney General, to offer pardons to those convicted of violating laws or executive orders during the internment period because they refused to accept treatment which discriminated on the basis of their Japanese ancestry.” (1988 Civil Liberties Act)

  • “There is hereby established in the Treasury of the United States a separate  fund to be known as the ‘‘Counterterrorism  Fund’’, amounts in which shall  remain available without fiscal year limitation.” (2001 Patriot Act)

  • “Prohibits any agency, department, or official of the United States or any State (the government) from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability…” (1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act)

  • “Amends the Internal Revenue Code to reduce income taxes for individuals and estates and trusts for taxable years beginning after December 31, 1978. Increases the zero bracket amount to $3,400 for certain surviving spouses and married individuals filing joint returns, to $2,300 for unmarried individuals, and to $1,700 for a married individual filing a separate return.” (1978 Revenue Act)

  • “Directs the President to issue an annual proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe two minutes of silence on Veterans Day, beginning at 3:11 p.m. Atlantic standard time, in honor of the service and sacrifice of veterans throughout the history of the nation.” (2016 Veterans Day Moment of Silence Act)

Making Policymaking a Community-Wide Cultural Practice

• Goal: Here I point to three directions that I believe, if pursued, would constitute policymaking as a community-wide cultural practice. Again, I stress that this is the work of only a single individual, and that any useful social science must be done with others, collaboratively. Here are three directions:

  • Community-Wide: The development of citizens’ assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy point towards a possible future where policy making is significantly more inclusive and community-based. The idea of regenerative, supply-chain-wide consumer-producer-trader associations also highlight this direction.

  • Cultural: Participatory institutions, such as “democracy vouchers” in Seattle or participatory budgeting and policymaking in Paris create the reality for all individuals to bring their ideas into the social realm, especially those from historically marginalized communities.

  • Practice: A recurring institutional activity, such as Portland’s charter reform commission that automatically meets every 10 years, or Iowa’s and Hawaii’s ballot question that asks voters every 10 years if they want to call a constitutional convention.

Envisioning Next Steps Through Our Biographies

• Goal: Now that we’ve gone through the imaginative process, beginning with an awareness of our biographies, we return to our biographies as vessels through which to bring about policymaking as a community-wide cultural practice.

• Invitation: “What policies and practices can you and Viroqua bring to the world?”