Blindness and Intoxication
The following quotes are from two lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in February and March of 1917 in Berlin. At that time the Russian Revolution had begun, the German army had started its withdrawal to the Hindenburg line and only weeks later the United States would declare war on Germany. There had already been about three years of war and millions had perished across the European continent.
In Berlin, in the midst of these lectures…
Women and children queue for food in Berlin Germany in 1917
The food supply increasingly focused on potatoes and bread as it was harder and harder to buy meat. Rationing was installed, and soup kitchens were opened. The meat ration in late 1916 was only 31% of peacetime, and it fell to 12% in late 1918. The fish ration was 51% in 1916, and none at all by late 1917. The rations for cheese, butter, rice, cereals, eggs and lard were less than 20% of peacetime levels. In 1917 the harvest was poor, and the potato supply ran short, and Germans substituted almost inedible turnips; the “turnip winter” of 1917-18 was remembered with bitter distaste for generations. (Wikipedia)
In [our] age, people have either wanted to form concepts that intoxicate them or those that blind them. Intoxicating concepts are formed mainly in the area of religion; those that blind are formed mainly in the domain of natural science.
Those who know see many sad things happening. For instance, it is absolutely appalling to someone who is not guided by mere words but realities that it is possible today for people to be impressed simply by an assemblage of words, by a number of speeches that have indeed been printed. A highly honored person of our day has delivered speeches, and in his very first speech he immediately assumes the attitude that human beings in one aspect of their nature are completely (and only) related to the natural order, and that theologians are not acting correctly when they do not leave the order of nature to the scientists who investigate it. Those speeches go on to say that in regard to the natural order, the human being is simply a piece of machinery … After that, of course one can live only on the husks of words. Moreover, those speeches are composed so that they lack continuity.
People today who are acknowledged materialists constantly swing back and forth between blind ideas and intoxicated ideas. Blind ideas are those in which people allow themselves to be blinded to what is going on, so that when they intervene they do so in the clumsiest way possible. Intoxicated ideas are those in which people give way only to their emotions and passions, confronting the world in such a way that they do not really understand things, but only love or hate everything. Thus, everything is judged according to love or hate, sympathy or antipathy.
Though these things were said over 100 years ago, they apply today as if they were said only this month. After the war, Steiner sold over 80,000 copies of his ideas for social, economic and political reform. You can read about his ideas in The Renewal of the Social Organism. Governments ignored him and things – politics, economics, education – continued on as they were before the war. In fact, little has changed up to our current times and nothing has improved in human relationships. Why? Because of an overwhelming vehemence against all things Spiritual.
In our day, amidst the “science of the times”, are there not speeches after speeches being made about what we need to do to be safe, to be healthy, to be “free”? People are blind to what is really going on in the world around them. People thrive on hating others, those that don’t see things as they do. So many parrot what others say to believe without thinking for themselves. It is this sort of blindness and intoxication of emotion that led to the First World War. Then the second. And inevitably to the War of All Against All. And still, people will wonder, how did we get here?
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
~ Isaiah