All Opinions are Luciferic
Our opinions are formed from a selfish desire to have things our own way…
…at the present time there is something that has a very great influence upon man’s life of soul between birth and death but that simply did not exist in its present form only a few centuries ago. It is what we today mean by the expression ‘public opinion’. Even as recently as the thirteenth century it would have been nonsense to speak of public opinion as we do today. A great deal is said nowadays against belief in authority, although in actual fact it exists in a much more oppressive form in our time than it did in these earlier, often despised centuries.
In earlier centuries there were, of course, defects, but there was no blind belief in authority such as exists at present. This blindness of belief in authority is usually revealed by the fact that the authority in question cannot be specified (i.e. identified). A person today will readily be shocked when he is told that science has proved this or that (in the sense that science is infallible, the ‘shock’ being a manifestation of fear of what science has ‘revealed’ to the individual and/or collective public). In earlier centuries, however, people attached more weight to authorities whom they encountered physically. Reference to an intangible ‘something’ is implied when it is said: “There is scientific proof of it.” Such a saying urges belief in authority when confronted with something incomprehensible. Such belief did not exist in earlier centuries.
People belonging to our civilisation usually concern themselves very little with matters about which the simplest, most, primitive human being in earlier centuries endeavoured to have some knowledge — matters relating, for example, to health and illness. “Why,” it is asked today, “should anyone need to know about health and illness? The doctors know about these matters and the problems concerned can be left to them.” This is also an example of what comes into the category of intangible but sovereign authority. But countless other influences make their way into life; from earliest youth the human being becomes dependent upon them and his trends of judgement and feeling force themselves into our life! These living currents swirling around among human beings are usually referred to as ‘public opinion’ — and prompted the saying from philosophers:
“Public opinions are mostly private errors.”
To realise this, however, is not as important as it is to be aware that public opinions exert tremendous power upon the life of an individual. It would be a complete misconception of history to speak about the influence of public opinion upon the life of an individual living in the thirteenth century. In those days there were single personalities who admittedly exerted a great deal of authority either in affairs of Government or in practical life, and in these spheres it was obeyed. But at this time there was nothing resembling what impersonal public opinion has become today. Anyone who is unwilling to believe this on the basis of the occult facts should study the history of Florence during those centuries and in later times too — when the government of the city passed into the control of the Medici (a powerful banking family). The tremendous power of individual authorities will then be apparent, but there was no such thing as public opinion. It first arose in an epoch preceding our own by four or five centuries and one can speak of its actual beginning. Such things must be regarded as realities, for a world of swirling thoughts does indeed exist.
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Public opinion is not created by human beings alone but also by a certain category of Luciferic spirits of the lowest rank — retarded Angeloi and Archangeloi.
Source: Between Death and Rebirth
“Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled – thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty.”
~Rudolf Steiner