Who Are You EP 01: Seth Jordan on Social Threefolding

This is the first, experimental episode of Who Are You, a subseries of the Jim Rutt Show in which Jim has an unplanned conversation with a mystery guest nominated and elected by listeners. In this episode he meets Seth Jordan, a writer focusing on the social ideas of Rudolf Steiner. They discuss Steiner’s focus on how we view society, the differences between complicated & complex & between operating systems & organisms, the contingency of human systems & methods of nudging, starting with human nature, a tripartite picture of government functions, breaking society into political, economic, and cultural realms & whether they should be kept separate, the dominance of culture by the economic realm, organizing at the meso-scale, the Amish & other local wholistic cultures, giving full autonomy to educators, the post-WWI creation of the nation-state & the advantages of separating nation from state, making participation a reality, moving from “me” to “we,” honoring cross-cultural autonomy, separation of church & state, the challenge of community coherence, and much more.