the resurrection, so that our gifts of sacrifice may truly serve the world. May our garden contain both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. May those on this earth 33 years from now be able to look back and say: this was possible, here in America, because of those, yet few in number, who rededicated themselves to this work back in 2012 so that “good would become.” With this wish in my heart, I welcome you to the start of our conference tonight.
Beyond Our Borders A presentation by Jonathan Stedall at the anthroposophical conference in Ann Arbor, USA, August 10th 2012 The Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, was asked once where he would want to be at the end of the world. His reply was ‘England’. Why England? ‘Because England,’ he said, ‘is always fifty years behind the times!’ I’m going to tell you why I don’t think this is always the case. But firstly, for me, Shaw’s remark prompts the question: What is the true nature of the times we live in? What’s really going on? On the surface it seems that economics—money— is what increasingly dominates the headlines. We are constantly encouraged to consume more, to be more productive. Yet on the other hand a different set of experts warn us that we are raping the planet in the process, and that this rush to get richer materially—as rich as America—is unsustainable. Like all of you, however, I am interested in what is really trying to happen behind the scenes—to evolve—as we plough on into the 21st century, driven at one level it seems by those two demons ‘fear’ and ‘greed’ that haunt not only the Stock Market but also the minds of ordinary men and women. Wealth and power, underpinned by a technology that has its own hidden and sinister agenda. Is this the true signature of the times we live in, or is there another scenario at work that points to a saner future?
40 •
being human
England—and Great Britain altogether—has long been delegated in the ‘tough guy’ stakes. We are no longer a world power, either economically or militarily—nor therefore politically. And in all these areas even America is now being ‘threatened,’ as they say, by China and other emerging economies. But is this such a tragedy? Does it have to be a humiliation? Or could it be an opportunity and a challenge to discover new tasks for the future, rather than mourning past glories—tasks related to this other scenario that I mentioned? You have chosen as a theme for this conference: ‘Meeting our spiritual destinies in America.’ As an Englishman I cannot speak for America, but what I am going to try and convey about England’s tasks and destiny in this respect—and why I think that England is in some respects ‘fifty years ahead of the times’—also applies to aspects of America that I have experienced and admired over the years. There’s a collection of essays and talks by the German scholar, Walter Johannes Stein, collected together under the title The Psychology of the British. Stein was a teacher at the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, and made his home in Britain for the last twenty years of his life. Although well aware of our shortcomings, he was very appreciative of what lives in the English folk soul. And he concludes his final essay by suggesting that one of the main tasks of the English in the future —a task that has nothing to do with Empire, or power in the economic or military sense, is to help ‘to make things human.’ And for me, if I had to sum up the greatest danger facing us today, it is the subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—erosion of our humanity. Already in the 19th century here in America, Emerson foresaw that danger and coined the phrase ‘self reliance’—not the self reliance that encourages and even justifies a culture of ‘every man for himself,’ but rather as a reminder of what is the potential in all of us to become what Steiner—some forty years later—described as ‘a selfless self.’ In this respect I have sometimes thought that we shouldn’t speak of ourselves as ‘human beings,’ but rather as ‘human becomings.’ It is in this spirit of trying to make things
human that I have tried to create my film about Rudolf Steiner’s life and legacy. From the outset I have, of course, been very aware of the difficulty of doing justice to such an enormously important subject; aware, too, of the danger of superficiality, and of conveying misleading and even inaccurate statements, as well as inadequate examples of anthroposophy in action. In fact I did make one small mistake in the original version of the film that I have since corrected. At the time I was comforted by a friend who told me about a tradition in Persian carpet-making whereby there is always a deliberate mistake woven into each new carpet—because only God can be perfect. Despite the correction, my film is nevertheless still far from perfect; but it is full of examples of people trying—each in their own way—to make things human, whether in classrooms, on farms—indeed in every area of human activity and culture. For me humour is an essential ingredient in this task of creating a world in which our true humanity can unfold. And of particular importance, I feel, is our ability and willingness to laugh at what we hold most dear. Here in America you’ve had many such geniuses to help us do just that—Mark Twain being perhaps the greatest. In England in recent years there’s been Monty Python, and now—though not to everyone’s taste—Sacha Baron Cohen, most recently as the Dictator. Mr. Bean, in the person of Rowan Atkinson, made a memorable and hilarious contribution to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in London. The whole event may not have been as spectacular as the ceremony in Beijing four years ago, but it was full of humanity and eccentricity. Humour, together with a certain irreverence towards icons, helps us, I believe, to keep a sense of proportion—a sense of our own inadequacies and shortcomings when confronting the great mysteries of life. Fantasy, as well as humour, is a gift that the British seem to have in profusion—enriched, I sense, by the Celtic stream in our make-up. And fantasy is, and will be, a powerful and important weapon in the battle against Ahriman’s dry, logical and clinical bias. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland,