Demons and technology

It has to be like this, that we allow demons to stream into everything and allow ourselves to the surrounded by them. It is part of the evolution of mankind. We have to acknowledge the simple necessity for this and understand the real impulse of spiritual science. And so we shall not sing the praises of people who say it is necessary, as far as possible, to protect oneself from the demons and to shun civilization and that we should set up a colony as far away as possible in the wilderness to save us from having anything to do with these demonic Ahrimanic elementals. That has never been the tenor of my words. I have always said that we must entirely accept what comes to us out of the necessity of evolution, that we must not let ourselves be induced to flee from the world. We need to take heed, however, we need to understand, that conditions are such in our age that we are filling our environment more and more with beings of a demonic nature, that we are more and more involved with the principle that is mechanizing our civilization. -- Rudolf Steiner, 1915