"Infantilization of Humanity" by Daniel Hafner

Hello. Good evening. Good morning, good afternoon. I think I saw Western Australia, that must be way early in the morning. It's an amazing time to be alive when you can just talk to people like this around the world and see little snapshots of their moving faces. This evening's theme—it's evening here, please forgive me—today's theme is about responsibility and taking responsibility for one's own deeds.

Or when you went out to the wilderness in the old days, you really had to take care of yourself and see that you had a place to live and something to eat. And something like that happens in every human biography. There comes a time when a child says, 'I can do that myself.' It's a joyous moment. And there comes a time when a teenager says, 'I want to have my own space and have some measure of self-determination.' Perhaps most teenagers would like to have complete... and can decide what the place is going to look like and how you're going to set it up and how you're going to live.

At first, we're cared for by our parents, and the gratitude is immeasurable if you just consider how much you receive in those early years. It gives you your whole foundation for life. And at first... and everything else. That is a necessary protection so that you can become strong. Humanity as a whole also began that way. There were caregivers, protectors, leaders of humanity who, by virtue of their own special development, told us how to live, where to live... of human culture, and everyone just said and did whatever the priest said. Those were the good old days. But for several centuries now, the feeling has grown stronger and stronger that that is no longer appropriate to a modern person who wants to be self-responsible. Sometimes with violent upheaval, the old regimes have been overthrown.

Wrote at the end of his long life a brief essay called 'The Education of the Human Race.' Lessing said, 'Humanity as a whole passes through something like a childhood phase and must in the course of time come of age.' This evening, today, we want to look into a type of a childhood state or even an infantile state. Have you ever noticed that there are some people who can scarcely bear to hear the word 'no'?

I once was in a conversation group with some other people, and I went as far as to say... that the person whose views I did not entirely share came to me afterwards and said it was hurtful. And I also didn't just say, 'I see that differently.' I tried to explain why. It's very hard. And if you notice what it feels like to be contradicted, it's sometimes hard to take. Children don't like it either when they are told 'no.' But that's part of being an adult, that you don't have to take it personally. You can also understand the other person sees it differently.

In this regard, it seems worth asking why the willingness to postpone gratification seems to be declining likewise. That's one of the differences between a child and an adult. An adult can know: if I wait and don't immediately satisfy this wish, it can be helpful in the long run. But people... and our wishes are really fulfilled to a very great degree, at least on the material level, compared to the way it was in previous decades or centuries. That one could pause for a moment and be grateful, but you find yourself perhaps impatient because it takes more than three seconds for the computer signal to travel around the globe to Australia and back. How does that even happen? Do they send the signal out to outer space in some satellite relay, or does it go by an undersea cable?

Something not only to postpone it but just to say, 'I'm not going to get that,' or 'I voluntarily give it up so that someone else can have it, so that something else can happen.' It's somewhat alarming that people are losing the ability. Of course, that's a vast generalization, but you can test these statements with your own experiences. Where is the threshold of frustration? Again, this is one of the hallmarks of adult behavior as opposed to the child. Children have beautiful qualities and gifts, but the selfhood is not yet there. And how does it stand with our faculty of taking responsibility?

You talk to people... you can catch yourself being defensive, and the other person only wanted to say, 'There's an issue here,' and is not really trying to cast blame. People answer then perhaps with 'No problem,' which in many cases actually means there is a problem, but I don't want to admit it. People's capacity to commit seems to be declining as far as I can tell.

There was a time when it seems to me you could usually rely upon a person's word. All right, if it wasn't a fundamentally dishonest person, you could know: if he says he'll be there, he'll be there. Today, you can make an appointment with someone, and if you don't have a mobile telephone, you're lost. You go to the place and time and you just wait. People with mobile telephones, they go to the appointed place at the appointed time, or even before going they make one more phone call to say, 'Are you really coming?' If you think that I'm seeing this wrong, I haven't done any extensive studies on it; it's just purely anecdotal, but that's my impression. Responsibility is declining, commitment is declining.

Another phenomenon is the way that we address one another. There are cultures in the world where the way that you speak to another person is highly formalized and important. In the West, this is becoming more and more informal. That need not be a bad thing. I was often enough still called by my surname, Mr. Hafner. I was a student; the teachers called me Mr. Hafner. I don't think that was true of all of them back then, but I know that a hundred years ago that was quite universal. And now you meet a person, perhaps a reverend, an old wise person, and you immediately say, 'Hi, Sally,' without even having known her before. At least in the West, this seems to be common and commoner.

On the other hand, one can question whether that's always complemented by the necessary maturity and respect. I don't want to generalize there; it's just a question. And in general, this evening's purpose is not to tell us that we're doing things wrong; it's to ask what is showing itself here. Because many of the older formalisms maybe weren't that helpful after all, and it's just as well to let them fall, but what is showing itself here?

And inspected and made safe. It's not only in the last couple of years with the concerns about infection; those concerns were there before as well. People worry about germs, even though there is a microbiology in every living organism where the sharing of microorganisms brings strength. People worry about germs. This leads to laws... is financial in nature is a different question, but certainly the reason that is given is, 'You could get sick, there could be germs in there.' But this is inconsistent because that's true not only of milk but of any substance that you touch or eat. If you wanted to be logically consistent, you would have to boil your lettuce as well, sterilize that. You'd have to set the whole grocery store under boiling water before you even enter it and then sterilize yourself from head to foot. All right, the reality is living beings cannot live in a sterile environment; they die. But that's a different topic. The point here is the fear of infection itself will make... the smaller they are, the more so. Adults need to be able to assess risks and make their own decisions. That's part of being an adult.

A few years ago, I was on a walk in the forest. It was in Canada, a country especially concerned with security. And there was a large sign there in the middle of the forest, a metal sign such as you would find on a street normally, saying, 'Keep a safe distance. Danger of drowning.' The scene was a small clearing in the forest with a very, very small pond, scarcely more than a puddle. 'Keep a safe distance.' Why? Are people really not able to assess the danger of drowning in a small pond? 'Safety first' is the motto everywhere. We have hideous exit signs permanently illuminated in case this building might suddenly catch fire, and this applies to buildings entirely made of concrete, as is the fashion nowadays anyway, so that you can't even have a beautiful room anymore without disfiguring it, at least if it's a public space. And then there have to be fire extinguishers prominently visible at every corner of every room almost.

You can mother them or you can smother them. You can wrap them in padding, make sure they never touch any sharp object or indeed anything longer than it is wide, and above all don't let them climb on anything. But by doing so, you're impeding their development. There's a beautiful passage in 'The Enormous Room' by E. E. Cummings where he speaks about a neighbor who let his child climb trees even though the little lad was scarcely capable of self-responsibility. Another neighbor says, 'Boy is going to...' I don't want to say that you have to do that at every age with every child, but there's a serious question. At some point, the teenagers are going to go out and take risks, and possibly without telling their parents about it. And how do we prepare them for that? And how do we prepare ourselves for that? And how do we as humanity deal with this simple given that things are sometimes dangerous?

One solution which does not seem particularly mature to my judgment... by spilling hot coffee. I believe it was at a McDonald's. The result was a lawsuit. If you have the right lawyer, you can get a lot of money this way. And evidently the lawyer was skillful enough, or the law firm, that McDonald's actually lost the lawsuit and paid damages because there was no warning on that coffee cup that you could hurt yourself if you poured scalding coffee into your own lap. At this point, there's a... for healthy common sense, they should not be necessary. At the end of a ladder, you can read a label to the effect that this is the last step on this ladder and you should not try to step out beyond it. You can be sure that there was some kind of a lawsuit that led to the necessity for pasting that label on every ladder. And staircases now in public buildings frequently are expected to have black and yellow diagonal striped police tape all across them to make sure you can see it's actually the edge of a stair. Again, we take the ugliness into...

Is part of every human life. It belongs to us as a part of us. We need to understand that it is an aromatic movement within the soul, a contraction of the soul. It is a part of us and we cannot avoid it. But there is a question of how to deal with it and whether to try to regulate it out of existence. This in turn gives rise to the whole insurance industry. Here too, the point is not to condemn... produce goods. It skims something off from the economy, and whole skyscrapers full of people spend their entire lives in little cubicles there, counting the probabilities and assessing the damages. And they are, of course, paid to do so out of the surplus of actual productive economic life. The insurance companies in turn are themselves insured. That means if one of the clients... it has taken out a policy with other insurance companies around the world for just such an eventuality. So everything is covered. And again, we have the avoidance of responsibility; indeed, that is the whole point of the insurance industry.

What about our relation to language? Language is being replaced in many contexts by pictograms. Diction is shrinking. The vocabulary of a typically educated person of 50 or 60 years ago was far richer than it is today. 19th century prose typically features complex syntax... or Cooper. Today, people write with two thumbs, and they use abbreviations. 'LOL' for instance is one of the better known abbreviations, 'laughing out loud.' But there are so many of them current on the internet that you sometimes have to consult a lexicon, at least I do. There are fortunately lexica available on the internet; you can look up all of these different abbreviations: 'IMHO,' 'in my humble opinion,' and so on and so on. But you can find it everywhere. Do you know what the GAS is? The General Anthroposophical Society. I've heard people say that it be called the GAS. All right, so here too we have certain phenomena of regression in the realm of language. And the fundamental gesture in many areas of life is the expectation that someone else should solve our problems. This is appropriate for children, not so for adults.

The government should do things first. The government should educate our children, for example. Rudolf Steiner did not hold back in his warnings about that particular expectation. I will read you a couple of brief remarks that he made on the subject, representative of many others. He thought it was imperative to free the schools from any kind of influence by the state. He said during a question and answer session during the first university course, 12th of October 1920, you will find it in volume 337 of the complete edition of his works: 'If aficionados of the ideas of the Waldorf school do not even develop this much understanding, that these do involve campaigning against the dependence of the school on the state, standing up with all our forces, then the whole Waldorf school movement is for the birds. For it has meaning only if it grows into an independent realm of the life of the spirit.' That is a voice of responsibility, because the consequence is we as parents and teachers and educators must find ways of raising children without the help of an authority figure from the outside, and not abdicate that to the government. That will make the children strong, experiencing adults who take responsibility for their own decisions, even if those decisions are not always as filled with wisdom as they were in the time of the pharaoh, at least before the decadent times of the pharaohs. Indeed, the children can learn by seeing how the adults cope with their own errors.

Of the Waldorf school for the first teachers, which Rudolf Steiner gave on the 22nd of August 1919, that's just when they were getting ready to open the school. It is contained in volume 294 of the complete edition of his works and published in English as 'Practical Advice to Teachers.' I read it because Steiner does not hold back in this particular remark but tries to awaken a sense for the earnestness of the issue at hand. Here is Rudolf Steiner: 'It is a picture... the people in the parliaments should meet to make decisions about questions of teaching and education based at most on the advisory opinion of those who in turn stand no deeper in the affair than by virtue of their democratic feeling. If the affair were realized that way, as it is now commencing in Russia, this would mean that the earth would lose its mission, would be withdrawn.' This is a branch of the Anthroposophical Society hosted by our dear Chicago Rudolf Steiner Branch of the Anthroposophical Society, and so I think it right that we also face such severe challenges as are posed by words like that. It's not that Rudolf Steiner said it which proves that it's true; you can know that it's true. Yes, so we expect this...

This is dubious. A government which controls the propaganda channels, the government should also finance the religious communities of its choice. In Germany, this takes place by way of a church tax. Oh, that doesn't happen in America or Canada. And yet, approved religious communities receive tax exemptions in America and Canada, for example, as well. I don't know the details of every country of the globe, but this is very widespread. That is, there is... gift money is different from coerced gift money, which is what taxation is. And the spiritual life needs gift money. The government should also determine what medicine is and issue medical recommendations or even directives. This is not a new thing in the last couple of years; this has been a trend, an increasing trend, for a long time now. The government should, of course, protect us from poverty. You're not responsible for making a living or for seeing that you do something useful in the world; the government should take... something along the lines of if people are unable to work, it's their tough luck. That is not at all how Rudolf Steiner meant it. But there's a difference between helping people out of human initiatives and lawfully enforced, regulated pseudo-brotherhood. It's a different type of soul movement that flows with the money. Brotherhood and caring for the weak are not things that can really happen in a human sense... of human society. Some people think it should even guarantee our income. Rudolf Steiner obviously spoke against that, and it would be maybe too much to get into all of the details. I will just skip to the main idea right now so that we don't go until midnight.

This is something that Rudolf Steiner formulated early on as a general law concerning the coming of age of humanity. He called it the fundamental sociological law. He published it in the magazine for literature, of which he himself was the editor. And he often reviewed the latest books in different fields in this magazine, and this was part of a book review. A certain Ludwig Stein had written a book called 'Freedom and Society.' And in July of 1898, Rudolf Steiner wrote a review of this book in which he essentially said Stein has done us a great service in showing cultural evolution over the course of the centuries and millennia. What he failed to do, according to Rudolf Steiner... directive. It's a descriptive law, not a prescriptive law. The fundamental sociological law is simply a description of how human evolution has been going and is going. Rudolf Steiner formulates this fundamental sociological law in the course of his book review like this: 'At the beginning of cultural conditions, humanity strives for the formation of social bands. The interest of the individual... from the interest of the bands, and to the free unfolding of the needs and powers of the single person.' That is the fundamental sociological law. And since you're all muted, I can't even ask you whether you need me to read it again. If you weren't paying attention, wait for the recording to come out or ask me afterwards and I'll repeat it.

All right, now Rudolf Steiner has pointed something out here: there's a general tendency from the early... lifetimes, and it's been the trend since prehistoric times. Rudolf Steiner continues now after formulating this law, writes further in his book review, and draws some conclusions about a desirable form of human community. Because the point cannot, of course, be that you become an absolute isolated island and simply have nothing to do with the others anymore. More of this essay, the essay has the same title as the book 'Freedom and Society.' Rudolf Steiner continues immediately after formulating the fundamental sociological law: 'Now it is a matter of drawing from these historical facts the conclusions: which form of the state and of society can be the only one worth striving for, if all social development amounts to a process of individualization?'

I have... but that can block us; that can be a preconception. If you take the fundamental sociological law seriously, it does have a certain rather surprising consequence. All right, you've had enough time to think. I shall not expose you by requiring you to answer publicly. Here's how Rudolf Steiner continues: 'The answer cannot be all that difficult. The state and the society that see themselves as an end unto themselves must strive for rulership over the individual. However this rulership is exerted, whether in an absolutist, a constitutional, or a republican manner... no longer emphasize its principle of rulership. It will set itself up in such a way that the single person comes to count in the biggest possible manner. Its ideal will be the absence of rulership.' If you know a little bit of Greek, you could translate 'absence of rulership' into a technical term... its ideal will be the absence of rulership. It will be a community that wants nothing for itself, everything for the single person. If one wants to speak in the sense of a way of thinking that moves in this direction, then one can only fight against everything that today tends toward a socialization of societal institutions. Ludwig Stein does not do that... compromise between socialism and individualism, between communism and anarchism. End quote.

All right, so now he said it: anarchism. That's a little bit of a jolt, because normally people think of exploding bridges and things when they talk about anarchy and anarchists. Back then, the assassination of the Empress of Austria was all in the news; those people called themselves anarchists. After Rudolf Steiner published this... anarchism. John Henry Mackay, a Scotsman living in Germany, who had read the magazine and wrote in to Rudolf Steiner. He already knew Rudolf Steiner a little bit because he had been enthusiastic about the book 'The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,' which is also all about ethical individualism. And so they had already had some contact on the occasion of the publication of that book, which was almost five years prior. Mackay was the rediscoverer and editor of the individualist Max Stirner. Max Stirner... nowadays Mackay is, alas, famous for something entirely different. That was after his acquaintance with Rudolf Steiner and after the death of Rudolf Steiner that he came out in favor of pederasty, but that is a whole different topic. Mackay was connected in turn with Benjamin Tucker, the editor of the magazine 'Liberty,' the journal 'Liberty' in New York City. Tucker published the recommendation of Mackay, many articles by Rudolf Steiner in this early libertarian journal 'Liberty.' Those are some of the first English translations, maybe the first English translation of Rudolf Steiner's works, at all.

All right, so anarchism is a more extreme version of that, and taken to the extreme would mean there's no government whatsoever. Rudolf Steiner was not in favor of abolishing the government altogether. He says it has its necessity, but the ideal must be to shrink it as much as possible, in keeping with each stage of our evolution. So Mackay writes into the editor. Maybe I'll even just read you parts of that; the whole thing would be too long, but because it's not that often quoted, I think it's good to hear a little bit of this. 'Dear... more urgently than ever in the last years the request of my friends reaches...' All right, Mackay goes on and on, makes some advertisements for his own book 'The Anarchists,' for Tucker's journal, and finally he gets the point and says, 'I noticed you said the word anarchism in your article there. How do you stand toward that?' This question is more in the background than in the foreground, but still he takes a stand, and he encourages Rudolf Steiner to take a stand. End of September, September 30th: 'Dear... we've met each other on the basis of the philosophy of spiritual activity.' I'm just summarizing here. Okay, here we go: 'Hitherto, I have always avoided using even the term individualist anarchism or theoretical anarchism for my worldview, for I put very little stock in such designations. If one states one's views clearly and positively in one's writings, what is then the need of also designating these views with a convenient word? ... speak my thoughts. I characterize my...'

Hi Daniel, Sebastian here. How are you? Hi Sebastian. I just wanted to ask you about the right sphere infringement on the name of everybody according to medical reasons. I can't hear you. I was about to write sphere infringement on the name of what? Of medical reasons on the people. So taking medical decisions for people. The right sphere or the government is currently infringing on the medical questions which are rightly part of the spiritual cultural life. Yeah, and that seems to be like the big elephant in the room right now. How to circumvent that, how to prepare around that? What are your thoughts? Thank you.

I'm sorry, I don't know how, because it's not a small thing and it's also not a new thing. These... government should take care of everything, and above all should take care of problems. It's really a long-term educational necessity, this question of the attitude of taking responsibility for our own problems. Because when you overthrow any kind of encroaching government gestures, the problem is still there in the world, and then the question is how can we as free adults deal with these things in a practical and real way.

Yeah, but this is the first time on a global scale that has been unanimously taken up by the entire world without any opposition. It's quite a... I'm sorry that I am not quite sure of the most important steps, but I'm sure they must begin with the formation of consciousness. This much I can say. Simply storming the barricades may be necessary sometimes, but it will never be sufficient.

In our actions in the outer world. Any inner work always has an effect, and that's one of the fundamental attitudes cultivated in the basic book about how to attain knowledge of the higher worlds. The realization that our thoughts and feelings are realities, and they do have their effect even if outwardly we achieve no success. The news media always convey the message, never really outspoken but between the lines, that just doesn't show up in such a sensational way and doesn't make it to the headlines. Even feeble efforts at inner work are of great significance to the whole cosmos. All right, that's perhaps too easy an answer, and how to find our way into the actual present situation and do deeds in outer life, that's a difficult one. It calls for moral fantasy and may vary from region to region. I don't pretend to be the expert in that. But any inner work that strengthens our awareness, that arises out of the whole sphere of the philosophy of spiritual activity, any inner work that arises out of the awareness of one's own higher self and one's own lower self, is going to make us more mature in the sense in which I've tried to say it today. Responding with frustration and anger is merely a sign that we indeed are not mature and actually do need the government to tell us what to do, or some kind of authority.

Fear, because that's a universal fluid right now. An aura of fear is surrounding humanity, and that applies to the people who are afraid of the virus and to the people who are afraid of the vaccinations, and to the people who are afraid of losing their human rights, and so on and so on. So I think the work with the soul calendar and the work with the philosophy of spiritual activity, it doesn't have to be those exact books and those exact verses, but anything that comes out of that... We live in a time when it is an unparalleled opportunity to practice the second half of the maxim of free people: letting live in the understanding of the other person's will. To let live not merely begrudgingly, but in the understanding of the other person's will. That can be a daily practice. And then we meet each other differently. I mean, that would be my path. I would try to start with individual encounters and not go to the streets and suppose that by waving a flag we can change things.

Right. Philosophy of spiritual freeness, this philosophy of inner activity. The one thing is the schools can do as they wish. I actually support that. And if all of the faculty decide these injections are just what we need, and that's totally necessary and we've got to do it, they should make that clear and they should be that kind of school. That's why there are other schools for people who might want to do it differently. It's easier said than done, but as far as that goes, we can say... The real thing yet. That's the adolescent illusion of freedom. 'My mother no longer tells me that I have to get up in the morning or clean my room.' That doesn't mean you're actually free in an inner sense. So the second question and the more important is: what does this school do once it has the permission to do whatever it wants? And this is where Rudolf Steiner spent most of his effort, trying to help the teachers to find a new view of what a human being is, so that they could educate the children differently. That's what I suppose is missing in the cases that you say. If there's not an awareness of these issues that you talk about, not a sufficient awareness, or not a... To be self-determining, that they really take into the bargain the possibility that we'll go off and do some mighty stupid things. And so far we've been doing that a lot, quite a lot. I know I have. It's a topic that comes up quite poignantly in the conversation with the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. The Grand Inquisitor actually proves, refutes Christ, quite logically too, and says, 'You shouldn't have given them that freedom. They're just ruining stuff. You should tell them what to do and make it right.' Yeah, okay, so that's the consequence. Otherwise we have to allow all kinds of stuff nowadays and try to let live in the understanding of the other person's will, painful though that often is. Because the alternative, if I take it to the extreme, is: I know better than those schools, and I'm going to go over there and tell them how they should be running their schools. But that cannot really be the ultimate goal of evolution either.

Yes, look at the process of what is happening. The strongest is if a person can face reality, even the painful parts of reality. But with a young person, and able to speak to a young person, the ideal should be helping the young person to endure it. Because there's so much pain and ugliness in the world, and some of the young people are astonishingly tender in their souls. Even the ones who put bolts through their noses and tattoo themselves and shave off their hair and make themselves ugly are sometimes very, very tender in their souls. I mean, they're different types of young people of course, but a lot of them are far more innocent and delicate than one might suppose. And it hurts me too to look at that, whatever the example may be. But to show, if you can show the young person a way of looking at it that does not merely involve condemning and does not involve fleeing. In other words, the question to parents and educators is always essentially a question of self-education. That's another thing that Rudolf Steiner said more than once. If I can find a way to look at this part of the painful reality of our present world, then I can help. If I myself am freaked out by all of the wrongs in the world, then I have to deal with that first before I can help other people.

No, the indirect approach is the strongest. Strength and the good. You don't have to go and talk about the most difficult issues all the time and put them in the center of your consciousness. You do have to look at experiences and abilities, and above all activities. Young people want to do something good, they don't just want to hear about it. And the more they're active, the more they grow strong. And that works indirectly, preparing them to meet all of the unpleasant things which are going to come inevitably in one form or another anyway.

Of course. Rudolf Steiner's main guideline, and he always said you have to look at the actual details of real life of course, but the main guideline that he offered was maintaining the equality of human rights. That would be something which the government can and must do. And to deal with pickpockets, of course the root of the problem is again a cultural spiritual problem: how are these people brought up and educated, and what happened to them in their lives? But when they're actually in the act of stealing someone's purse, coercion can be necessary. You might have to stop the guy and grab him, or in the extreme case lock him up or something. But that's always to be dispensed with great caution, because well, I think we can all feel that.

The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is always in the foreground, but that book that you just mentioned, Road to Self-Knowledge, that's great. That belongs to the whole group of books about the inner path of self-development. Yeah, it's hard to choose just one. Yeah, I mean those eight meditations, I can't get through the first one. Yeah. Thank you, Daniel. Mr. Head. I'm going to call you Ted now if you call me Daniel.