2021 Annual General Meeting

When I presented my first lecture at the Goetheanum in 1982, using a PC (CBM80 – to which any pocket calculator today is superior), I was told afterwards that I had desecrated the Foundation Stone Auditorium. Actors later refused to rehearse in that auditorium because an accounting machine supporting the finance department was housed in the rooms behind it.

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Decades later an electronic address system was introduced. The tide had turned. Now many felt disadvantaged for not being able to work on a PC.

Needing to be noticed

Decades later again, Justus Wittich asked me if I was prepared to act as a ‘members’ advocate’ at the 2021 AGM, making sure that the (first ever) online ballot was done correctly. Entering the Schreinerei auditorium today, I find myself in a well-equipped video studio and realize that I have to be advocate for yet another group: the helpful beings that ensure the ‘100 percent electronic AGM’, as Ueli Hurter designates it, will not end in a technical disaster.

I would like to elaborate on this advocacy but feel this would be inappropriate given that the members present are interested in the voting results and not in my deliberations on the subsensory world. But these spirits know full well: sine me nihil! (nothing’s happening without me).

I therefore talk briefly online about my work, which has always involved machines, electronics and computers, mentioning that these beings have quite an intrusive need to be noticed by us humans – usually through hindrances, shenanigans, malfunctioning devices, the disappearing of small but essential parts – in short, a number of minor, but sometimes really expensive ‘annoyances’.

Without humans the stuff of the devil

What I do not relate in impressive detail because there is no time is something I only fully realize now: they are not simply vain (as in wanting to be constantly noticed) but, because they arise from human achievements (machines, electronics, computer), their thriving depends on their (at least temporary) presence in our consciousness. For, if they are cut off from us they are forced to mutate into the devil’s work that some think the world of technology is.

The fact that this ‘100 percent electronic AGM’ runs smoothly – never before have we put ourselves so fully at the mercy of technology – may remind us that these beings are willing to serve us, but they can only do that if we acknowledge them in our consciousness. Their work would be grim if we rejected them.

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