Nowadays one can, as some intelligent left-wing socialists do, prove without a doubt that Marxism is intrinsically true; one can, from another point of view, just as easily prove that Marxism is complete nonsense. It is possible these days to prove most things. We need to understand this.
These days, children are instilled with the notion that they ought to prove things. However, therein lies something incredibly tragic, this capability to prove things so readily, so rigorously and thereby be so easily convinced of a concept. Because of all the ways to become convinced of something, the easiest is the current method to prove matters. There is no easier means to acquire a conviction today than to prove a conviction to be the right one. Precisely by proving something in this way, people have lost their sensitivity, lost the ability to sense that beliefs in life must be fought for and acquired, that one needs to conquer a conviction if it should become an integral part of the soul.
Why is this so? Why are we so easily convinced of something? It happens because we have become accustomed to superficial thinking. These days people tend to stay on the surface with their thinking; they do not bother to penetrate deeply into things. Moreover, the more superficially one thinks, the easier it is to prove something. This is particularly important to understand. The thinner the concepts are – and on the surface of things all concepts are thin and abstract -, the better these concepts seem to provide arguments for what one wants to believe and assume from completely different substrates, from very unconscious subjective feelings, from arbitrary will impulses, subconscious beliefs and assumptions.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 191 – Soziales Verständnis aus geisteswissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis – Dornach, October 18, 1919 (page 147-148)
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger
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