Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

What does it mean to be born a Westerner? In anthroposophicalterms, it means that one chose—before birth and in accordance with the needsof one’s karma—to build a bodily instrument, a physical, etheric, and astralorganization, conditioned by specifically Western influences, an instrumentwith its particular limitations and one-sidednesses, as well as its particularstrengths. Having made the decision before birth, one then spends one’slife learning to accept and rightly use the instrument one has chosen andbuilt up for oneself, knowing that there is no other way, in this incarnation,to enter the stream of life’s experiences. It is not as disembodied spirits thatwe learn the meaning of freedom, but as fully-incarnated spiritual beingswho say “yes” to the limitations, the capacities, the one-sidedness of one’sown earthly nature. In this sense, it is not the human individuality, the ego,which is Western, European, or Asian—American, German or Japanese—butthe bodily-psychic instrument through which the individuality must, in thislife, express itself, and through which it can learn to know what it means tobe and to become human.With this in mind, let us try to characterize some aspects of what istruly Western in the world today, both as it is and as it can become, recognizingas we do so how easy it is to oversimplify, and bearing in mind as we lookat the American, in particular, that there is a Westerner in everyone today, asthere is also a latent Easterner, and a man or woman of the “middle realm.”By and large, our Westerner approaches life through his senses; hewants to “see for himself” and to know how what he sees works. It is notideas that interest him in the first place. When he meets a new person, he“sizes him up,” tries to discover “what makes him tick.” He wants to knowwhether he is “for real” and can be trusted. Only then is he prepared tolisten seriously to his ideas, and his test is: Will they work? In this sense,indeed the Westerner is a pragmatist. He observes the world and says:“Show me!” Rudolf Steiner expressed it by saying: The German has toprove everything, he must go back to first causes and explain how thingsevolved, whereas the American is satisfied merely to assert that it exists.Naive, instinctive pragmatism can never grasp the intangible, but, taken asone’s starting point and enhanced by the inner activity of the individual, itbecomes the capacity for genuine open-mindedness, for a truly childlike,but perceptive simplicity. And this simple openness—as a European friendlikes to say: “This enthusiasm unhampered by experience!”—can also givethe Westerner the predisposition toward an artistic approach to experience.The artist perceives concretely and works creatively with his material, andthe Westerner—too often superficially—also takes things as they are and265