What we Should See Today

We can already clearly see that the number of people who do not expect much from the conference in Washington to improve world affairs is increasing. However, we do not see the same extent to which views are forming about the reasons for this disappointment.

The world economy is under discussion at this conference. All other questions are being raised from the point of view that is given by this fact. Even if this is less transparent for some, there can be no doubt about it for the impartial. This has been discussed in articles that have appeared in this weekly magazine.

But in world affairs, different questions are under discussion than at this conference. And these questions must first be understood if one is to talk fruitfully about the ones openly raised today.

The economy can only be put in order if people can come to an understanding about their purely human relationships. And this understanding has faltered, taking the economy down with it. Wilson sensed this. That is why he gave his famous fourteen points an ethical-idealistic guise. But the inner content of these points was abstract and unrealistic. They were shadows of thoughts thrown into the wild surge of real passions and conflicting vital interests.

It is important to see from which underground this surge is driving to the surface. And every attempt to see clearly in this direction must lead to recognizing how, in our time, one cannot ask: how can one manage under the given public conditions; but rather, how should one publicly deal with the fundamental human questions in order to come to a possible understanding?

We must recognize today how the complexities of life have led the three fundamental parts of all human existence – economic activity, political and legal understanding, and the cultivation of spiritual life – to conflict with each other. Wherever an economic plan is devised or implemented, it fails because of the political and legal sensitivities or the spiritual interests of those affected by it. Where political decisions are made, they collide with economic impossibilities and emotional disturbances.

The harmonization of the economic, political, legal and spiritual conditions of the peoples: that has become the burning world question. And no conference decision that sweeps over people's heads can contribute to this harmonization if it does not touch on the fundamental question itself: In what social contexts must people live so that what they strive for in one of these three areas is compatible with the other two?

This cannot happen if the three areas do not maintain their relative independence in social life. It is simply not right in life that a possible unity can be imposed on the members from the outset; this can only develop from the independent unfolding of the members. Cooperation cannot be achieved by an abstract idea of unity or a unified will, but only through the impulse of unified human nature, which can develop freely in each individual member.

How can we ensure that, when economic decisions have to be made, only those involved in economic life are called upon to make them? But in such a way that these personalities bring with them a political, legal and spiritual state of mind from their lives that objectively supports their decisions, without destructively interfering with them? And the same must apply to the other areas of life.

Thinking along these lines is regarded as utopian. But do we not see how the judgments of people who strongly reject the accusation of utopianism prove to be utopian the moment they are to enter real life? Did not the conferences of the present have a thoroughly utopian character?

We will only see how firmly we are rooted in the reality of life when we first raise the issues mentioned above in public life in an appropriate manner. One will notice that one thereby everywhere encounters the reality of what lies in the unspoken longings of peoples and individuals. If this does not yet become visible, it is merely because the reference to it is drowned out today by the voices of those who close their eyes to the necessities of life in the present and the near future.

You cannot fruitfully negotiate the secondary if you refuse to see the primary. But for any conference on public life, the above is the primary.

There is much talk that the recovery of humanity must come from the moral side. There can be no doubt about that. But if someone is to work the field with a plough, it is of no use to tell them to do it morally. I have to teach them the art of ploughing. But the overall context of life requires that moral people stand at the ploughs. Economic life cannot be permeated with abstract ideas; but it will take on a moral shape if it is connected with a spiritual life that is freely active in itself and with a political and legal structure that corresponds to human feelings and develops relatively independently on its own ground.

The concept of the threefold social organism is based on a simple and unadorned view of life. Many people do not see this simplicity because they are numbed by the complexity of modern life and, in their stupor, prefer to content themselves with phrases that ripple on at the superficial level rather than penetrating to the simple level that touches on the primary.