The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. What Else I Have to Say to the Younger Members

Newsletter of the Youth Section of the School of Spiritual Science

[ ] Wherever the “youth movement” appears today, it reveals that it thrives on a sense of deprivation. What does the young person, who is becoming aware of their youth, “lack”? After all, there is so much one can “learn” within today’s civilization. It contains not only a wealth of knowledge, but an abundance of it.

[ ] It seems obvious to believe that this abundance confuses young people, that they cannot “understand” the content of this abundance. But experience shows that this belief is false. Young people “understand” quite well what civilization has to offer them. One can understand what can be grasped by the mind. And despite its abundance, our modern civilization can be almost entirely grasped by the mind.

[ ] As a young person begins to develop a relationship with civilization, he becomes aware that he understands it. And a true instinct tells him that this understanding, this thoughtful grasping, is also to be his future destiny. But “understanding” alone is not enough to be young. One can only be young if one experiences with one’s whole heart and soul what awaits understanding. And as a young person, one senses that one will grow old as one gradually transforms what has been experienced into what has been understood.

[ ] Today’s youth absorb from civilization something that allows them to grow old, but not something that allows them to be young. This civilization has almost nothing to offer the early years of life. One would have to be born today at the age of twenty; then one could immerse oneself in the essence of civilization.

[ ] This civilization has lost its spirit. It focuses its thoughts solely on matter. These thoughts cannot be experienced; they can only be understood. And once they have been understood, they lie unchangeable, hard as stone, in the soul. They are already fully mature at the moment of their creation; therefore, they cannot grow. But a young person must grow; and he wants what he takes into his soul to be able to grow with him.

[ ] A true spiritual science can reveal itself only in thought. Yet these thoughts are tangible and can be experienced; no one can absorb them to a greater degree of maturity than they themselves possess. But they are akin to the essence of the human being. They grow and mature with the individual. If, as an eighteen-year-old, someone presents me with thoughts derived from the material world, I absorb them just as I would if I were forty or fifty years old. If someone allows me to experience thoughts that spring from the spirit through his own human development, he may be seventy years old; yet if I myself am only eighteen, these thoughts harmoniously unite with my eighteen-year-old state of soul and grow along with me as I myself grow.

[ ] The materialistic way of thinking and worldview demands that young people fill themselves inwardly with “the old.” Young people, however, want to experience their youth. That is why “experiencing old age” becomes a deprivation for them. The Youth Section at the Goetheanum wishes to provide young people with a living insight through which they can actively embrace their youth within themselves. Today’s civilization lacks the ideas necessary to experience “youth.” A true spiritual science will provide such ideas.

[ ] When older people today hear young people speak, they often get the feeling: Oh, how old-fashioned the words that come from the mouths of the young sound! But these are the words that young people find among the “old” today. They take them in, but they do not make them their own. In trying to live them out, they feel inauthentic. They speak words that can hold no truth within them; and they carry their own truth within themselves without being able to reveal it even to themselves. It chokes them; it becomes a nightmare arising from within.

[ ] Young people want freedom to breathe in a vibrant spiritual life, so that the oppressive burden may disappear. They want to awaken to a healthy spiritual outlook, so that their consciousness may be filled with the experience of youth.

[ ] Young people want to live fully in their youth; yet the ideas of materialistic civilization allow them only to dream of it. But one can only dream when one’s consciousness has been dulled. Thus, the consciousness of youth must wander, dulled by mechanical reality. Its hammer blows and its electrical waves crash into their dreams. But they cannot bring about awakening. For they are not human; they are superhuman.

[ ] The humanities can be for souls that wish to awaken. They do not merely seek to impart knowledge to people, but to bring them closer to life. Then they will be free to live their lives in wisdom.

[ ] People who believe themselves to be poets, but who are in fact nothing more than philistines, object: “Take away the dreams of youth, bring them to their senses, and you take away the very best of their youth.” Those who speak this way do not realize that dreams only attain their full value when they are illuminated by the light of wakefulness. Mechanistic civilization does not allow the dreams of youth to reveal themselves in their joyful radiance; rather, it wears them down even as they are forming, so that they become oppressive and burdensome.

[ ] Only through such images can we convey here what the Youth Section aims to achieve. It will not publish a “program”; it will not offer a declaration on the “nature of youth.” It will strive to bring to life what its founders themselves can experience through the hardships faced by today’s young people. This will give rise to a “youth wisdom” that can unfold anew in daily life.

[ ] Young people living at the Goetheanum expressed their desire to work within the Youth Section immediately after its announcement and have continued to do so ever since. These expressions are filled with enthusiasm. In my first appeal, I said that the Youth Section will be able to function if people understand what is meant by it. I truly believe that this enthusiasm can bring about the right kind of “understanding.” Not the kind of “understanding” I have spoken of here—the one that young people lack—but rather a different kind of understanding, one that, though designated by the same word, is in fact quite different. An understanding that comes not from the intellect, but from the whole human being.

[ ] The aspiration of the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society “can only be to feel itself surrounded by a receptive enthusiasm. Then it may hope that the life force of spiritual science will be sufficient to give this enthusiasm what it would like to carry forward. To live with young people in such a way that they can bring their youthfulness, in true humanity, to meet old age—that is what this Executive Council wishes, because it believes that in doing so it is providing precisely what young people lack and what their longing hearts desire.