I am sitting wonderfully in the autumn sun between two rain showers and reflect on the past week, when there were elections in the Netherlands. They brought a great surprise, and yes, that of course then leads to the question: how can it be that there comes a result that stands so far from the polls and is such a great surprise to everyone? What has actually happened that caused things to change so much in the Dutch population in such a short time? And it is not so much about this specific case for me, but more about a general question: how that actually works in our time.

I then remember my secondary school days in history class — at a certain moment we received a little bundle of brochures from the different political parties, and the task was to choose your favourite political party from them. Well, yes, what do you do then? You read them all, of course, you have to. And what was very clear to me was that I could not find a favourite political party among them. What could it have been? The sixties, last century, already then. So you search for something that corresponds to what you yourself experience as important for the Netherlands. And you find this here, that there, but where you have found this, what that represents is not at all what you find. There you find that; but where you find that, there is not at all to be found what you had found there that you thought positive.

So that is quite hopeless of course — you don’t really find a political party of which you can say: well, that one corresponds to what I myself find important. But yes, that of course doesn’t mean much that one person experiences it that way. And I can’t remember how it went further in the class. But with me it stayed that way. I have never, in the course of my life, had a moment when I could say: this political party now truly stands for what I myself would also wish politically, in our country, in the Netherlands. Well yes, it will probably be like that in other countries too. And yes, you then ask yourself what it actually is that makes people choose in a certain way.

Apparently that choice remains unclear until the very last moment, and the last moments are decisive for how finally that box in the voting booth is coloured in. So the last days are apparently of the greatest importance. And that was actually also the case in the previous elections, when in the end the PVV with Geert Wilders turned out to be the largest party. Which also was a surprise, that it became so large. Now it is D66 with Rob Jetten that causes a surprise. And what you then see is that in the last days before the elections, during those public debates on television — I haven’t seen them, only fragments, but I really cannot bring myself to watch them — that in those TV debates finally a winner appears as far as the debate is concerned.

And I can’t help it, but I keep thinking of football matches, even that evening after the elections. For me it doesn’t have much to do with the importance of the country, but it is more a kind of victory for this one or that one. And of course everyone draws their own conclusions from that, but I find it very difficult to watch. And the question arose in me: what is actually going on here? My answer is that the human being is leaning more and more towards that which can be perceived by the senses. Not what you read in a brochure or what you read on a website, but the whole event, the struggle of the debate. And the one who succeeds the most in saying things in such a way that they touch people’s hearts — that one wins.

That is quite worrying. Not that I want to say it is worrying that now D66 becomes the largest party — probably, it is Sunday, I am not yet sure. That is not the point, but what I find worrying is that it shows that people no longer form a judgement of their own, but allow themselves to be carried away by what publicity actually brings. And then, apart from the content of a party, it becomes above all the face of the party leader who takes part in the debates, that becomes decisive for what one does. And this is only a symptom; I have no illusion that it is only like this here. This is something that more and more is the case in all humanity — that the human being leans on what is offered, does not stand on his own thinking feet and consider what he wants and what he finds and what should be and what he can know, but tends toward what is being offered.

And of course you can also go to YouTube and look up completely different directions than the mainstream ones, but then you are also leaning on what is being said there. I try not to do that. I try to sit here and not become someone who exerts influence on the opinions of people, in terms of content. The only thing I hope is that through what I say and what I do I can awaken a bit of consciousness for the tendency that exists — that the human being gives away his own independent faculty of judgement, and that is really something very terrible when it happens.

Look, of course in the past — and I can’t help referring to the past, because I am a bit older, so I have a “past” — in the past, if you wanted to know something, you went to the encyclopaedia and looked it up there, and if it wasn’t in there, well, then you had a problem. Then you had to somehow find out. It was quite a hassle to come to know certain facts. You can hardly imagine now that you wouldn’t just pick up your phone and look up on the internet the answer to a question yourself — you can’t imagine that anymore. But that’s how it was, of course.

I also remember having read about the time of Rudolf Steiner, that there was a man who lived then, named Friedrich Eckstein, and that man was a kind of ChatGPT. He sat in a café at a table, there you could find him, and if you wanted to know something — whether it was something factual, or certain opinions or judgements or tips, or where best to turn to get donations, whatever your question was — he had the answer. How that was possible remains for me a riddle for now, but it was so, and he is a well-known figure in history of whom it is said — as a joke, of course — that the encyclopaedia came out of the bookcase at night to consult him on certain questions that were not included in the encyclopaedia.

So great was that man’s knowledge. Well, that no longer exists, but we do of course have ChatGPT, and I am actually not unhappy that we have that. Because as long as it’s about facts, it’s really very useful. And why should you waste your time — say, half an hour searching with a search engine, when you can have the answer in half a second? So that’s really not bad that it exists. But what is bad is when you don’t leave it at facts, but also begin to seek judgements in sources that are not your own. You must not lean on the judgements of another.

You must bring up the activity to have for all things in life the courage and also the will, the effort, to form your own judgement. Because it is being lost. And yes, I don’t want to appear as a conspiracy theorist, but one might think that there is a certain power at work, and that could very well be a supersensible power, or a sub-sensible one; it doesn’t have to be some outer brotherhood or something like that — but that there is a power at work that also wants it that way, that the human being gradually lays aside his independence of his own free will. Nobody says that you must do that, but you just do it, because it is much easier to lean on what others think and say, and to lean on what presents itself to you, let’s say, emotionally from the outside.

That is something quite different from asking yourself inwardly, in all things: how do I want to stand in relation to this? That takes effort — you have to collect data, you have to weigh one thing against another, and you have to have a kind of inner “measuring instrument” to feel, to experience whether something is true or not. You also have to develop that; it’s all quite a business. It is much easier simply to turn on the TV or YouTube and then watch another broadcast or a short film, and then see all those images and let your opinion be formed by what is served to you. That is what I find worrying about the course of these elections in the Netherlands — that it shows a symptom of a weakening of the faculty of judgement.

And that weakening is also supported by the fact that we are allowed to find less and less. We have freedom of expression, that’s what it’s called, but it is becoming more and more difficult to dare to express an opinion freely. As long as it lies in the stream of what is accepted, you can say anything; but if you would find something else that goes against it, that goes against certain movements that simply exist, yes, then you can get into real trouble. So the freely formed judgement is, in that sense, also made more difficult. I have often spoken in these videos about the development of thinking. I have also spoken about the necessity that we, as human beings, learn to recognise that the world as it appears to us is not the whole.

That in this world a spiritual reality is at work, which gives form and shape. And that world of spiritual reality — let’s say, the lowest level of it that we can reach immediately — is the stage of pure, willed, independent thinking. So I will talk a bit more about that in the coming time. I know that many people have no desire at all to listen to that. But well, what can one do? I see it as an absolute necessity that a call is made to humanity: Go and think without support, whatever you want to think. Do not lean on what exists, but lean on what your pure part of the heart lets you think. So far my reflection concerning last week’s elections.