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On Thu, 13 Feb 2025 at 07:50, Kokanje via groups.io
<landvankokanje@...> wrote:

Hello all,

on a lighter note…

I’ve just read this argument pro vaccination (from the archives) by Roger Rawlings:

/g/waldorf-critics/message/31197?p=%2C%2C%2C20%2C0%2C0%2C0%3A%3ACreated%2C%2CSeat+belt%2C20%2C2%2C0%2C59745057

It mentiones seat belts as a comparison. The argument for vaccination is even better than the argument for wearing seat belts, according to Roger.

This made me think of a situation, in which a then co-worker of mine, in an anthroposophical organisation, intentionally did not wear his seat belt. I remember being astonished, because I thought the only reason not to wear your seat belt was because you forgot. But he put on the seat belt when there was a police car in sight and afterwards put it off again immediately. Unfortunately I didn’t ask him about it. He was very into anthroposophy - a real believer.

So my questions are these: where does this behaviour come from? Does it have a link with anthroposophy? Did Steiner mention seat belts in his lectures (not many cars around back then)? Have some of you seen similar behaviour? If you say the argument for vaccination is better than for seat belts, does that even work on people who believe you should not wear a seat belt for some reason in the first place?

PS: a little search on the internet revealed that there is a broader movement of people not wearing seat belts intentionally, as an anti-government statement (or pro-freedom if you wish).

That makes me think: do anthroposophists wear bike helmets? ;-)

Just curious (as always),

kokanje

There were no seat-belts then, so he can't possibly have said anything
about them.

I think maybe people who are more cautious (wearing seat-belts,
helmets, and so on) are perhaps more careful about whatever ideas they
are attracted to, perhaps they're more averse to harm ad danger in
general, thus avoiding crazy beliefs? So maybe it's not a matter of
anthroposophy making people not wearing seat-belts but of people being
drawn to anthroposophy being the same people who would choose to
flaunt all sorts of rules of supposedly normal behaviour? There might,
of course, also in some cases be a matter of taking karma to the
extreme -- I suppose! With vaccination, there are all these additional
things -- like vaccinations being bad for the child's spiritual
development -- which confuse things. One might -- if one takes this
spritual danger seriously --even imagine that not vaccinating is the
choice with the less risk attached to it.

Or perhaps anthroposophists are not really as quick to adapt to new
mores, living more in the past? Not that long ago -- like when I was a
kid, in the 80s -- it was still quite "normal" not to use seat-belts
or helmets, wheras today most people would find such behaviour totally
reckless. (At least for kids not to use these things.)
Anthroposophists are not always the fastest when it comes to adapting
to new fashions and trends.

-alicia