Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

shelf of fix-it and self-help books. Self-sufficiency is available for everyone.You can quick order “fast food” for every meal to save time in the rush to domore, and you may never have to leave your car to bank, eat, see a movie, oreven, in California, attend drive-in church services. There is an atmosphereof restlessness, a need to be entertained, and a nervous mobility. A modernculture jogs on, lacking spiritual health and moral constraints.The June 8, 1997, edition of the New York Times Magazine was a specialissue on America, “How the world sees us.” Over a dozen authors fromaround the globe were asked to contribute. Josef Joffe noted that America’swealth comes from production and from relentless adaptation and innovation.“If steel falters, then they shift to microchips, if the Japanese grab thecamera market, then Hollywood will flood the world with movies. TheUnited States is a gambler that makes a stake at every table that matters—and does so with more chips than anyone else.”America’s destiny is connected with the ultimate mastery of force.In our modern world, America experiences the destiny of force (in terms ofeconomic, military, and technological force) as her own.This force was born from conquering the aggressive hardness of thiscontinent’s geography. The land has imbued the people who live on it withcertain qualities; North America’s nature and its landscape have nothing soft,inviting, comfortable, but rather offer constant resistance. The land fostersa pioneer spirit, inspiring such characteristics in human beings as courage,tenacity, perseverance, and self-reliance, but also calls forth recklessness,thoughtlessness, and ruthlessness.Force requires the strengthening of the “will.” The will of NorthAmericans can be experienced through the many scientific discoveriesmade on this continent. This is seen most strikingly through the history ofelectricity and its technical application. The pioneering work of BenjaminFranklin, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison are outstanding examples.Nikola Tesla, for example, as a child in Croatia in 1868, was showna postcard with a picture of Niagara Falls on it. He is reported to have saidthat he would harness those falls some day, a prediction that he later fulfilledby selling the patent rights to his system of alternating current dynamos,transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse in 1885, after emigratingto America in 1884. Before coming to America, he developed his first workingmodel of the induction motor, the motor which made his AC powersystem superior to Edison’s DC system. Tesla brought forth his original ideasin Middle Europe. He then produced his first working model in WesternEurope, and finally had to come to America to bring his ideas into fruition.42