Are anthroposophy and biodynamic agriculture synergetic?

This philosophy, established and developed by Rudolf Steiner in 1912, is distinguished from its relative, theosophy, by its more Western inspiration.

The basis of the doctrine is alchemical, that is to say that it functions by correspondences between the material, conceptual and spiritual worlds.

Many of its foundations are indicative of an impregnation of ancient culture, such as the notions of karma and reincarnation, but there is also a consequent place given to the Christian religion and the figure of Jesus Christ.

The Waldorf-Steiner schools are directly inspired by this movement, as well as biodynamics (alchemical agricultural approach) and certain companies like Weleda©. There are also buildings designed according to anthroposophical architecture (like the Goetheanum) and an anthroposophical medicine.

Before naming my work "Synergetic Design", I took the time to learn about anthroposophy to see if I would not find more or less the same in terms of design and many other things in terms of spirituality.

I read some of Rudolf Steiner's texts and listened to several of his lectures. I also met people that are involved in the movement (some of them who have grown up since childhood in this context).

To be honest, I must say that I am not convinced by this doctrine.

Of course, there are some things in it that I would call interesting (such as the non-use of synthetic products in agriculture), but I see several elements that are contradictory to synergetic design as I propose it:

• its effectiveness is far from being proven, because the anthroposophical approach is often satisfied with an intellectual elegance made of alchemical correspondences, without providing solid proof of the relevance of the doctrine;

• its predictability is low, because certain protocols, particularly biodynamic ones, involve a human intentional dimension and are therefore extremely complex to establish as viable solutions that deserve to be promoted, while some others are simply not seen as positive or negative like sometimes in its medicine;

• anthroposophy is a very complicated approach, intellectually heavy and rigid, which tends to encompass everything in a doctrine and which is therefore very difficult to transmit, not to say boring;

• the contentment it provides is questionable, in fact, having been in contact with people from this movement, they are generally rather dark and stark and it is obvious that the hyper-rigid concepts of anthroposophy cannot suit spontaneous and playful temperaments.

This does not mean that there is nothing interesting in it, but it is my personal opinion that what is valuable in the anthroposophical doctrine mostly already existed in the ancient traditional forms of wisdom, and that in this respect, this doctrine has only had the role of agglomerating this wisdom with other more modern elements and Rudolf Steiner’s views.

Also, and the most important to me: I consider impossible to explain everything of the reality and not a good idea to follow that path too much (I tend to follow the middle path for most things). And we know thanks to his version of Faust that Goethe himself agreed on that matter!

Humans need spaces of freedom, innocence and spontaneity, amongst other things. I never saw until now that dimension explicitly promoted by the anthroposophical movements and I think this is a huge deal-breaker that contradicts the notion of contentment inherent to synergetic design.

I will therefore not promote this movement here, although it seems obvious that some of the concepts discussed may overlap with certain notions found in anthroposophy, but which are in reality in my opinion only elements of common sense, not elements directly coming from this doctrine.