Concepts and Principles of a New World

WITH JOHN BLOOM, IN-PERSON OR LIVESTREAM, SPONSORED BY THE ARLINGTON INSTITUTE

What could a new world actually look like?

How would it work? What would be the underlying concepts and principles?

If a new world is on the near horizon, what kind of consciousness shift is needed to move actively toward a more equitable society that changes the most basic organizing system that shapes – even dictates – how humans now live and work on this planet?

Ours is a complicated system with huge, entrenched interests working very hard to maintain the present configuration, but indicators abound that suggest that this is changing – big time.

The old world is fragmenting and imploding, generating significant interest in exploring new models for living. If we’re on the path to a new world of a millennium of peace (as many ancient and spiritual texts suggest), the new configuration will necessarily circumvent and eliminate the fundamental concepts that animate our present world and produce the major problems – war, pollution, inequity, etc. – that consume our lives.

It is an exciting time of great change that presents us all with the unprecedented opportunity to shape that new world – in the fundamental terms that guarantee a new way of living. So, now is the time to begin to seriously think about what this new system might be . . . and what we can do to encourage its emergence.

That’s what John Bloom, the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, will be talking about at TransitionTalks on the 14th of May. John is one of the world’s experts on Rudolf Steiner, the great mystic, philosopher, scientist, and social reformer of a century ago, who, perhaps as much as anyone generally known, thought comprehensively and integrally about what a new world might look like and how it could operate.

Steiner talked about how the economy, political system and cultural world could work around a new set of principles that, for instance, emphasized power distributed with others, rather than power over others – the essence of cooperation rather than competition.

This presentation will demonstrate differing ways to organize our lives that will make for a more human and engaged future, and one that cherishes the gifts of mind, nature, and our capacity to serve each other.

John will talk about how a world like this could actually work. There are many other significant aspects of this powerful, interesting model that will be addressed, including practical issues associated with engendering a comprehensive shift of this type, the contributing factors that could allow the emergence of this new kind of thinking and what we can be doing now to prepare ourselves for this epoch shift.

Do join us here in Berkeley Springs (or via livestream), for this certain to be fascinating and provocative talk. We look forward to having you with us. If you can join us in person, you can look forward to the wine and cheese (during the presentation), and the group dinner options that many of our friends anticipate.

John Bloom has been General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America since October 2016. He recently retired from RSF Social Finance, San Francisco, where he served as vice-president for organizational culture. As part of his work at RSF, he developed and facilitated conversations, programs, and workshops that address the intersection of money and spirit in personal and social transformation. He also developed a spiritually based leadership program to cultivate and encourage organizational leaders in new ways of being and practicing in order to shift old behavioral patterns and shape new ones. He continues to deepen that work independently and is part of forming a new organization Spirit Matters, serving anthroposophical initiative. He has written extensively on money and culture and has fostered collaborative dialogues on the challenging social aspects of economic life. Recently, he has been researching, writing on aspects of threefold consciousness as precondition for restructuring our cultural, agreements and economic lives.

He is a founder and trustee of Yggdrasil Land Foundation, a nationwide land trust committed to supporting biodynamic agriculture and land-based regional economies. He has led numerous workshops and written about issues of land preservation and community supported agriculture. He has written two books, The Genius of Money, and Inhabiting Interdependence, both published by SteinerBooks. He is currently working on his next book of essays and lives in San Francisco.

Click here to see a short video.