This year, 100 years after the first “World Power Conference”, the World Goetheanum Association and the Youth Section of the Independent School for Spiritual Science are collaborating on a special event, an intergenerational conversation about global economic cooperation and peace. It is an event for everyone who is interested in working towards a vision of a global economy dedicated to cooperative, associative economics. In this episode Daniel Dunlop, the first World Power Conference of 1924, and the work of Walter Johannes Stein are introduced and how they relate to the upcoming event.

References:
“Working for Freedom and the Common Good” Website: https://www.worldgoetheanum.org/en/wg...
T. H. Meyer. D.N. Dunlop, A Man of Our Time: A Biography. Temple Lodge Publishing, 2014.
Rebecca Wright, Hiroki Shin, and Frank Trentmann. 2013. From World Power Conference to World Energy Council: 90 Years of Energy Cooperation, 1923-2013. London: World Energy Council.
Basel, Perseus-Verlag. 2023. “W.J. Stein: The Earth as a Basis of World Economy.” Perseus Verlag. https://perseus.ch/archive/11950.

Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations

This episode touches on the will, meditation, and the possibility of developing spiritually in a way that undermines our ability of love, responsibility and compassion in life. This is not only relevant for young people who are developing an inner practice, but also for countless others who are navigating existential inner difficulties for reasons related to experiences with psychoactive substances or even excessive media use or video gaming. These young people may feel that their difficulties are essentially spiritual challenges that beg a spiritual point of view and understanding. This episode focuses on the feeling of a need to develop a strengthened self, one of pure will, to counter challenging spiritual experiences, while overlooking the most important balancing power: love and fellowship, awareness of earthly needs of others a will for service. This leads to the picture that developing a strengthened self should always be complimented by cultivating the capacity of compassion and a clear intention of the heart, will and mind to be of service through our lives and work.

References:
Rudolf Steiner. A Way of Self-Knowledge: And the Threshold of the Spiritual World (CW 16–17). SteinerBooks, 1999

Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations

In this episode Nathaniel Williams turns toward Hari Kunzru’s novel Red Pill, published in 2020, as an image of what contemporary human experience. It depicts a journey of a writer who is driven to confront unsettling questions about life, the place of violence and human dignity while society around him is seething. To join with the world, we are given into the jaws of violence, even if it is simply with the decay of our body. To take the world into ourselves, into our consciousness, takes away its reality. Behold, the human being, and a description of contemporary experience. Such an image of the human being was characterized one hundred years ago this month in an introductory course on Anthroposophy given by Rudolf Steiner who suggests, “The human being stands … in double darkness, and the question arises: Where is the other world to which I belong?”.

References from this episode:

- Hari Kunzru. Red Pill. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2020.

- Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy and the Inner Life: An Esoteric Introduction. Rudolf Steiner Press, 2015. (Formerly Published as Anthroposophy: an Introduction).

Questions of Courage is a project of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum, in collaboration with Goetheanum TV.
To support the Youth Section Global Access Fund, please visit: https://www.goetheanum.org/en/youth-donations