Preparing a Space
When we are young we seek out other young people. Part of the reason for this is that we have a unique connection with the questions of life that, in ways, belong to youth. We have a connection with the spirit, with the creativity that flows through all things and beings, that we can sense in other young people as well, and they in us. Life is a drama, not only an interpersonal drama; something much more. We are not sure older people can hear it. Something is impossible to say properly, but every young person can hear it between the words when they listen with their hearts. The space between the words calls out: wake up! Not only to reality but to responsibility, to the good! Ideals sit us up straight and make our hearts into bells, ringing energy through our limbs. The urgent optimism in young idealism is filled with divinations of wisdom and love, of conscience, passion, and connection. Our hearts are exposed to these ideals through some sweet vulnerability. The heart does not only ring, it grows wings, dismissing the ribs and chest while taking flight into the world. The suffering of the world, the possibilities of the world, they are our own somehow. Our lives will make a difference, and surely together so much can be accomplished!
The young individuals who organized the International Students' Conference of 2024 chose the title: "Taking Heart – Finding our way together". The title, and the event, expressed so much of the particularity of the spirituality of young adulthood. Over 700 participants gathered at the Goetheanum to explore regenerative agriculture, social approaches to economics, and understandings of love. A red thread through the conference was one of the greatest stories of peace and transformation, which was invoked through a large, participatory pageant performance in the city of Basel.[1] Young people gathered, keenly aware of the precariousness of the world situation as well as the goodness, beauty, and truth they recognized in one another, regardless of where they called home on the planet.
The spiritual situation of being young necessarily involves our hearts being peculiarly exposed to the world. Suffering and intimations of evil can seem unbearably close at times. The tension between ideals and what appears as senseless suffering can daze and paralyze. The scale of the world’s challenges can rise up like a giant, insurmountable mountain, crushing what, only moments before, seemed to be our most holy purposes in life.
In the last two years, many within the Section have turned their hearts, projects, and gatherings toward social and political challenges, drawing inspiration from Rudolf Steiner’s social and economic theory. Just last year an international youth conference was hosted in Georgia called “Principles of Healthy Social Life”[2] and now the country’s constitution and future are at stake. For weeks thousands have been gathering every night in different cities in Georgia, especially Tbilisi, contesting the legitimacy of the government. Tension is growing, and the outcome is uncertain. Their government’s criticisms of the West echo Russia’s. A friend described her experience on the streets saying, “the violence is bigger and more brutal than ever, and justice nowhere". Masked individuals attack journalists and civilians until they lose consciousness. As they lose themselves in the blackness of concussions, they may also feel the powerful undertow of a Russian style authoritarianism drawing their whole country into an oblivion. Facing this darkness many understandably look to the West, not only to the EU, but to the USA, as a symbol of individual rights and dignity, rights to free assembly, speech, press, and democratic representation. Many of us, around the world, anxiously look on and accompany our friends in this decisive moment in Georgia.
More recently, this past September, young people collaborated with the World Goetheanum Association to deepen and develop an understanding of socially oriented, cooperative economics.[3] Since then Brian Thompson, the top manager of a health insurance company, was murdered in the USA. It appears to have been a targeted killing, motivated by the injustices of the for-profit structure of health care and health insurance. A widespread and organic wave of sympathy arose toward the young man who, it appears, committed the murder. Some wonder how it is different to end a person’s life by denying them care they have a right to out of an interest in financial gain, as opposed to murdering them with a handgun. These frustrations can easily mislead us. We can sense this when we consider that many in the USA are connected with savings, pension funds, university endowments, life, car, or property insurance policies. This is a massive amount of capital entrusted to financial managers to create profits, without necessarily asking how these profits are made. This is a major challenge in the country, a weakness of imagination that cannot see how the perpetual focus on profits veils the suffering we create in their pursuit. The notion of an evil industry manager obscures interconnections in which most people are implicated on some level. In the hatred and cynicism that swirls around unjust insurance practices and a murder the collective burden of the society of the West, with its anti-social focus on competition, individualism, and a crude variety of capitalism, is obscured. As if in a blizzard or snowstorm, striking out in the West with limited vision, everyone is vulnerable to friendly fire. We think we see the enemy, but we cannot see far, and we attack our own. We celebrate our victory even though we cannot identify the body. It is lost in the quickly falling snow. If we could, we would find our brother or sister.
How understandable that in moments we can feel that a cold blizzard is blowing from the West. How easily it can appear that at moments we feel darkness spreading from the East. In such moments we feel how important even small spaces are where new ideas and ideals can grow. In such moments we can feel the need to make a windbreak and small fire to foster a vision of good will and a cooperative economy. We can feel how important it is to try to envision a world where nations and states are separated, where the competition in culture might no longer be fought with arms.[4] We might feel this particularly strongly today when we witness the unspeakable suffering of those in Palestine (not only the millions of its citizens but all hostages and prisoners of war). It can painfully confront us in our own likeness (this is not only meant metaphorically, practically all the weapons involved are supplied by the USA and its allies).
We can feel this as an almost unbearable burden. It can rise up and become a picture of social and spiritual violence that implicates almost everyone through our ideas, social imaginations and actions. Our hearts can be weighed down terribly by this. We can come to feel that a future worthy of the human being cannot be found in what exists in the East or West.
And in such moments, we will be able to value the humble work from the past years, and we can feel how the ideas can warm our hearts, chasing out the creeping cold of anxiety and cynicism. We can feel how important it is to create a small shelter in the dark and cold of the Palestine of our hearts and spirit, lest the unspeakable that is happening in Palestine currently not only continue but prove prophetic on a wider scale. In such moments, protecting and affirming any modest success our hospitality for new ideas allows, and nurturing these ideas, we might carry both warmth and light, capable of inspiring decisive action, toward a worthy future.
Nathaniel Williams
December 2024, the Goetheanum
[1] https://goetheanum.ch/en/news/thinking-should-replace-killing
[2] https://dasgoetheanum.com/en/georgia-a-center-of-the-world/
[3] Information about the World Goetheanum Association’s members Forum from this year can be found here: https://www.worldgoetheanum.org/en/wgf-2024/wgf-2024-review
[4] https://goetheanum.ch/en/news/the-peace-potential-in-separating-nations-from-state