The Rudolf Steiner Archive

40. Fatalism as a Pestilence of the Times

[ 1 ] It cannot be denied that the number of people in Central Europe whose cultural-political creed leads to fatalism is growing. They say: We have to get through further destruction, through even greater chaos, before we can return to a fruitful development of public life. They see from the helplessness, from the confusion into which we are drifting more and more with every week, that nothing fruitful can be created from the opinions of the old party leaders, from the views of those who have so far been pushed into leading positions by the course of events. But this does not cause them to seek refuge in ideas which, recognizing the basic conditions of social life, seek to bring about a new structure, but only leads them to hope for something nebulous and indeterminate, which will come about when the distress and confusion have become even greater.

[ 2 ] They reply to those who put forward such ideas: Redemption cannot come from the thoughts of individual dreamers, it must arise from the depths of the will of the people. It is as if such people want to buy themselves out of the trouble of thinking through fruitful ideas through this call for the "will of the people". They do not see through what is developing from this "will of the people" today. They do not recognize how this will of the people needs to be fertilized by the leading ideas in order not to fragment its power into something insubstantial. They do not want the ideas; that is why they are waiting for the miracle of the will of the people without ideas.

[ 3 ] In recent times, one could hear a differently expressed belief in political miracles. It was noticed that no promising political action could be derived from old party ideas. One recognized the unfruitfulness in the actions, or actually in the inaction, of the leading personalities who rise to leadership from the womb of the party system. This realization has led to calls for "experts" to replace inaction with fruitful creations based on some kind of non-party insight.

[ 4 ] The idea is that such "experts" exist. All you have to do is turn to them and entrust them with your "business". If they steer the wheels of political and social life, uninfluenced by party words from left and right, then it will lead to something. We fail to see that our plight is caused precisely by the fact that the ideas of the old experts have reached a dead end. This "expertise" has led to a complete lack of direction.

[ 5 ] The same error occurs here that is at work in another field, that of popular education. People talk about the need to create enlightenment through "folk high schools". It is assumed that the knowledge which has been brought to the surface of public life by previous developments should only be disseminated. Then they will work the miracle of improvement from the broad masses. One should say to oneself that our bleak situation has resulted from these "insights" and that the bleakness will not diminish but will increase if what has borne no fruit with a leading class is allowed to proliferate in the broad masses. What is needed above all is a renewal of knowledge, a new intellectual construction. We must first think about the change in what is to be taught in the adult education centers before we can approach them ourselves.

[ 6 ] The fact that a change in thought must occur is not something we want to admit. One wants to be content with gaining new forms for the cultivation of old thoughts. It is as if every effort is being made to avoid having to subject the new ideas to scrutiny. Those who are calling for "experts" for the leading positions are probably also saying that we have to look for them in order to restore confidence abroad. It is believed that loans will be granted to us in England and America once such experts can be guarantors for the correct use of these loans.

[ 7 ] Foreign countries will certainly not care whether the personalities who have to negotiate with them from Central Europe are labeled as "experts" based on the old circumstances. It did not care about these "experts" before 1914 and will not do so in 1920 either. Foreign countries will only start to take notice when fruitful ideas emerge from Central Europe. But all this talk today of building confidence abroad is only a consequence of the flight from ideas at home. We do not want to take a stand against the ideas. For this reason, we call for people who are not looked at for what they have to say, but who are labeled as "experts" out of untested circumstances. People do not want to look for ways to bring about a new reconstruction; they want to wait for the redeeming turn of events that is supposed to come like a miracle. We will only see that after some time, the "experts" will reveal the barrenness of their "subjects" and that in the time that has passed by then, the chaos will have become even greater.

[ 8 ] The movement for the threefolding of the social organism has been fighting against this flight and fear of ideas ever since it attempted to enter public life. Its supporters had to say from the beginning that all the experiments attempted in social life on the basis of the ideas that have contributed to our misfortune can lead to nothing. Anyone who wants to see how conditions have developed since the so-called peace treaty should finally be led to the realization that the way in which these bearers of the threefold idea have approached the hopeless attempts at new construction has found a certain confirmation in the facts.

[ 9 ] Not waiting for a miracle that - no one knows where from - is supposed to come, but only the will for guiding ideas can lead us further. The fatalism we have arrived at is the most alarming sign of the times. For it paralyzes the will to the guiding ideas. And if this paralysis continues, then destructive instincts take the place of constructive reason. And this paralysis of the will can only lead to complete destruction. We are already further along the path of destructive instincts than many admit. There is a point on this path of destruction where the "miracle" will not occur, but where so many ears will be deaf to reason that it will no longer be able to make itself heard. Today the ears are not yet deaf, but the will does not allow the power of hearing to come into its own. That is why it must always be emphasized anew: Salvation can only come if a sufficiently large number of people are seized by the will to cooperate in the transformation of the way of thinking. Those who shy away from this work cannot consider what is necessary for the development of humanity in the present.