Worldview wars

Worldview wars refers to the contextual background of the meaning and impact of a worldview, and the positioning of the 'materialistic world conception' of contemporary Mineral science versus that based on and derived from Spiritual science.

The term war is there because conflicts have far reaching societal impacts that reach through to the development of Man and his free choice.

Aspects

see also: abolishing the soul and spirit - see more on 869#Aspects

General introduction for perspective

Introduction

What people believe gives them certainty and a worldview hence is like an 'operating system' for a person and society.

It is therefore also the basis for stability of power structures.

Therefore, what people believe has always been the basis for conflicts and wars, and we can learn a lot from it.

We can distinguish two main areas:

scientific beliefs of how the nature of the world and cosmos
happenings in the world, the reality of events, political facts and motivations

Historical perspective

In the previous fourth greco-roman cultural age (747 BC to 1413), the the greek culture was followed by the huge power of the Roman empire. After the fall of the Roman empire, the position of power was taken up by the Roman Catholic church that became the largest power structure in Europe and the world (certainly between the 4th and 14th century).

First centuries

Examples of extreme actions by the Roman Catholic Church were:

the college for destruction of initiation, gnosis, spirit'
- whereby 'Everything that this college did not allow was thoroughly swept away and what remained was modified before being passed on to posterity' .. “For as long as possible nothing new shall be seen in the spiritual world” - so decreed this college. “The principle of initiation shall be completely rooted out and destroyed. Only the writings we are now modifying are to survive for posterity.”
- See the quote 1922-07-23-GA214 on Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams
the abolition of the spirit, made official by decree by the fourth council of the Catholic Church in Constantinople in the year 869

Middle ages

The crusades are examples of religious wars, but with war we mean not an armed conflict but a long-standing collision of belief systems.

Not agreeing to the commonly accepted truths, called heresy, led to torture, imprisonement, being exiled, or burned.

The most famous case of a conflict with the church was that of Galileo (1564-1642) in the period 1610-1633. At first he escaped the Inquisition but later he was still sentenced to indefinite imprisonment and put under house arrest until his death.

Others were less fortunate, examples of people who got killed or burned this way are:

Hypathia (360-415), Pietro d'Abano (1257-1316), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639)

The church had an index of forbidden literature and banned books, called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or 'Index' in short. Viewing this list with a 21st century perspective, the following authors found their books on the index:

Blaise Pascal, Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, Henri Bergson,
and for sure people with a spiritual perspective like Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Emanuel Swedenborg.

Some books were on the index of banned books for centuries but later removed, eg the works of Dante Alighieri, Nicolas Copernicus De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543) from 1616 to 1835, the three books by Johannes Kepler (1609 to 1835), and Victor Hugo upto 1959.

Note Rudolf Steiner mentions the examples of Copernicus and Kepler, because of the 200 years that the books with worldview impact were not allowed to be read widely in society without a 'ban' by the authority of the roman catholic church.

Current 20-21st century

1/ scientific worldview or belief system

A large category of topics are being scoped out, certainly that is to be expected in the area to do with human consciousness:

coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, epiphany, premonition, etc
remote viewing, lucid dreaming, out-of body experiences (OBE), near death experiences (NDE), astral travel, etc

but also findings that contradict the paradigm cause anger in the scientific community:

for example the work by scientists who made discoveries that didn't fit the scientific paradigm, eg Samuel Hahnemann, Albert von Herzeele, Jacques Benveniste, Rupert Sheldrake
the work by Nicolas Tesla or John E.W. Keely

2/ happenings in the world, the reality of events

media control -> public opinion

-> information war, ao spreading dis-information,

information which is not true but purposely broadcast to distract or confuse people, whereby they are not aware or are not able to find the truth any more. This in term can be used to the advantage by the parties who organize such information campaigns.

see the Rudolf Steiner's Karma of Untruthfullness lectures (GA ..)

Implications

It is the mainstream view of science and history that is taught at schools, the rest is ridiculed. Researching wikipedia gives plenty of examples of what is called 'pseudo-science', whereby it is shown with all possible means that the findings are impossible or erroneous.

The importance is that society organizes to try and weed out all that does not fit, as illustrated with a few examples:

in some countries, homeopathy is not reimboursed by the governmental health care system because it is a sham (and working against the stakes of established pharmaceuticals industry and lobby)
many countries still have legal government restrictions on religion or social and societal rules involving religion
even a recent modern western-european example - the last twenty years more than fifteen countries rolled out laws regarding opinions about an event of the 20th century

Still today people are being imprisoned because they hold a different belief.

This illustrates that the above principles are of all ages and are everywhere, today just as in the past - albeit just in different forms.

Lecture coverage and references

1915-05-15-GA159

talks about the challenge of a spiritual culture in central Europe between the eastern luciferic and western ahrimanic influences

(SWCC)

The souls are prepared for materialism best of all if they are in a half-sleeping state for the external life, so to speak, if they are still childish souls. One does not notice that one can bring into the souls ideas which prepare them best of all to accept the materialistic view as a matter of course.
...
Our souls have to tend to that which was prepared in the Central European culture especially expressing that we are put pendulum-like between two powers permeating the world and that we must find the balance. We have to realise that, on the one side, the world strives for ahrimanic hardening, strives to get solidified in the fire of the purely material; that it strives, on the other side, to ascend egotistically to an abstract spirituality. Following the one or other side would ruin the Central European human being. Following only the science engaged in the external senses would persuade us to tear the roses from the cross and only to look at that which solidifies. We would gain a world view gradually which would completely deflect the human being from looking at the spiritual. It would allow to only looking at that which has solidified ahrimanically. Try to imagine the ideals of the ahrimanic science: it is a world of whirling atoms, a purely material world creation. One wishes to throw everything spiritual out of this world-picture.
...

This is a threat to tear the roses from the cross and to have only the black, charred cross. ... ... science, which wants to tear the roses from the cross and to keep only the charred cross, tends to the West.

The other threat is to tear the cross from the roses and want to strive only for the spirit, despise what the divinity has put in the world development, not to want to dive affectionately into the thought that the phenomena of the sensory world express the godhead. This is the unilaterally religious world view which despises the science which only wants the roses and which tends unconsciously to the luciferic element of the East.

We, however, in Central Europe, we have a vocation to have the roses on the cross to have this what is expressed only by the connection of the roses with the cross, the roses on the cross.