Acting out of individual insight

Dear Members,for a year now we, as humanity and as individuals, have been living with the Coronavirus in a new kind of global crisis. Everything we were used to has been called into question. Can our own ‘inner compass’ give us orientation in such a time of trial?

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Many people are active in the world out of anthroposophical impulses: in the frontline of Covid-19 medical care, in childcare and education, in healthy food production and in many other fields – and of course also in striving to acquire new insights regarding current developments, and resulting from this, in the one or other protest movement. The ability for initiative and commitment are, after all, highly desirable human qualities.

Critical media resonance

It is interesting, in my view, how such increased and, in each case, individual social activity has very quickly led to a critical media resonance, in several countries even. The British Guardian newspaper mocked the exemplary commitment to Covid-19 care at the Havelhöhe hospital in Berlin (DE). Three questions in a sociological study conducted by Basel University (CH) on the “anthroposophical-esoteric thinking” in the Coronavirus protest movement have caused a stir.

The journal Die Drei is cited by the German weekly Die Zeit in criticism of an alleged “maverick thinking with Rudolf Steiner” – or even of “sailing into barbarism” with anthroposophy, as the Swiss online platform Republik suggests. Not to mention the insinuated historical comparison with anti-Semites and anti-vaxxers (anthroposophists included) in Die Zeit (both on 4 February 2021), followed a week later by references to the “humanist Rudolf Steiner”.

We can make use of this public image conveyed by the media to question our often august self-image: where do we not act out of individually gained insight? Where are we lacking internal exchange of knowledge or come across as arrogant? Are our motives transparent and are we open to dialogue? Within the Executive Council at the Goetheanum we are working this year, and within this context, on the three motives of courage for knowledge, personal responsibility and world affirmation.

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