WHITE GUYS

Caucasian Self-Approval

Near the center of Rudolf Steiner’s doctrines stand the concepts of evolution, reincarnation — and racial superiority.

According to Steiner, human beings are evolving toward spiritual perfection. Part of this process involves moving upward from inferior races to superior races. An individual makes this passage during the course of multiple reincarnations on the Earth. Each soul starts out young and unevolved, in an inferior race. If the person is good, s/he will return in a future life more highly evolved in a better race. By repeating this pattern numerous times, one can ultimately become a really, really good white European (like Steiner himself).

Here’s a quick summary of how this works, according to really, really good European white R. Steiner. I will return to some matters I've discussed in other essays; I'll add some new material; and in the process I'll create an overview: 

“Not all of the people living on the earth today stand at the same level of development. Alongside those people that stand at a high stage of civilization, there are primitive peoples that have lagged culturally far behind ... Europeans have ascended to a higher level of culture, while [American Indians, and others] have remained behind." [1]

If you think Steiner was only talking about culture, cast your eye over the following:  “A race or nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type ... The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation [leading to] an ideal future.” [2] Don’t be thrown by Steiner’s inclusion of nations in this; that’s bad enough; but more fundamentally, Steiner was talking about races. The ideal future is the one that whites are leading us toward. Whites have led the way since ‘way back when:

See, we good ol’ white guys shrewdly segregated ourselves from peoples living in Atlantis. [3] “[O]ur white civilized humankind originated because certain elements segregated themselves from the Atlanteans [the other peoples of Atlantis] and developed themselves higher here [in Europe], under different climatic conditions. Certain elements of the Atlantean population remained behind, at earlier levels; thus we can see that the peoples of Asia and America are remnants of the various Atlantean races.” [4]

Steiner taught that the most backward people are black Africans, who are really just children. “[A] centre of cosmic influence [is] situated in the interior of Africa. At this centre are active all those terrestrial forces emanating from the soil which can influence man especially during his early childhood ... The black or Negro race is substantially determined by these childhood characteristics.”[5]

Steiner did not hate the members of inferior races. He simply, objectively, “scientifically,” saw that they are inferior.

“Each person proceeds through race after race. Those that are young souls incarnate in the races that have remained behind on earlier racial levels ... Our own souls [note: he was talking to whites] once lived within the Atlantean race, and they then developed themselves upward to a higher race. That gives us an image of the evolution of humankind up until our time. In this way we can comprehend how to justify the principle, the core principle of universal brotherhood without regard to race, color, status, and so forth ... Our souls march from one level to the next, which is to say from one race to the next, and we come to know the meaning of humanity when we examine these races.” [6]

If you spot a logical inconsistency in that last remark by Steiner, you must be highly evolved yourself. Steiner says that we are all brothers because we are all engaged in the same evolutionary pattern. The good humans among us, anyway, are all moving upward, from low races to higher races. Now isn't this nice?

BUT. What Steiner is also saying is that the race you belong to reflects the quality of your soul. If you belong to an "inferior" race, it is because your soul is in some way inferior. This is a far more devastating racial judgment than to say that racial differences are mainly physical or even mental. Steiner says they are spiritual.

"A soul may be incarnated in a race that is declining; but if that soul does not make itself evil, it will not be reincarnated in a race that is falling back, but in one that is on the up-grade. Enough souls are pouring in from other quarters for incarnation in races that are on the down-grade (i.e., bad souls)." [7] Good souls ascend, bad souls descend. The inferior races remain heavily populated because so many bad or otherwise inferior souls are available for membership at their low level. Note that if a soul "does not make itself evil," it will advance. But this means that souls that DO make themselves evil will descend to the "lower" races.

According to Steiner, the inferiority of a black person's soul may merely mean that s/he has a very young soul, and perhaps s/he will be able to graduate to higher races in future lives. But the inferiority of a black person's soul may also mean that s/he is a wicked person who is descending through the racial hierarchy — and s/he may be headed for the abyss — or s/he may not get even that far, s/he may fall out of evolution altogether and become a subordinate nature spirit (a being with no true spirit at all).

People who fail to advance may eventually "fall out of evolution." [8] After descending to the bottom of the lowliest races, they may fall even further, ceasing to be human at all. Eventually, you see, the inferior races will wither away, and then there will no longer be enough slots available in the inferior races to house all the evil soul. "Such souls lose the possibility of incarnation and find no other opportunity ... [T]here are no more bodies bad enough [to house them] ... Beings that stay behind at such stages appear in a later epoch as subordinate nature spirits." [9].

Ultimately, far, far in the future, after so many, many bad souls have been weeded out, there will still be souls who fail to measure up and who will be separated from the good. These last remaining inferior souls will form the ultimate evil race: "The evil race, with its savage impulses, will dwell in animal form in the abyss." [10]

But let’s bring our attention back to the here-and-now. Think of a black person standing next to a white person. According to Steiner’s doctrines, the main thing you can immediately know about these two people is that the white is superior to the black. And this superiority is a matter of the utmost importance: It reflects the white’s advanced spiritual qualities, which are far more advanced than the black’s spiritual qualities. In brief, the white person is more highly evolved than the black person.

Such thinking is blatant, vile racism. It is deeply perverse and hateful. Possibly Steiner, living in his time and place, thought that his doctrines were advanced, liberal, enlightened. But from today's perspective, they are clearly reprehensible — and Anthroposophists are really under an urgent moral obligation to renounce them utterly. This is difficult for them, however, since it would mean gutting the human evolutionary scheme that lies near the heart of their religion (oh, pardon, their "science").

No, Anthroposophists generally either deny that Steiner said these things, or they interpret them in the most defensive, self-deluding way. Brotherhood,  they say. Steiner was talking about brotherhood. His teachings are all about love and peace and brotherhood.  I won’t try to answer them. Instead, I’ll let Steiner do the job.

That’s brotherhood, Steinerstyle.

[1] Rudolf Steiner, Menschheitsentwickelung und Christus-Erkenntnis, pp. 243; provided by Peter Staudenmaier. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorf-critics/message/10829

[2] Rudolf Steiner, KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS AND ITS ATTAINMENT (Anthroposophic Press, 1944), p. 149.

[3] I personally am not European; I’m an American, so I shouldn’t really claim to be as highly evolved as my family members in the old country.

[4] Rudolf Steiner, DIE WELTRÄTSEL UND DIE ANTHROPOSOPHIE (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1974), p. 145.

[5] Rudolf Steiner, THE MISSION OF THE FOLK SOULS (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2005), p. 75.

[6] DIE WELTRÄTSEL UND DIE ANTHROPOSOPHIE, pp. 153-154.

[7] Rudolf Steiner, INVESTIGATIONS INTO OCCULTISM SHOWING ITS PRACTICAL VALUE IN DAILY LIFE (Kessinger, facsimile of 1920 edition), p. 138. The final phrase “(i.e., bad souls)” is an explanation added by the Anthroposophical editor. The same passage, without the last phrase, can be found in Rudolf Steiner, AT THE GATES OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE (Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, 1986.)

[8] Rudolf Steiner, NATURE SPIRITS (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1995), p. 69.

[9] Ibid., p. 70.

[10] Rudolf Steiner, UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN BEING (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1993), p. 103.

[11] Rudolf Steiner, DIE GEISTIGEN HINTERGRÜNDE DES ERSTEN WELTKRIEGES (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1974), p. 38.

[12] Rudolf Steiner, VOM LEBEN DES MENSCHEN UND DER ERDE (Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1961), p. 67.

Note: If you search in vain for some of these quotations in English-language editions of Steiner’s work, the explanation is simple: Such passages have been censored by the Anthroposophical publishing companies. Are they trying to hide something, do you think?