Without spiritual ideas we are sliding more and more into chaos

The institutions and ideas, especially the social ideas people have today, are abstract and crude; they are clumsy in the face of the complexities that are lying ahead. And because people are not able to have ideas or concepts about the true nature of things, they are sliding more and more deeply into chaos — the events of the war make this quite clear. Chaos is arising because reality has changed; reality is becoming fuller and richer than anything people are able to think of or create in their heads. And we shall have to be clear in our minds that we are faced with a choice: To go on beating each other to a pulp, shooting at one another, in the way we do now, because we do not know how to bring order into the world or, start to develop concepts and ideas to match the complexity of the situation.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 177 – Fall of the Spirits of Darkness: Lecture 5: Changes in Humanity’s Spiritual Make-up – Dornach, 7th October 1917

Translated by Anna R. Meuss

Not preaching and restrictions are helpful, but insight

When people do not build their social ideas according to the foundations of Anthroposophical spiritual science, then humanity will not be able to avoid the disasters which are so terribly evident nowadays. I know the value of what emanates from people who are nowadays called pacifists and such, people who are enthusiastic about all kinds of peace movements. However such things do not get established through restrictions or by merely ordaining this or that must happen. People may fully agree about what should happen. If one, however, only establishes the rules, only the laws from out of the customary way of thinking, it is as if one would say to a stove: Dear stove, it’s your duty as stove to heat the room; so you are going to make this room nice and warm immediately. However, this will not happen, one must first fill the stove with wood and light the fire. It would be wonderful if this could be done by just by telling the stove to do so, but it will not happen. Not unless one provides the wood and light the fire.  

Just as little would the conventional ideas on peace-keeping and so on commonly accepted be adequate. The point here is that one does not just say: people, love one another, but that one – just as pointed out in the example of the stove –  provide the fuel that will speak to the human souls. The fuel needed here are ideas that stem from absorbing spiritual insight in a living way. Because the human soul does not only belong to material life, but also to spiritual life. And often it is still not understood nowadays what it really means that the human soul is part of the spiritual world. It is believed that one comes nearer to the supersensible through applying certain laws. This is not the case.

Source(German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 72 –  Freiheit Unsterblichkeit Soziales Leben – Basel, 18th October 1917 (page 58-59)

Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger