Museum of Capitalism/Threefold Social Order

A Museum of Capitalism, which would, perhaps, be more appropriately named the Museum of Anti-Capitalism, just opened in Oakland. Even though just about everyone I know sees capitalist oligarchy as the root cause of our dying planet and greed-driven culture that allows so many to be homeless and seeks to deny health care to millions, I have been unable to interest anyone in going to the museum. I googled the museum and read a few reviews. My favorite review points out that industries tend to fade away after someone opens a museum to honor them, citing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Newseum. Here's hoping this new museum is the beginning of the end of Capitalism, eh?

I am fascinated that so many of my very left leaning friends have no interest in a museum dedicated to showing the flaws of capitalism. Of course, there are many real life illustrations of capitalisms failure: homeless camps in our cities, hungry humans, children denied decent educations, the prison industrial complex that uses slave labor for private profit, the military industrial complex that thrives on war (you know, war that kills humans so some may profit). . . . If we are going to pull out of the vortex of capitalism, we have to grasp how it fails to serve human need.

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy (and Waldorf Schools, biodynamic farming and, among so many others, the Threefold Social Order) indicated that humans are threefold beings (thinking/feeling/willing) and human culture is threefold: social/artistic/economic. He indicated that for a health threefold social order, each of the three realms must exist in perfect equipoise. This means that the economic realm exists solely to support the social and artistic realms. Social: roads, schools, water, fire trucks; Artistic: creativity, spirit, invention; and Economic. If we had a healthy economic arm of human culture, we would have an economic realm in perfect equipoise with human and the planet's needs.

How did we get to where we are today, with so much inequity and luntaics devoted to ideologies like Ayn Rand's who want to take away basic human needs so the very rich elite can be richer, to a culture of perfect equipoise? Well, we have to understand how we are off and then course correct. Far easier said than done, I know.

An economic realm of human culture that exists solely to serve human and nature's needs. This is very appealing to me, even though I see we are far off course. I aspire to dwell in a Threefold, Healthy, Social Order.