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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Search results 4861 through 4870 of 6552

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186. The Challenge of the Times: The Present from the Viewpoint of the Present 30 Nov 1918, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

Most certainly the past theosophical maxim, “I love all human beings; I have an interest in all human beings,” is not effective; it is abstract; it does not lay hold upon real life and laying hold upon real life is what really matters. This must be understood in a deeper sense. A lack of understanding of real life has been the characteristic of recent centuries.
In other words, such representative bodies, under whatever system of suffrage chosen, would not render possible the attainment of the goals that are there striven for.
Even within our own circle, where this could so easily be understood, people do not always reflect that everything we receive obligates us to return an equivalent to society and not simply enjoy.
186. The Challenge of the Times: The Mechanistic, Eugenic and Hygienic Aspects of the Future 01 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

Yet this fact compels us, naturally, to use words that will be understood by some persons to be intended as criticism of one or another of the social classes. Such is not the case. When we speak here of the bourgeoisie, it is as if we were speaking of an inevitable historical phenomenon, and not for the purpose of raising any objection to what has simply been unavoidable according to certain spiritual-scientific points of view. I beg you to understand in the same way also what I shall present to you today. Let us take as our point of departure the comprehensive motive force that underlies in powerful form the present social demands of the proletariat, just as it underlies all or many human movements.
People will not undertake them in Western countries because in those regions they are not considered advantageous or desirable.
186. The Challenge of the Times: Social and Antisocial Instincts 06 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

It alternates between ebb and flow. If people do not understand this, they simply do not understand anything about the world. We frequently hear it said that the ideal of community life within a state is a democracy.
But this socialistic republic would actually be a great place of sleep for human conceptual capacities. We can understand that there are longings for something of the kind, but longing for sleep is always present in many people. We must simply understand what the inner necessities of life are, and must not content ourselves with wishing for what suits us or is pleasing to us because the thing that a person does not possess is generally pleasing to him.
186. The Challenge of the Times: Specters of the Old Testament in the Nationalism of the Present 07 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

This is the reason why precisely this people received the revelation that man became man when the breath of life was given to him. We acquire a special understanding when this is developed on the basis of the nature of human breathing. We acquire an understanding of the life of abstract thinking, which was called in the Old Testament the life of law, an understanding of the reception of abstract thoughts.
It was necessary that the Christ impulse should be understood for the future. Without an understanding of this Christ impulse, no social demand takes the direction leading to any sort of wholesome objective. The almost twenty centuries during which Christianity has previously been disseminated were only preparatory stages for the real understanding of the Christ impulse because the Christ impulse can be understood only in the spirit. Everything happens gradually.
186. The Challenge of the Times: The Innate Capacities of the Nations of the World 08 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translated by Olin D. Wannamaker

Let us consider the various impelling forces underlying the civilized world in the light of the most important European differentiations that come to expression through language.
It is only in this way that you will succeed in understanding the real nature of English politics, which are actually the dominant politics of the entire population of the earth.
On the other hand, we must acquire what was brought to your attention yesterday and that is the direct understanding of one human individual by another. This is connected with everything that ought to live within us in the form of social judgment and social feeling.
186. The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times: The Transforming of Instinctive into Conscious Impulses 13 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Anyone who is unable to read this out of the phenomena themselves, simply fails to understand this present time. And it is a sad thing how many people fail to understand it. It is through this that we go more and more deeply into confusion: men do not really try to understand their time.
What is the deeper underlying truth? It is this, my dear friends. We have entered into the age of the Spiritual Soul; we are in it since the 15th century.
Now men are moving towards the conscious experience of such things, as that these experiences can be undergone consciously when they meet the Guardian of the Threshold; and more or less instinctively they must be undergone by human beings in the course of time, during the Age of the Spiritual Soul.
186. The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times: The Logic of Thought and the Logic of Reality 14 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

Why are they so helpless? Because they are bent on understanding with the Natural-Scientific type of thinking something that cannot thus be understood. We shall have to make up our minds to conceive the social life, not with the kind of thinking that is brought up on Natural Science but in an altogether different way.
And it is true, if we consider only the content of the philosophy of Avenarius, we are still more at a loss to understand how it happened. For what does Avenarius think? Avenarius says: Men labor under a prejudice. They think: within, in my head, or in my soul or wherever it is, are the ideas, the perceptions, they are there subjectively; outside are the objects.
But it was not merely said, it was propagated with a vengeance, and the most unbelievable people acted up to it—people of whom you might have supposed that they would understand the rudiments of economics—directors of factories and industrial undertakings. They too declared: pay in check and not in ready money, that is patriotic!
186. The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times: The Metamorphosis of Intelligence 15 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

It remains as empty abstraction if you say: “I love all men.” To enter into the other human beings with understanding, that is the thing needful, likewise it is necessary to enter into the different communities of men with understanding, to have a true judgment about them and about their social structure.
It depends alone on the spirituality that is flowing through the time. Hence I am under no obligation—I beg you to take this in all earnestness—I am under obligation to no one to keep silence about anything of which I myself consider that it ought to be spoken about in our time.
Think how different it would be if in this or that establishment the individual worker were placed, even in soul and spirit, into the whole process which the commodity he makes undergoes in the world; if he understood how he stands within the social structure through the fact that he produces just this commodity.
186. The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times: The New Revelation of the Spirit 20 Dec 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown

This understanding of the Universe was then applied in order to understand Man too. Man himself was conceived in terms of the Universe.
In the ancient revelation which proceeded from an understanding of the Universe to an understanding of Man—all the old religions and traditions had their source.
They find it more comfortable, for it does not demand a conscious understanding. People find Spiritual Science inconvenient. For they are called upon to understand it, and it can only be understood by making use of healthy, wide-awake, human intelligence, but people would rather not understand.
186. Social and Anti-social Forces In The Human Being 12 Dec 1918, Bern
Translated by Christopher Schaefer

Nowadays Spiritual Science is the only means of seeing things truly in their totality; it is the only means for understanding our time. Just as one is adverse to entering into the spirit and soul foundations of man's physical constitution, so one also avoids, out of fear and lack of courage, studying those things in social life which can only be understood out of the Spirit.
This is impossible, for the whole world is organized by underlying principles so that one cannot simply create identical forms at will all over the globe. This is a point which we must not forget.
If only a sufficient number of people today were motivated to say, “We absolutely must have a better understanding of things”; then everything else would follow. It is just in regard to social questions that there is a need to consciously strive for insight and understanding.

Results 4861 through 4870 of 6552

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