Coronavirus – a spiritual symptomatology

January 10, 1920 was the official implementation of the Treaty of Versailles, which failed to adequately resolve socio- economic and political tensions after the First World War. It was also the founding of the League of Nations; whose purpose was world peace. In a striking contradiction, the following decades saw the rearmament of Germany, the Second World War and the establishment of the post 1945 world order.

The Twenty First Century – What’s it going to look like?

As a result of the 2020 pandemic, it is said that 50% of small businesses in Europe now face bankruptcy. In March 2020, the US Federal Reserve Bank granted more than $3 trillion in loans and asset purchases to again, as in 2008, stabilize the economic system. What are going to be the consequences of all this?

Plans for a restructuring of the global economy, detailed in ‘Agenda 21’ (the blueprint for socio-economic development for the twenty first century), were established as far back as the 1992 ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro: updated as ‘Sustainable Development Goals 2030’, or ‘2050: how the world will look’. Alongside, financial institutions are seeking to transform the global monetary system with the deployment of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Research into Agenda 21, in 2014, backed up globally, showed that many Agenda21 changes to law had already been implemented on a local level, the world over. Aligned with Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development 2030, the Coronavirus crisis accelerates the next phase, known as the ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Comprising technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Outlined in the following quote from business consultancy McKinsey the Coronavirus crisis can therefore be seen as an opportunity to further economic aims, justifying a layoff of relatively ‘inefficient’ human workers.

“Opportunities to push the envelope of technology adoption will be accelerated by rapid learning about what it takes to drive productivity when labor is unavailable. The result: a stronger sense of what makes business more resilient to shocks, more productive, and better able to deliver to customers.” i

In the French Revolution, the Comte de Saint Germain warned the ruling elites of the upcoming disaster with the words ‘they shall sow the wind and reap the whirlwind’, which highlights the aim of the resistant powers to bring the future into the present, abstractly and prematurely.

We have seen in 2020 how Emergency situations can justify intended changes. The Christian impulse is that change should occur slowly, so that all may come to the shore.

The ‘influence’ of events

Rudolf Steiner warned of the manipulation of world historical events in his Symptomatic Observation series of lectures post World War One. ii Steiner drew attention to how lodges are able to work through the media. (In the books of , influential at the United Nations, it was called Ceremonial ).

Now, it may be overt narratives in Hollywood, the news or popular literature, or it may covertly apply to how the mind of a specific period of history is more subtly influenced by group psychology. Such knowledge is employed metapolitically, as in above-and-beyond, political affiliations.

What will it take to transform society?

In the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Caesar says to the Soothsayer ‘The ides of March have come’– whereby the soothsayer replies ‘Aye Caesar but not gone’. In the scene of Caesar’s assassination, Caesar is surprised when even his close friend Brutus delivers one of the 33 fatal stab wounds. As priest of the eternal flame of the temple of Vesta, Julius Caesar might have counselled us about knowing our “spiritual adversaries”.

Exactly 100 years on from 1920, the historical challenge of the Coronavirus pandemic calls us to bring what is chaotic and corrupt in our socio-political systems back into the order of the cosmos. In this task we recognize ’s emphasis of the great and ongoing need of our time, to understand the nature and mystery of Evil, by bringing it to consciousness.

i March 2020 McKinsey & Co: “Beyond coronavirus: The path to the next normal”. ii Rudolf Steiner The of Untruthfulness Volume 1 and 2 (13 Lectures from GA 173, 1916)