I agree that God can and will turn evil deeds into good fruit in time, I cannot accept “materialism is just a phase humanity needs” or “not consider materialism bad” because that logic destroy...
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Here's a more thourogh explanation of what I meant with my initial comment. We can see many signs of a lack of soul (in architecture, music, art, etc.) but I believe that many people are starting to reconnect with our spiritual dimensions again, and with God.
According to Steiner (In my understanding) humanity needed to "forget" their spiritual dimension and dive into materialism in order to be able to develop free will, and ultimately regain spiritual widsom/connection to god through free will.
The goal of humanity is to become spirits of love and freedom. The task now is to re-learn spiritual science, and combine it with the new insights we got from natural science. If we're able to unite these two, we will have come further than in previous times when humanity had great wisdom but lacked free will. I tried to explain it with my own words but better to go straight to the source, here's a link to one of Steiners (many) lectures on this topic if you're interested;
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/SOL2024/19240625p02.html
Excerpt:
"... For this, higher beings had to take care of them when humans still had this soft brain. And the consequence of this was that people in those days had no freedom, had no free will. These people had great wisdom, but no free will at all. But in human evolution, free will gradually emerges. For this, the bones and the brain must harden. But with this hardening, the old knowledge takes its downfall. We would not have become free human beings if we had not become stubborn, hard-skulled, and had skulls with hard brains. But we owe our freedom to that. And so the downfall of the old knowledge comes with freedom. That's it. Is it understandable?
(Answer: Yes) It comes with freedom!
But now, while humans have gained freedom on the one hand, they have lost the old knowledge and fallen prey to materialism. But materialism is not the truth. Therefore, we must come to spiritual knowledge again, even though we have a denser brain today than primitive people did. We can only do this through anthroposophical spiritual science, which comes to knowledge that is independent of the body, that is recognized by the soul alone.
The ancient people had their knowledge because their brain was softer, that is, more similar to the soul; and we have our materialism because our brain has become hard and no longer absorbs the soul. Now we have to gain spiritual knowledge with the soul alone, which is not absorbed by the brain. This is what spiritual science does. One comes back to spiritual knowledge. But we are now living in the age in which humanity has bought its freedom through materialism. Therefore, one cannot say that materialism, even if it is untrue, is something bad.
Materialism, if it is not exaggerated, is not bad, but through materialism, humanity has come to know a great deal that it did not know before. That is it."
According to Steiner (In my understanding) humanity needed to "forget" their spiritual dimension and dive into materialism in order to be able to develop free will, and ultimately regain spiritual widsom/connection to god through free will.
The goal of humanity is to become spirits of love and freedom. The task now is to re-learn spiritual science, and combine it with the new insights we got from natural science. If we're able to unite these two, we will have come further than in previous times when humanity had great wisdom but lacked free will. I tried to explain it with my own words but better to go straight to the source, here's a link to one of Steiners (many) lectures on this topic if you're interested;
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA353/English/SOL2024/19240625p02.html
Excerpt:
"... For this, higher beings had to take care of them when humans still had this soft brain. And the consequence of this was that people in those days had no freedom, had no free will. These people had great wisdom, but no free will at all. But in human evolution, free will gradually emerges. For this, the bones and the brain must harden. But with this hardening, the old knowledge takes its downfall. We would not have become free human beings if we had not become stubborn, hard-skulled, and had skulls with hard brains. But we owe our freedom to that. And so the downfall of the old knowledge comes with freedom. That's it. Is it understandable?
(Answer: Yes) It comes with freedom!
But now, while humans have gained freedom on the one hand, they have lost the old knowledge and fallen prey to materialism. But materialism is not the truth. Therefore, we must come to spiritual knowledge again, even though we have a denser brain today than primitive people did. We can only do this through anthroposophical spiritual science, which comes to knowledge that is independent of the body, that is recognized by the soul alone.
The ancient people had their knowledge because their brain was softer, that is, more similar to the soul; and we have our materialism because our brain has become hard and no longer absorbs the soul. Now we have to gain spiritual knowledge with the soul alone, which is not absorbed by the brain. This is what spiritual science does. One comes back to spiritual knowledge. But we are now living in the age in which humanity has bought its freedom through materialism. Therefore, one cannot say that materialism, even if it is untrue, is something bad.
Materialism, if it is not exaggerated, is not bad, but through materialism, humanity has come to know a great deal that it did not know before. That is it."
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