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Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss…
FIRST SUNDAY WEEK IN MARCH
Seaweek Australia
This event coincides with Clean Up Australia (the World!) but focuses exclusively on the marine environment. Each year it takes a different focus; for instance, Seaweek 2012 was the attack on marine debris. It is conducted under the auspices of MESA, the Marine Education Society of Australia.
What good news it was to recently hear that the Australian government has extended the national marine parks system right around the continent. Of course, the self-interested Fisher Kings from coast to shining coast rose as one to decry this sensible and compassionate initiative.
Every caring Australian should celebrate this historic event, as they should the Seaweek in general. The role of this ‘festival’ is to increase community consciousness of the importance of our marine bounty, whether food, fun or aesthetic.
It also calls for the plunder of the past to cease, and to regard the animals and plants of the seas as needing of protection as much as those on land.
Many fish, and most marine invertebrates, spawn in the thousands; and many in large multiplies of this. Oddly, this is rarely the case with terrestrial habitues. It would seem that La Mer is indeed the womb of the world.
This phenomenon also accounts for the fact that extinction occurs far more commonly on land than in the ocean. In spite of this, total no-fish zones must not only be maintained, but even enlarged, to assure the continued existence and prosperity of this spawning biomass.
As noted above, this is certainly the case on a national level, but as for New South Wales …! The clouds on that state’s horizon, alas, are the proposed reining back by the NSW government of marine parks right along the coast. The Minister responsible recently tabled the usual canard used by those attempting to defend the indefensible:
“The science in not yet in for the support of marine sanctuaries.” How similar is this argument to that foisted onto the community by Big Tobacco, just a few years ago. They were wrong then, and the state government is wrong now.
Actually, the science is in, and lots of it. Marine research institutes world-wide have voluminous evidence of the widespread benefits of marine parks, not only for the environment, but for those most trenchantly opposed to new sanctions, fisherpersons. However, within the constraints of this article, I will give just one small but compelling example.
A few years ago, the inhabitants of a small Indonesian island supplemented their income by catching ever-diminishing numbers of tiny sea horses along their already degraded coral reefs. This was, as usual, for the discredited Chinese folk medicine trade. Consequently, the area was almost denuded of not only the besieged sea horses, but almost everything else.
A visiting Australian marine scientist suggested to the islanders the proclaiming of part of the reef as a no-fishing zone. Naturally, this was stridently resisted. But the young woman’s persistence won out, and she convinced the village elders to at least give the idea a trial run. As these eminent persons carried absolute authority with their villagers, the safe haven remained relatively untouched.
At the end of a single season, it could be seen that the sea horse population had noticeably increased, not only in the protected waters, but in adjacent areas as well.
The following years proved that this was no aberration, with the herds of pint-sized ponies increasing in number – and even size – exponentially. As such, the protected zone was made permanent, and the islanders continued to enjoy the benison of a healthy trade in sea horses with their sadly-deluded customers of this snake oil medicine.
Actually, due to the chance of the feeble-minded reading this, I won’t say what ailments sea horse powder purportedly cures. This assures the continued flourishing of our own healthy populations. Evidence indeed: perhaps the minister should sit down with this good-hearted, intelligent young Australian to be informed of a boatload of scientific and anecdotal evidence of the efficacy of marine parks.
She might also talk to the people at National Geographic Magazine; a respected journal which has focused on the benefits of, and threats to, marine parks for many years.
Happily, due to the large-spawn principle mentioned above, the marine environment does bounce back fairly quickly, if given some time and space. However, not all.
Grey nurse sharks, for instance, are notoriously tardy breeders; hence the species is in crisis. Not only a relentless campaign of extermination over the last 200 years has brought the grey nurse to the edge of the abyssal drop-off, but diminishing food resources and unintentional maiming, and subsequent death, have done so as well.
These sharks habitually shelter and feed in offshore reef zones; some already marine reserves. Sadly, these are fishing hot-spots also popular with anglers.
Here the sharks snap up the bait to find, not a tasty morsel, but a sharp hook embedded in mouth, gullet, gill, or stomach tissue. Being a very big fish, the line of course breaks. So, the hapless shark has yet one more hook to add to the many already causing blood poisoning, or impediments to feeding and breeding.
Sadly, this beautiful animal so often slowly and painfully perishes. This is almost as bad a fate for sharks as that other atrocity generated by Oriental demand, that tasteless absurdity (consumed for kudos, not nutrition), shark fin soup. This fell and incredibly brutal practice has driven many species of sharks and rays to the brink of extinction.
In the timeless Orwellian spirit of black is white and white is black, many fishing communities state, straight-faced, that they are the true conservationists. For this dubious claim, they cite their strong support for the protection of mangroves and sea grass beds, and other rich inter-tidal spawning areas. These fish and crustacean “nurseries” always seem to be conveniently where they can’t actually catch fish; or easily, a least.
However, many fish and other edible sea dwellers spawn in the open-ocean reefs and sand banks of the continental shelf, which is unfo1tunately especially narrow along the NSW coast. The hypocrisy here is revealed by the fact that catchable fish and spawn unfortunately occur together.
So, the high moral ground of protection for one spawning area is contradicted by a demand for open slather in another.
One of the greatest environmental catastrophes of our age is the universal depredations of our world’s seas and oceans. No, there are not “plenty of fish in the sea”; not today, at least.
The relatively new establishment of marine parks around Australia in general – if not New South Wales! – is a small but vital step in redressing this tragedy.
Members of the Shooters and Fishers party who are pushing for the reduction, or even the abolition, of blue water safe havens, and their accomplices the Liberals-Nationals, are not only guilty of callous indifference to the fate of our fellow travelers in evolution, but of rank stupidity as well.
Not only the sea horses, but all living things in our wonderful marine reserves I’m sure would agree.
I watched appalled as the 12-year-old boy casually pulled the legs and nippers off a beautiful sand crab he’d just caught. “Why are you doing that?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Bait,” he replied without feeling.
That’s the heart, so to speak, of the recent Green peace/bluefin tuna fiasco. It is not economics, not sustainable resources – not “jobs” even – but a lack of compassion for the suffering, and in the worst-case extinction, of our besieged sea creatures that generates the heat in the debate.
“They’re just thugs!” one tuna boat captain recently fumed about the dispersal, with inflatables, of his intended tuna catch. Well, history might judge, differently. The real “thugs” will be found to be those who heartlessly and stupidly bankrupt our oceans. Stupid? Along the famous Newfoundland Banks vast populations of cod have almost vanished. One trawler skipper was asked why he was setting off to catch one of the last-known schools of the species. “Because if I don’t catch ’em, someone else will.” he said – stupid to the point of economic suicide.
Until recently there has been a clear line drawn in the sand, as it were, defining where compassion begins and ends; a literal line, drawn by the ocean itself – the high-water mark. Since the turn of the century, there has been increasing compassion for animals, manifesting in the creation of national parks, species protection, and cruelty-to-animals legislation.
We in the West have realized that the vocation of, say my great-grandfather, that of koala shooting, is not the honorable way of earning a living it was once thought to be.
Most Australian terrestrial vertebrates have blanket protection by the law, but in the water, well, it’s still mostly a case of anything goes. Though warm-blooded sea creatures, such as seals, dolphins, and whales, have since the 1960s been afforded some protection. Also, today’s whale-watch industry far surpasses in “prosperity” that of its resource-destructive predecessor. However, with fishing it’s still business as usual.
Trawlers return to port with their ever-declining fruits of the sea confronting precious little public outcry. It seems that the newfound compassion is fine for cuddly, land-based animals, but not for fish. This attitude is what makes it doubly hard for the Rainbow Warriors to garner public support. They are at the front line of probably the most vital war in our history.
The myth still pervades that “fish don’t feel pain like we do”. This is built on the fatuous teachings of Descartes. He stated that a mouse doesn’t squeak from pain when you cut off its tail; it is merely an automatic response the same as the snap of a mousetrap when set off. In short, the mouse has no soul.
All scientific, and more importantly experimental, evidence refutes this. Fish not only suffer from the wounding of being caught and cut, but also from slow s1μfocation and dehydration.
“A thousand people in Port Lincoln will lose their jobs,” the tuna captain above further fulminated. Well, if the current tuna decline continues, this prediction will be realized anyway.
How much more intelligent if, through incrementally reduced harvests, the present industry was to metamorphose into:
“Port Lincoln; bluefin tuna sport fishing capital of the world.” There would be smaller boats, but more of them, catching less fish – true sustainability – but supporting a lot more people in the tourist industry. Hopefully the generation beyond that would be: “Port Lincoln, bluefin tuna-watch capital of the world.” ·
While still in gloomy reflection on the “crab boy”, and the implications for the future, I recalled my own daughter’s anguished outburst when she saw a man, who had just caught an octopus on his line, violently smash it against a rock.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked uncomprehending. On the compassion ladder, it’s more a case of what’s wrong with him.
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