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"For history, the children were taught "history as a developmental process paralleling children's development, with Western Civilization at the pinnacle",and ancient myths and legends as historical facts. Now there’s nothing wrong with myths and legends in themselves, but they are not historical fact, and “history as a developmental process with European society at the pinnacle”?!?Give me a break! What about the fact that the Arabs developed zero and kept learning alive during the Middle Ages? How about the fact hat the Chinese were scientifically and culturally further advanced than their European counter parts? How about the great civilizations of Mesoamerica? Why was their mathematics, their scientific achievements, their highly intricate societal structures completely ignored?"

In terms of cultural and scientific development, can anyone truly question that the creation of the Nazi cow was far more profound than Chinese foot binding and the human sacrifice of the Aztec?

I'm a pretty big fan of obsidian surgical tool-making, myself.

I think this is a reflection of the Copernican system, only used as a metaphor with Europe (well, the northern portion... well, the north-WESTERN portion) as the sun.

Up through the Sun King, of course. Which is no doubt why he was called that.


He was certainly a sanguine. Er-- or perhaps a choleric?


Are the temperments genetically inherited? Or is this a past-lives thing, and therefore luck-of-the-draw?

No, it must be the influence of....Ahriman! Interfering with our enlightenment!

No, Ahriman would be assisting us, as use of the intellect is the root of all evil. Instead, we must be attempting to exceed the limit set on our collective enlightenment by the reincarnation of our past selves. In my case, I suspect my etheric, astral, and corporeal selves became misaligned at the precise moment I taught myself to read as a 2 year old. Drat! My 3-lives-ago mother just knew my jaw wouldn't allow for it, but she was, unfortunately, reincarnated as a voiceless, luminescent orb who couldn't communicate her disapproval to me beyond subtle shifts in etheric vibration.

That would be luck-of-the-draw, wouldn't it?

Have you tried practicing karmic yoga for this? I hear that this is one of the paths to enlightenment.


Darn.

I am evidently dooming my daughter to a (future) life of left-handedness with early college.




Darn.

She really wanted to go to college this young. I guess it was a failure in parenting not to put our feet down about it. {sigh}

On the bright side, I suppose that this means that she's got a good future as a left-striker for a youth soccer club in her next life, and those kids are really important for the team.

I on the other hand have been purchasing waldorf friendly craft kits for DD4 - if they had a crafty test on the wppsi she'd smash that ceiling - yay to no more toilet rolls

I am actually quite impressed - did anyone else but Steiner have an idea about brain hemispheres and speech centers in the brain at the time?
Anyway, it is eurythmy which will take care of everything for you, not karmic yoga!

I'm envisioning eurythmy as being a bit like Tai Chi-- so I guess one could say that the notion of channeling Chi predates Steiner by a considerable margin.


Hmm. Yes, Steiner's ideas are interesting, and in some cases insightful, but I'm also thinking about the truism about broken clocks. While Steiner's grasp of intuitive neuroscience might seem rather sophisticated, let's also not lose sight of the fact that this is the same dude that also thought that Buddha vacated the home planet for Mars and fame via crucifixion, and that the Sun has healing powers.

I guess that only applies if you don't happen to have a DNA repair disorder of some sort, and it is certainly an odd belief for someone believed that melanin expression was apparently inversely proportional to human worth. I have to also wonder why Steiner's ideas caught on so well, whereas those of people like Alisdair Crowley really have remained fringe. It's a strange world.

Hey, and in an update to the Disney thing, apparently about 6 of the 22 patients identified by health departments in five western states have needed hospital care, which is comforting in a way since this means that this is about "average" as measles outbreaks go. Unfortunately, it also means that there are likely to be a few cases in which deaths or permanent injuries occur when the number of cases grows large enough.


Steiner would suggest, by the way, that these patients are working their way to better karma or something-- which is the basis of anthroposophic avoidance of vaccination, incidentally.

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2013/04/steiner-schools-vaccination-and-measles-outbreaks.html

A more pro-Steiner viewpoint expresses the anthroposophical position on infectious disease.



Oh, well, then that makes it okay. I've just misunderstood the causes and purposes of things like polio. I've deprived my child of the important opportunity to work through her karmic baggage the easy way via possible paralysis or death. I'm clearly a horrible parent. In related news, btw, Steiner also proposes that I may have set her up for cancer later by doing this, since the karmic baggage is what causes that, as well.

What a shame that organizations like MSF insist on 'interfering' with the naturally wonderful karmic process in third world locations...



* and by medical remedies, here, the author is probably meaning magical herbal preparations and homeopathic ones, and while I respect that there are those who believe that those things are "medical remedies" I personally tend to think of them as placebos. At best.


** of course, this assumes that ALL of those without vaccine-acquired immunity have elected this particular immunological status. Maybe they could dance their way to immunity instead. Of course, if they are karmically okay, they are naturally immune to begin with, I suppose the right children are being infected anyway and we shouldn't concern ourselves for those who are being punished through the wisdom of the universe.



Yes, I realize that I sound like a skeptic. I'm actually pretty easy to convince-- but I do require extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims, and that first link should demonstrate that there's a fairly robust link between pockets of underimmunisation which coincide rather well with Steiner educational communities, and the resultant epicenters of outbreaks.

It's very dangerous to have neighbors who are Steiner acolytes if you happen to be a cancer patient or a newborn, for example. I've also quite commonly heard that my daughter's disability is somehow her "burden" karmically and that we should put her on organic food and quit interfering with "nature."

I gotta go with Val here. Some of this wackadoo nonsense is funny and more or less harmless, but there comes a point at which it isn't funny and public health is my personal line there, I suppose. Besides, nobody wants a Nazi cow anyway, biodynamic enology aside.

To be fair about this, though, if you have a vitamin D deficiency, maybe the sun IS healing.

No, no, no, HK, you are allowing her to work out her karmic debt by taking on the risk of vaccine side effects. If the cosmos does not allow her to develop autism as a result of childhood vaccinations, then clearly the risk alone was sufficient to work off the load, without the disorder itself.