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Lyndon LaRouche Addresses
LaRouche Youth Movement
German Cadre School

We Are Creating a New Elite of People—
Who Have a Spirit of a Renaissance

July 6, 2008

LaRouche: Okay, I’m here.


EIRNS/Stuart Lewis
Lyndon LaRouche at a recent webcast.

Moderator: Okay, we are here 80 young people. You can start.

LaRouche: Well, you know I did something yesterday, Saturday, here, in something that usually starts about 10 o’clock to 11 o’clock in the morning, just to get a weekend discussion, which involves chiefly a few people who wander in from Leesburg, plus we have a substantial population of people working here on the science projects, plus the projects which are going on in nearby Purcellville on running other operations of the LYM; and plus, as I said, the people who wander in here, from activities associated with me, directly or indirectly.

So that we have these discussions, and I addressed the question of drama, its political significance. And the political significance lies in understanding that a tragedy is not a problem of an individual, or some special group of individuals, but rather is a cultural problem in the sense that mass behavior is controlled by what we sometimes call popular culture, or national cultures, or current [inaudible] in national cultures, where people make their decisions on what their individual behavior is, based on acting within the framework of what they think is approved behavior according to the current national culture, or regional culture. And thus, when you’re dealing with a tragedy, like Shakespeare’s tragedies, or the treatment of tragedy by Schiller, you’re dealing with a control of a population by its cultural peculiarities of that time. And all of the Shakespeare tragedies, as tragedies are based on that.

Denmark did not go down in Hamlet’s time, because Hamlet made a mistake. Hamlet went down, because Denmark at the time was a mistake. That is, the culture of the country was a mistake! You take the same thing with Shakespeare’s Lear or Macbeth, the Celtic stories. And then you take the Roman stories—always the same thing. Shakespeare is conscious that a population is not the sum total of individual actions, but that there is a cultural unity of a kind which is imposed upon the population, so the population acts as the personality of its culture dictates. And very few people in the culture violate that.

Now this means that when the culture itself is on a trajectory toward doom, that most leading individuals in that society will make decisions which are agreeable to that culture, which is the cause of the problem. So that a true tragedy, when presented competently on stage, is not about a couple of individuals making mistakes: It is about the mistake of the culture, the culture as a whole. It is the culture, which, in this manner I’ve described, controls behavior.

You could look at what you’re dealing with on the streets of Germany, for example: Exactly that. You’re running into a cultural malaise, which is largely controlling the population. And what is difficult for you to do, as here, is to find an appropriate action which goes against the culture. The opportunist will say, “you have to adapt to the culture,” and therefore, the person who adapts to the culture, is a tragic figure. Because in the time that the culture itself is careening society toward destruction, the typical citizen accepts that, and makes decisions which contributes to this careening process. For example, mass voting patterns, where people vote, actually, en masse against their own best interests. And they do it with a certain kind of fervor in this process.

So my biggest problem in politics, in dealing with people, and our people inclusively, is the tendency to try to assume that our object is to be popular, popular in the sense that we have to find the secret of how to adapt to the prevailing choices, or tendencies for choice among the population. We have to adapt to the population. Here you are, in European nations. All European nations are more or less a mess, they’re more or less a mistake. They’re in a mess, because they have been committing mistakes, not as individual mistakes, but they habitually make mistakes. They always make the wrong choice: a choice which is consistent with the directive given by the present trend in culture.

So people are generally opportunist in that respect. So they make choices, “I want to be popular. I’m right, I’m going to be popular.” My approach is exactly the opposite. Society’s a mess because the people are a mess, and therefore, you have to shake it up, you have to violate the rules, and get back to reason. And so, the idea that human reason should govern the individual’s behavior, is not an accepted policy in today’s societies: not in Europe, as I know Europe, and not in the United States, nor in South America, nor Central America.

Reason is not the governing principle of human behavior.

The capacity to reason exists. But reason is always expressed in history, as a violation of the apparent current rules.

Take the case of the Jeanne d’Arc image: Jeanne d’Arc went against the popular opinion of her time. The popular opinion was, as expressed by the King and his circles, and by the Normans [Burgundians?], was expressed by an adaptation. “Accept reality, we’ve been defeated. Accept it.” And she said, “No. No.” They said, “We’re going to burn you alive, we’re going to bake you.” And they did. What happened? Her cause immediate caused a change in the mood of the ongoing councils within the Catholic Church, and this mood grew until her general exoneration by the Church occurred. And the effect of that was seen in the case of Louis XI, the King of France, who created the first actual modern nation-state, and the first successful modern economy; who was then imitated by Henry VII, who was influenced by the model of Louis XI, admired him very much.

That all history is made by heroes: The definition of the hero is the one who “kicks the pricks.” And you can take that anyway you want to: That you always, in any crisis, the crisis is caused by current trends in popular opinion, popular cultural reactions; the solution is always found through individuals, who not only resist this, but are able in some way, directly or indirectly, to overturn it. That’s the nature of things. And we’re in such a time that if you adapt to popular opinion, if you adapt to “the way things work,” as you might say, then you’re walking into doom, willfully.

We’re now in a point, where this should become obvious. We’re actually run by a British Empire. Now, what do I mean a British Empire, mean the Queen? Well, we’ve got lots of queens. But in this case, the empire is an international banking consortium, or financial consortium, whose origin in its cultural form, is derived from the legacy of Paolo Sarpi. What Paolo Sarpi created is a variant of a Venetian system, a Venetian system of usury. But what he did, is he kicked out Aristotle, and replaced Aristotle with a lunatic from the medieval period called William of Ockham.

Now, the problem was that Aristotle created certain blocks against thinking, certain formal system, and denied the existence of creativity. Now, what you’d had, in this period, the 16th century and slightly beyond, what you had was the influence of the Renaissance, the Golden Renaissance, had introduced innovation. That is, the bringing of the creative powers, conscious creative powers of the human individual, to the fore, as a factor in shaping history, centered on the figure of Nicholas of Cusa. So, with Louis XI and Henry VII, you had a change in the direction of the policies of states in Europe, which was called the Renaissance: The idea of the modern nation-state, which is based on the idea of creativity. We saw creativity in art, creativity in technology, creativity in science, and in culture generally. So you aroused the people to participate in admiration and emulation of creativity.

Now you get 1492, with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, by the most reactionary Habsburg-related influence. This began, actually, a system of religious warfare, which continued in Europe as a dominant characteristic of European culture from 1492 to 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, Peace of Westphalia.

In this process, you had a Paolo Sarpi, he’s a typical Venetian, except he’s atypical in that time. What he recognizes is that the Aristotelean code, which is actually a slave system code, under which people are supposed to do what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did before them, that this was the block, because now you had a society which was based on scientific and cultural progress, as typified by the scientific program associated with the Renaissance. And you saw, in particular, as you see in that century, you see that the eruption of the cities, which are now a hotbed of technological innovation and culture, has changed society such that you are at an impasse: On the one hand, the greatest power lies in hands of the—from the top down—of the Venetian types of system, a reactionary system, the legacy of the Spanish Inquisition. They have a crushing power.

But there’s a resilience, because out of the cities, in particular, you have the development of what we call today a middle class, which is infected with the idea of progress, technological progress in particular. And as we know, this became also a part of a new military system, Machiavelli’s, because Machiavelli described this process: In which the cities became centers of resistance to this onrushing Inquisitional power.

And so therefore, you had Paolo Sarpi emerge, and what did he do? He emerged in the last [interruption]. So anyway, what happened as a result of this development, Paolo Sarpi introduced the idea of William of Ockham as opposed to Aristotle. And by doing so, he absorbed the instinct for innovation by allowing it, in limited degrees, but at the same time, by denying rationality, that is by denying reason, he prevented innovation from becoming science.

So you have the characteristic difference of those like Fludd, and others who attacked Kepler, typify this problem. So we had what we call Liberalism produced a fake science, a science in the sense of Newtonian approaches, or the modern positivist approach, which accepted the reality of innovation, but refused to accept the scientific principle, the scientific principle, the universal principle upon which the innovation was based.

And so therefore, we had a Liberal system, which adapted to innovation, but prevented the average citizen from knowing the spark of creativity. In other words, creativity was not a consciously organizing factor in society. It was killed by empiricism; or what we call empiricism, today, or by positivism in a worse form later.

And so, the problem has been, is, we live in a society, in Europe, in the United States, and elsewhere today, in which the principle of reason, as defined by the principle of creativity, as scientific creativity, or Classical artistic creativity is not allowed. People object to it: “No, no, no! You must have freedom from this!” And you get Babba or Abba, or other forms of insanity, instead of reason. You get existentialism, you get positivism. You get the influence of Bertrand Russell, all forms of mass insanity. And these forms of mass insanity control the political system, because the political system, insofar it’s a voting or a voluntary system, adapts to what it perceives to be the prevalent wave of popular opinion, the trends in popular opinion, or sometimes the trends in money.

So therefore, the idea of creativity by the individual, is not the basis for the composition of society, and you see that more clearly in Europe than you do in the United States. Because the U.S. Constitution creates a different kind of society, than you have in Europe, where the adaptation still to the oligarchy! I mean, who wants to hear about Kings and Queens, and Dukes and Dummies, of the type we have today? Who wants to hear about these guys? Who wants to hear of the oligarchy? These parasites! Who wants to see the rainbow press, and that kind of ideology? Why do we tolerate that in Europe! It’s destroying Europe, it’s corrupting it! And similar kinds of things. Populism is corrupting it, because the principle of reason is not allowed.

But then, you have the alternative: The only thing that’ll save us is reason, and the power of reason; and submitting to the principle of reason. That’s the only chance we have.

We’re now at a point where the civilization is about to disintegrate. We’ve been in that process, in this phase of that process, since toward the end of July 2007. Civilization is now, in its present form, is doomed. The exact date of its death and interment, is not known. But the fact that date is coming up fast, is known, or should be known.

Therefore, we have to make a revolutionary change, in the way society thinks about itself, to free it from Sarpi and what he typifies, and return to the principle which expressed by the Great Council of Florence: the affirmation of principle of human creativity, as the nature of the human being. Scientific creativity. We’re having fun with that, in the United States, presently here, especially with a certain radius of where I sit, now: That the science we’re doing is proceeding magnificently, is working in the only way it could work. We have a dozen or more, a score or more, young people right here, involved in this. The effects are radiated throughout the United States from these meetings. The documentation that’s being produced from the recording, the audio/visual recordings of these proceedings, are a precedent, a breakthrough in the progress of modern science: We’re actually doing what has not been done, in universities or elsewhere, for a very long time. We are creating a new elite, an elite of people who have a spirit of a Renaissance, which centers around things like ancient Greece, from the Pythagoreans, Plato, and on; through the modern Renaissance, which began in the early part, the middle part of the 15th century: the greatest kind of scientific revolution that has happened in a long time. And we’re generating this, by increments, out of the project we started in, largely in California, of the work on the Pythagoreans as a starting point, and going on to what we did with Kepler. And the Kepler project, which is actually the foundation of all modern science, what we treated in the Kepler project, is the foundation of all competent modern science, as was emphasized by Albert Einstein later on.

That’s where we are. We now have more and more people among us—a few, of course, limited, of course—but we have a corps of people, an expanding corps of people, who are participating in reenacting the experience of the principle of scientific creativity. And scientific creativity is not limited to physical science: It also can be found in art, in Classical art; it’s the same principle. In one case, it’s man acting upon the universe, on the physical universe, man on the universe outside man. In the other case, it’s man applying the same conception of creativity to man, to human behavior, which we call Classical culture. And these are the two things which are the same thing, in principle, but different forms of expression of the same principle of creativity of the human individual. We’re doing that.

From that standpoint, it’s easy for me to see, as I expressed this yesterday in the meeting here—this was done from a transcription from an audio recording into text, and these things are not always right because people don’t have time to clean them up: But you can get the drift of what I was saying, and what the discussion was there, from that record. And what it emphasized, what I emphasized there, is that human behavior is not a matter of a Cartesian-like interaction among individual particles called human beings, and their opinions. But that human behavior is controlled by a social principle, as typified by the tragedy, tragedy as treated as a subject, by Shakespeare and Schiller, the tragedies as such: Like the Wallenstein Trilogy, tragedy as such. And you see that the control of the opinions of mass opinion, or the assumptions of mass opinion, by a social process, is the secret of tragedy. There is no such thing as “the tragic individual” in history. There’s “the tragic culture” in history. And the secret of history, of making history, is to resist popular culture, popular habits, and popular influences. Because there is never a destruction of society, a self-destruction of society, which is not a result of popular opinion: That is, the participation of a people in accepting certain cultural standards.

And that’s what you have understand, I think, to maintain courage, in facing what threatens Europe in particular today. The nation-state system of Europe, overall, is a failure, because it’s not a true nation-state system. The old oligarchy, the heritage of the old oligarchy, still grips Europe in a way it does not grip the United States, the people of the United States. We have a different problem. But that particular form of oligarchy, of the aristocracy and its lackeys, which grips Europe, does not grip us as much today in the United States. It’s a qualitative difference.

And that’s what the problem is, in Europe: You’re dealing with an oligarchy. Now, you get breakouts. Because the oligarchical system, in Europe today, is no longer credible, to itself. You see this thing with Britain, like this case, which I addressed with this crazy Evans-Pritchard. The guy is a quasi-intelligent person by normal academic standards. But when it comes to the system, of which he’s a part, he’s controlled by it! He acts like a little, silly little boy! Spouts silly little things: “Mama, I’m going to burn down the house. I’m gonna burn down the house, Mummy. You’re not talking to me nicely, I’m going to burn down the house!” That’s what he’s like! And pretty much the whole British system is like that.

You’re having that in Germany. You’ve got it in a large section of Italy. You have a certain revolt now going on in France. In Italy. There’re peculiar aspects to this revolt in France around the Sarkozy Presidency, but it’s a revolt. It’s not a creative revolt, it’s not positive, but it’s a revolt. It’s a revolt against being pushed into a break with institutional traditions, and the effect of the long history of France, the institutional traditions in there are having an effect. Not very positive, but they’re there. It’s causing a division. You have the difference, even with the Sarkozy, you have the difference of the French policy toward the Middle East, so-called, different from Britain and from other parts of Europe. And you get the protests against that: “You guys are out of step, you’re out of step, you’re out of step!” You vote against the Lisbon Treaty: “You’re out of step, you’re out of step!” Huh? But there’s resistance.

And this resistance against going to Hell, which is about the best you’re getting in Europe today—as from Italy, certain sources in Italy, typified by Tremonti’s ability to play the role he’s playing, and what you see, also, in France—this resistance is what you start from. Because the resistance, the questioning of the suicidal direction of European culture, today, is the foundation, on which you can actually introduce the factor of creativity.

And the key thing we have to do, is what we’re doing here, particularly with the science work, which you see reflected, actually, in the difference in what we produced on the “1932” report, from what would be produced by us in the United States earlier: The qualitative difference is not just my influence on this thing, which of course is very clear throughout, but it’s the fact that the people who put this thing together, were proceeding from a standpoint of creativity, accepted the idea of creativity as an approach to history. And therefore, we produced something here, which went beyond what we did earlier on the question of the 1923 crisis of Germany. We got at the heart of the thing: And we came out with something which is, not perfect, but it’s vibrant! And it goes in the right direction.

So, we take the areas of European culture and beyond, in which there is discontent with the accepted ideology, or the prevalent ideology, the prevalent cultural legacy, of today: You take that dissent, and you build upon it, by introducing the factor of creativity. And what you do, is you change popular opinion, from the inside. You create a revolt, where people dare to make the decisions which are the alternative to tragedy.

Tragedy is caused by popular opinion, or the control of popular opinion of that time, over the key figures who are acting. The way to save a civilization which is in danger, is to overturn popular opinion. To do that, you have to bring in the factor of innovation, of creative innovation, which allows people to begin to make decisions which do not accord with the control by popular opinion.

That’s what we’re doing. And that’s what has to be affirmed. [warm applause]

Dialogue With Lyndon LaRouhe

Moderator: Thank you, Lyn. Thank you a lot. Maybe you have some time to take some questions?

LaRouche: Well, I probably do. Somebody want to throw a question at me? I’m aware that I’m in a territory, where I’m under Helga’s supervision, so be care—.

Question: Hello, Lyn? This is Xenia. I have this question, because we have a lot of scientifical work we can do, and there are a lot of people we have to organize around all these ideas. But my question would be what is the way to follow? I mean, we are a lot of times confused where to go. Because, I read Leibniz a lot, and what I figured out, that he starts from the standpoint of a God Who’s Good. And it’s, I mean, like a paradox, because I thought it was the scientifical work we want to figure out that we are living in the best of all possible worlds. But, he starts from there.

Ja, and we had yesterday, a presentation on the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven, and it was that that he, like, first presented his idea, and then went back to solve it. And I mean, it’s a big paradox, and I want to know, how we can have this method to find a way?

LaRouche: Okay, well, you take the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven, is actually a simplistic construction relative to the kinds of innovation which you see in earlier and later works by Beethoven. So in this case, he was in a sense, trying to condense what he’d accomplished in this particular form of the Fifth Symphony. You find it for example, the same thing occurs, the same principle of composition, occurs in a much more complex for in a related work, which is the Appassionata piano sonata, which is the same thematic pivot, in a much more complex development; as a matter of fact, a much more, the Fifth Symphony’s a very orderly thing compared to what the Appassionata is. But it is a breakthrough.

The main thing here is, that any revolution of any account, scientific or otherwise, depends upon recognizing that the conventional system, the conventional cultural outlook of practice, in the society itself is the disease you have to overcome. In other words, the misguided physician would say, “Well, disease is a result of abnormal behavior.” Well, I say that the history of humanity, is that diseases are the norm, and progress in humanity is conquering disease. So therefore, by conquering, overcoming the normal, you get to the better, which is what the Fifth Symphony typifies, is a launching point, of reducing things to such a degree that you get this distinction.

What we’re doing in scientific work is in the same direction. Now, what I’ve emphasized in this scientific work, you’re not—people like to think of complicated constructions and say, “this wonderful complicated construction solves the problem.” But actually, this is the way it works.

Let’s take the principle of universal gravitation, and look at that as the question of a universal physical. Ah! But what’s the principle? The principle is that sense-certainty is a lie! That convention, as defined by sense-certainty is a lie. That was Kepler’s great discovery, which becomes clear in his discovery of simply the orbit of the planet Earth, of equal area, equal time: which is not a linear construction. It is not one you can represent in conventional mathematics. Huh? And then you get further, into the composition of the Solar System, as the Harmonies, and you get a complete new dimension which says, “No! Sense-certainty is not authority! The universe is not organized by sense-certainty, in the sense of either sight or hearing. Neither! But the irony of the juxtaposition of both, which shows you that your senses are merely instruments, like any other measuring instrument. They are not the controlling principle: the instrument is the principle of its design.”

And he forces the question, as Albert Einstein recognizes later, and emphasizes, that all modern science is rooted in Kepler, as science, as physical science. There is no other competent science in modern science, except that which is rooted in Johannes Kepler’s work, especially his uniquely original discovery of universal gravitation, which has nothing to do with that idiot Newton, or anybody else like that.

And therefore, the secret of truth lies outside sense-perception, in the principles of organization of action in the universe, which we call “scientific principles,” or similar kinds of things. And what you see in Beethoven, in particular, in the Fifth Symphony, you see an inflection of exactly this. A revolution in music which is based in Bach, rooted in Bach entirely, which poses a question of how do you conceive of how far you’ve come? However you define the launching point for where you go next?

And that’s where we are today, ourselves. And what we’re doing in the Basement here, and its extended review operation which is now in progress, you’re going get a mammoth amount of reproduced material in audiovisual form—a mammoth amount, which will be a complete reeducation in the foundations of modern physical science, and it’s being assembled right here, as we speak, as an ongoing process.

And that’s the way to look at it. We’re going outside the accepted culture. We’re going to simple the discovery and recognition of principles, as Kepler’s two great discoveries, in terms of the planetary system: first the idea of the orbit itself, which is an absolute revolution; the idea of the infinitesimal, which is the ontological infinitesimal, not the mathematical infinitesimal. It’s crucial, the first one. The second one, in the Harmonies, how the Solar System is controlled by a principle of musical composition. Which takes you completely out of the sense-certainty area, into the powers of the human mind, the creative mind. And when you get that sense of identity of the human being, as the powers of the human mind, not the powers attributed to the senses, or the sense experience, then you’ve made it! And that’s what we’re trying to do. And I’m immensely pleased with the degree of progress we’re making. Not necessarily with the effects, but with the progress itself.

Question: Hi Lyn, I will continue on the same lines. I have two questions which are very related, and a third one. One of them, I think I kind of know part of the answer, but you can still give me more ideas of on that:

How do you start like really investigating the well-tempered system? That’s the first part.

The second part is: How do you see the evolution concerning the well-tempered system, from Bach to Beethoven?

And the last part of it is: What exactly do you mean by Beethoven being like a precursor of Riemann?

LaRouche: Well, the question in all three cases is really the same question.

First of all, you’re looking critically at sense-certainty. The way to lose yourself, is to try to derive the principles of nature from the evidence of sense-certainty. Let me give you the crucial example, which I’ve often used before, and it’s still the best: You have essentially two physical senses, let’s take the case of Kepler. You have two physical senses, which he employs in defining the composition of the Solar System, or at least the part your looking. One is sight—vision. The other is hearing. But it’s not simply hearing, it’s tuning. Hearing of a tuning experience.

These two faculties of sense-perception are contrary. They’re immissible, they’re in contradiction. He solves the problem of the composition of the planetary orbital system, including the discovery of the missing planet, which we later call the Asteroid Belt, which is the fragmentation of that planet, and he makes this discovery based on understanding that they’re neither sight nor hearing, as sense-perception actually are real. They are shadows of reality, different shadows of the same reality. And when you approach them from the standpoint of shadows, there is no rational solution, of the discrepancy between the two.

But when you step back, and say, that hearing and sight are instrumentation of the mind’s attempt to explore the universe, then sight nor hearing are really real. They’re instruments, they’re instrument readings.

Now, the great thing about the Harmonies, especially the Harmonies in Kepler’s work, is the fact that for the first time, he takes science as practice, practically, out of the domain of sene-certainty. Rather than interpreting a sense-certainty, you are now looking at something that is neither of two sense-certainties. You are looking at sight and hearing as instrumentation, like the construction of instrumentation for a physical experiment. You don’t assume that the readings of the meter, on either instrumentation is truth. But you find, the conceptual process is to take the contradictions, the ontological contradictions, between the implications of the two readings, and you find reality: In this case, the principle of gravitation. The principle of organization of the universe. Which is uniquely Kepler. Nobody else discovered the principle of gravitation, except Kepler.

The idea that Newton did so, is just a completely piece of idiocy, a fraud. All Newton and his friends did was to copy what Kepler had discovered, approximating it, coming up with a fake explanation, and calling their fake explanation—which they read from the Kepler!—as their discovery. As a simple state of data analysis. Idiocy! They discovered nothing.

What Kepler discovered was the breakthrough, from an experimental standpoint, which is what attracts Einstein’s attention to him so much—the first discovery of the nature of the universe, as something lying outside the domain of mere sense-perception, outside the domain of mere sight and hearing. And it’s by contrasting the two incompatible faculties, sight and hearing, that he solves the problem.

That essentially, is the nature of things.

Now, this stands beyond music, and back into music, in such forms as Bach and Beethoven. They’re the same thing. They’re different, but they’re the same thing. There’s nothing in Beethoven, which is not implicit in Bach’s definition of the well-tempered system. Nothing! You take the one example we often refer to, as the Lydian mode. The Lydian modality is one of the characteristic ways of looking at and understanding how Bach’s system works. And how Beethoven, like Mozart, and so forth, treats it! So, when you start to talk about the Lydian principle, then you begin to have a real sense of music. Hmm? Whereas otherwise, it’s noteplaying, according to rule. And of course, Beethoven’s effort is constantly to proceed from Bach, and that is his essential education, and proceed from Bach as such, on this question, as the Lydian principle. To understand, what music can do.

So, he builds a system by recognizing what music can do, by going back to back. Therefore, he gets away from the idea of sense-certainty interpretations of music, to music as a reflection of a process which is located actually in the human mind. And that’s what a great music performer is, as opposed to others.

I was just hearing, just in going down to the kitchen, there was some music playing on the radio, violin—crazy! The guy is a skilled violinist, but he doesn’t know how to make music. Everything is monotonous: Here you have a piece which is rich in contrapuntal contrasts, and different voicing—he just plays it through: note to note, note to note, note to note! And he plays it “prett-i-ly”—without any meaning! [laughs] And it’s considered a good performance: because he plays it “prett-i-ly.”

So that’s the point. We have to—don’t look at Beethoven as such. Look at Beethoven and Bach as an expression of an attempt to explore those qualities of the mind which distinguish the human being from birds and apes. And thus, look at the human mind itself, don’t look at constructing the effects. Locate the effects as a result of what underlies them, the principle. And then it all comes into place.

Question: Hello, Lyn, here’s Kasia. Helga said something yesterday very interesting: She said, in order to become a genius, you actually have to put a lot of work. [Lyn laughs] And believe it or not, some people were really surprised—I think you are familiar with that. Can you elaborate a little bit on why on you actually built the LaRouche Youth Movement. And also, why is it actually important that every one of get a sense of—ja—of everything somehow. To become a specialist on music, a specialist on geometry, and Kepler, and also what agape has to do with that. Because especially for the youth generation today, the biggest problem with recruitment, is always that people feel so afraid of themselves, actually, to take responsibility. And that’s what we have to deal [with] the most, I guess.

LaRouche: Well, the problem is, when you talk about human beings, and you talk about human beings as I look at the work of our youth organization, the idea comes up of fertility, as a functional concept. Now, to some people means that’s sexual fertility; it does not mean sexual fertility. It means, like when you get to a bunch of eggs, and they’re hatched, you try to save the chicks that are worth saving, the ones that you want to use for breeding purposes. And this is the problem we go through with the youth organizing.

If you look at the history of our youth organizing, since about 2000, when it really began. It began during my year 2000 election campaign, where for the first time in a long time, we reached out to campus layers, university campus layers. And I found, in discussions with youth groups from campuses during the course of that 2000 campaign, I saw that there was something emerging, something different than the deadness which I’d seen during similar layers during earlier times.

This was coming in a part as a reflection of effect of the Clinton Administration, which was a change in character of the U.S. political process. But then, we find again, you find that most of the young people who fall into that category of the 18 to 25 age-group, the same thing as the university age-group, really can’t make it. They’re too crippled by their cultural background, or their personal reaction to the culture background, they really can’t make it. And when you think about the process we’ve gone through, there’s a process of distillation in the formation of this youth organization, over these periods, which is now almost ten years now; and you think about who comes and goes—who makes it, who does. And you find that there’s a part of the population, of this population in particular, which can make it, in a sense as being—make as individuals, and a few in number relative to the total population. And our accomplishment, as a Youth Movement, is located in those individuals, who are capable of, and who accept, the idea of a certain kind of special intellectual responsibility, and responsibility to society and its history, which is lack in the generality of their own generation.

So it’s a selective process. And the way history works, is that you have leaders—not leaders like Mussolini, but leaders who have this commitment to truthfulness, and discovery, freedom from blind submission to the popular opinion of the people around them. Who have independent, really, truly independent thinkers. Not “independent” in the sense of being crazy, like some of our former associates, who couldn’t think, but who were independent of thinking, but could babble about it at great length—and this.

So we take a group of people, and you select from that, a group of people who can make it. It’s often like university. Some students are going to make it. some will pss the course, get the degrees, and they’ll be useless, or almost useless; no creative potential whatsoever. They drift off, about the age of 27 or 28 into some other land, of routine. And they become just part, a differentiated part, color, in the same common mass.

So when you’re talking about leadership, you’re talking about a highly selected portion of the total population of any generation, of any source.

Now, when you identify that, you identify that by trying to bring people into cooperation with one another, because that’s where this shows up: Those who can collaborate, and those who can’t. who say, “I don’t like that! I don’t like that! Oh, that’s not normal, I don’t want that, I’m going the other way!” They’re failures. They’re human failures.

So you take people who are not human failures, who face up to the challenge of creativity. Now, we started a process, we started the process historically: It started on the West Coast of the United States, around the Pythagoreans. You had one senior member of the organization out there, who played a key role in that part of the education, and he continues to play that role.

But then, we got through the Pythagoreans, and a little bit into Plato and so forth, the process in the national organization as a whole, halted. It was in this period, that I had intervened, to bring in the question of Bach, especially the Jesu, meine Freude, as typical reference point for stirring things up, to get to the two senses: to get from sight, which is the way people think of physical science, and get to sound, actually to music, as typified by Bach. My demand was, that these two things, these two distinct dimensions, of sense-perception of knowledge, must be juxtaposed in a way which creates the contradiction, which forces the mind to look for the principle, rather than the perception. And most scientific education is based on perception. And principles do not actually exist as principles in that kind of science education; same thing in music. So it’s when the two are combined, and juxtaposed, that you get that breakthrough.

So what we did, is we moved the development to the East Coast, at my initiative, and out of this we developed the concept of the Boston experiment, which is targetted by our enemies right now, by the way, with various kinds of garbage thrown at it. Hmm?

So, we changed the character of the organization as a whole, to this conception. The significant change started with a beginning of phase one, of the work on Kepler, and then went to phase two. Now, on phase one, I was not too much directly involved, though I was involved; because I was also involved in other things. But the teams that worked through the first part, laid the ground work for what we did in the second part, of what became the Kepler project. At that point, I was full in on it, with the second phase of the Kepler project. And there, the music question came up, came up on the question of the Solar System, as opposed to the Earth orbit.

Now, here’s the interesting thing: We had a discussion in the youth organization as a whole, during this second period of the work on Kepler, in which the question of music, as distinct from sight-perception of science, is crucial. And this led to a hilarious little session, with a telephone connection to the West Coast and to the people meeting in Leesburg, in a hotel location where we had this session, reviewing the work, and this came out. So the key thing, here, was, this combination of seeing that sight and hearing, neither are true—they’re sense-perceptions, they’re instrument readings. It’s when you understand what lies between them, as reality, which is neither sight nor hearing, that you get reality. So from that point on, we began to move.

Now, then, we went to the Gauss, directly, which I’ve described. Because a lot of the other work that we were doing is already implicit in that, go to Gauss. And the thing with Gauss is, that Gauss never tells you the truth. He never tells you a falsehood, but he never tells you the truth. He deceives you, but he tells you something which is usefully true. That is, he never really explains, or very rarely, exactly how he makes a discovery. He gives you a plausible explanation of how he made the discovery; the discovery is valid!—as our people have found out with a lot of work! But his explanation of how he got there, is not true! [chuckling]

Because, he was under tremendous pressure at that time, the pressure which corresponded to the aftermath of the French Revolution, in which, by the end of the century, by the end of the 18th century, Europe was totally screwed up in science, by the influence of this spillover from the French Revolution. So therefore, from that point on, he was afraid to tell the truth, about how had made discoveries. Hmm? As he admits in his discussion on non-Euclidean geometry, later on. He said, “I did that in my childhood, I’m not going to talk about it; I never will talk about it publicly, again!

Why? Well, his method that he’s using! Why doesn’t he want to talk about it? Because the method itself is targetted by a kind of witch-hunt, called science, in Europe at that time. and the breakthrough did not occur, until after, or almost after Gauss’s death, with Riemann: Riemann is the first guy who breaks the whole thing open!. For example, in his habilitation dissertation, which is one of the greatest discoveries in all history of science.

So, it’s this—and what we’ve done since then, as a result of this work on Gauss, we have now come, by looking at Gauss in the way I said we should look at it—and we spent a lot of months on this thing, of doing that—we came to a point where you had a group of people who had an understanding of science from this standpoint, as it had not existed before! Or at least, not existed as a group activity before, maybe some individuals, like Einstein and others, or Max Planck and so forth, would get a sense of that. So that’s what we did.

So this is all tied together.

Now, the other aspect of this, is the question of immortality: The two things are inseparable. The human being is, on the one hand an animal. It’s got an animal body. The animal body dies. But what remains? Well, what remains, as in the case of science, or the case of Classical musical composition from Bach on, attests to certain—a progression, an evolutionary progression of ideas, which become ideas of practice in society, which increase the power of society to exist and develop. So, in a sense, the individual who has died, has achieved immortality, which sometimes is referred to in theology as “the simultaneity of eternity.” And people live in the simultaneity of eternity by the role of the contributions they make to the discovery of principle in the course of the development of the human species as a whole.

So when the attachment is made, as through physical science, away from sense-certainty, and the sense-certainty of life and death as biological as individuals, to the principle of development, in music and in science, where the discovery of ideas, which have the power of changing the universe, becomes the subject of reality, then, the individual’s role in life is not their role as a biological entity as such, but rather, their role as a repository and vehicle of a continuity of a creative process of humanity. Their individuality is located in their contribution to that process. Either a direct contribution, like the discovery of a scientific principle, or similar, or a great work of art, or the participation of an entire population in the creative contributions of their generation and preceding generations. And thus, you get a sense of the essential irony, of individual, mortal existence, and the eternal presence of the human soul, which is the standpoint, you find reflected as in Beethoven. [extended applause]

Question: Hello, well, I think you’ve already answered my question in your introductory remarks, but I have kind of a special aspect of it. When we talk a lot to young people and so forth, it seems very much that you run into a lot fear. And what I noticed also, is then when start breaking with this domination from oligarchy and so forth, and also with operations being run against us, or just reaction because of the culture, and oligarchism and so forth, you see something very strange, which is that you get a reaction of guilt, when people start doing the right thing, as opposed to feeling guilty when they’re being immoral, and just following a genocidal culture—[Lyn laughs]. But it seems to be that, instead of—I don’t know if it’s related to this fair question, but anyway, I think it’s something we need to figure out, if we’re going to recruit quicker.

LaRouche: Take James Fennimore Cooper’s first novel, which appeared in two forms, on two different occasions, two different, sequential occasions—The Spy. And you have to think about this figure, who is identified as the spy—Cooper insists that he doesn’t know who the guy was, but he had, obviously from his father, who was a key official in the Revolutionary War, would know that. But he wasn’t told. But he portrays the actuality of the role of this man, whom he refers to as the spy. And you think of yourself as being, in a sense, like that spy: You’re in society, it’s a dangerous society, the enemy authority is out to kill. Find out who you are, destroy you, eliminate your presence, eliminate your effectiveness. But you persist.

And we find ourselves, in what we do, in precisely that position: We’re right. If we’re not right in what we think, as opinion, we’re right in our endeavor to discovery what we should think. [drops to stage whisper] And this makes us — a spy! We’re a spy, in this society. We represent some unseen force. We come out of the woods, we come out of the bushes, we jump out of the ditches! And we intervene to change things...

... and we disappear! Back in the bushes, back in the woods, back in the swamp... like spies.

And when you do what we do, you often have the sense that you’re living dangerously, like such a spy! Hmm? And that’s part of the experience.

But the point is, what are you doing? You actually realize that you represent a factor, if not being particularly creative yourself, you represent a factor of creativity, a factor of a force of creativity in society. A force which is essentially to free society from its present, guilty corruption.

And you must, at the same time, be aggressive, be adventurous, take dangerous steps... but at the same time, you must be cautious. You must try to adapt to your environment to a limited degree. But don’t let the adaptation corrupt you! You see that often. People say, “Well, I’ve going to be creative, but I’m going to be ’careful’ about it.” And sometimes, the carefulness destroys the creativity. Or sometimes the creativity which is uncritical is incautious. Because creativity always has to have a purpose, a mission.

And our major activity, or what should be our major activity, is understanding the distinction of the two aspects of our nature as an organization: On the one hand, we have to be independent of society, in terms of opinion. We have to be the critical factor, observing society, as if from the outside, and seeing what’s wrong with it, what has to be done to fix it. Like a secret meeting of a committee which is trying to improve mankind. And you’re doing dangerous things, because there are other people who don’t want those changes to be made, even attempted. But you have to do it! And you have to find out in yourself the courage to put yourself at risk, if necessary, to accomplish your mission: Like The Spy, of James Fennimore Cooper, in the second version of his first novel—which is based on truth.

Question: Hello, Lyn. After we destroy this new treaty organization, stop the plans of the oligarchy to make World War III, what do you think is the next plan of the oligarchy to destroy your plans for a new financial world order.

LaRouche: I don’t think the oligarchy has a real plan. As I’ve emphasized in the case of my writing on Evans Pritchard. Evans Pritchard is essentially a fool. That is, in history, he’s a fool. He is struggling to defend a system which is inherently doomed: the British Empire. The problem of the British Empire is not that it could win; the problem is that we could lose: and that is a very important distinction to make. The British Empire will never win this struggle now, but we could lose it. And this is the case. The result would be the common ruin of mankind for generations to come.

And therefore, we must win. And we must become cleverer, and cleverer, about winning. We must be more efficiently focused and dedicated to winning. It is my belief we can win. It is my belief, we can also lose. And therefore we have to be very serious about understanding that distinction. But whatever happens, the British Empire will not outlive us, outlive what we’re doing. But we can all go down to a common ruin, from which humanity will have to crawl back, in some future generation: Therefore, we must win, for the sake of all humanity. And once you have that view, you’ve got it right. [thunderous applause]

Question: Hello. My question is, we had yesterday a presentation that went into the protectionist measures that were introduced in Germany around Bismarck. And that led me to think about what is the history behind protectionist means, because I would say it can be much more than only barriers against imports, but that it’s a part of a culture, like we as an organization don’t allow you know, we protect ourselves against beat music, or other kind of failed ideas. And I see that as a kind of protectionism. But what is—it must have evolved in humanity from a much earlier standpoint.

LaRouche: Well, the key problem here, again, it’s like the problem of Kepler. That protectionism is normal; free trade is abnormal. Free trade is a system of an abnormal imperial system, which should never have existed. And the point is this, that the argument is made, that we’re talking about money. This is a Venetian view of things, isn’t it? Usury!! Money!! And then say, “what’s the law of money?”

For example, look at the history: In 1971, as a process which became clear in 1967, but more clearly until 1971, in the breakup of the Bretton Woods system, mass insanity took over the world. And the mass insanity was the belief that a system of money, which is called “free trade,” was the system which must determine value. But you look, in fact, at on one side money, and the other, physical reality, since 1970-71, or ’68 actually. And you look, what’s the reality? People said, “Well, the U.S. economy, the European economy, this economy has succeeded! It’s a free trade system! It’s the only one that works, every other system has failed!” Ah! But it’s the free trade system that has failed! Including the Soviet system, which was a free trade system: Read Marx! Marx was an advocate of free trade. So when you talk about a state system, a state economy, you’re attacking Marx, because Marx was a free trader, hmm?

Now, the reality is, you’ve got the British system against the American System. The American System is based on the perception, as typified that Alexander Hamilton, that is it physical production and physical output, which is the measure of value; and it’s physical value, per capita and per square kilometer of territory. The increase of the power of mankind to exist, per square kilometer, per capita, through the process of scientific and related discovery of principle, and the application of those principles. So the American System is a principled system of protectionism: Protection of what? Protection of value.

What’s the free trade system? It’s the denial of value. The free trade system says that whatever happens is value. We say, “no!” The system must be controlled by the principle of value. What is value? It’s physical value. And what’s physical value? Just objects? No. It’s the increase of the productive powers of labor. It’s the advancement of the development of the human mind. Which results, it is the source of the increase of the productive powers of labor; it is the change in the character of the environment, to make human labor more productive.

And there are a couple of real zingers in here, you know: Let’s take the case—let me just do this, this is fun: You may enjoy it.

Look at the question of value, productivity. Now the key thing in value and productivity, is an increase in productive powers of labor, per capita and per square kilometer of territory, that is, the total territory. How is this achieved? Well, the essential thing is, through science and technology, innovations. Now, you think about, how does that work? If you make something more knowledge intensive, that is more technologically progressive, more capital-intensive, aren’t you just swapping values? You’re just swapping capital intensity for capital intensity, against the normal place without capital intensity? Just as Al Gore and similar lunatics, the Malthusians, and neo-Malthusians today argue, the so-called environmentalists? But what does the environmentalist say? The environmentalist says, “Well, look: There’s a Second Law of Thermodynamics.” Which by the way, it’s not a law; it’s a law of a dictatorship, it’s not a law of reason. There is no such thing.

Take the things I keep referring to: You got three magnitudes on this planet, you’re concerned with—we’re talking about the top surface of the planet, largely, the large top area, down into bedrock, and through the oceans and whatnot, up through the atmosphere. And you have three categories of phenomena, which are defined by the cause in the way in which they are generated: One, the abiotic. And you’ll never get life out of an abiotic process, contrary to idiots like John von Neumann. The second one, is the Biosphere, and living processes in general, of which man is a participant, our husks, our human, mortal husks are part of that. The third one, are the creative powers of reason, which is the Noösphere, as defined by our dear friend Vernadsky.

So these three. Now, what happened? The history of the planet, the biological history of the planet is, we with the abiotic, then you get the emergence of a crust, which is the Biosphere and its products. We find that the Biosphere is increase in total mass relative to the total mass of the planet otherwise. Ah! Then you come to a third one: The role of the human minds, the Noösphere. We have products which are not produced by the Biosphere, which are produced only by the action of the human mind and changing the character of products; and all the products and residues of products which are accumulated as part of the weigh of the planet, the pure mass of the planet. And you have three. So, you abiotic, the Biosphere, and Noösphere. The living processes are increasing their relative share of the mass of the planet, through biological progress. Then, the total mass of the planet, which is entirely the product of human intellectual intervention, creative intervention, called the Noösphere, is increasing relative to the Biosphere, and both are increasing relative to the abiotic. So therefore, we have a process which we call “anti-entropy,” in which a lower form of existence, is transformed into a categorically higher form of existence, first from the Biosphere from the abiotic, and thirdly, the Noösphere from the Biosphere.

Thus we find that there’s a creative force, one called “life,” the other called “creative reason.” These two things are changing the character of the planet—physically! In the mass, the weight of the whole planet! And you can deny that exists? You dny that? What’re you an idiot? What’re you a follower of Kelvin, or an idiot like that? A poor, pompous fool.

Or do you recognize the creative power of the human mind, as distinct from anything else in living processes. And the destiny of the universe is the human mind.

Now, look at technological progress: What you’re looking at as the residue of the Noösphere, is entirely the product of human creativity. Something that does not exist among animals, only human beings. And—how is this possible! How is this physical effect of the increase of the Noösphere possible!? It’s not possible in an entropic system. Or even life: How is Biosphere increased, relatively? It’s not possible without, the creativity of life per se. And the human mind, and this creativity, is a higher form of existence of even life itself: It’s a form that can ultimately can control the universe!

Now, you have an invention: A capital-intensive application of an invention, a skill, a discovery of physical principle. You apply that.

Now, does the work involved, the physical work, the output of the human being in generating this invention and its effect, is that mere an energy transfer from one department to another? Or, is it not the fact, that the effect of human creativity, in changing the way we produce things, results in an increase in the energy-equivalent of the planet as a whole?

So apparently, from the standpoint of the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics, we’re getting something from nothing! Because there is no human work put in, which as simple physical work accounts for the gain in productivity and resulting increase of mass, attributable to the Noösphere. Hmm?

So, when you look at that, and consider those implications, now you sit back and say, “What the hell is science?” As long as you accept the idea of this idea of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or anything like it, as long as you assume, as the crazy, evil Olympian Zeus presumed, that mankind should not be allowed to discover universal physical principles, such as fire, as long as you assume that, you say, “The existence of man as we know him, is impossible.” If you believe what Al Gore believes and his master of the British Prince Philip believes, human existence, culture is impossible. Therefore, Al Gore says “Let’s take down culture, it’s impossible. It shouldn’t exist! It’s a defiance of nature.” It’s a defiance of de-nature. It’s a defiance of denatured nature of Prince Philip, who wants to reduce the human population from 6.5 to two billion people as soon as possible.

So therefore, the key problem here, is that we, by accepting the idea of entropy, by accepting the idea of Newton, by accepting the idea of similar reductionists, the modern positivists, and similar types, the followers of Bertrand Russell: As long as we accept that, we’re idiots! We’re not only idiots, we’re dangerous idiots! We’re like the drunk behind the wheel of the car at night: We’re going to kill a lot of people by our drunken stupidity.

And that’s the biggest question. Is society organized in such a way, that the way society organizes itself recognizes the principle of creativity? That is, to find the source of what appears to be the energy-equivalent, that is, the net gain, as if from nowhere, of the energy-equivalent gain in productivity, which can not be accounted for by the inputs of physical activity put into it, but it’s only accountable by the discoveries of the human mind, discoveries of principle by the human mind: That’s the key issue. That’s probably the most fundamental issue of economics, which almost no one on this planet understands. [applause]

Question: Hey Lyn, Elodie: I have two questions which are related. When you were talking about the simultaneity of eternity? I mean, being able to have that in your mind all the time, to have people from the past that you come to know, or people from the future that you just imagine, or people today, but they’re just on the other side of the Atlantic, like you are, or on the other side of the Rhine, and so on—I mean, it’s a totally different way of thinking, when whoever is not physically there with you, is just as present for you as somebody who is physically there.

LaRouche: Yeah.

Question: I don’t know if you can say something on how we can help ourselves, and everybody in general, including in the field, to really get to this kind of—as much as possible to something like that.

And the other thing, is this question of passion, which is —I mean, today, it’s strange, like you have a mixture of a return to the Middle Ages mentality, where, “life doesn’t matter; people die anyway, people get sick anyway, people get unemployed anyway, there’s hunger anyway, so who cares?” And this thing from TV, from computer games and so on, where people are desensitized, and it’s really, really spread, this heartless personality— Yeah, so that’s the two things.

LaRouche: Okay, well, first of all, let’s look at the second one first: What do people, who think as you described, these are people who are morally dead. They haven’t died yet, but they only died morally. They have no excusable reason to live, they’re simply alive, and they’re about to correct that error. Or induce their neighbor to correct that error in himself, or herself. This is the demoralization.

And what is, from my standpoint, and my experience, it’s people who resist and reject that, as I reject it, who keep the universe working. And our job is to take charge. Our job is to take these Dionysians—which what you really call them, the Nietzscheans, they’re Nietzscheans; the cultural pessimist. And you know, like the history of Germany, what’s the history of Germany: You had a Germany which had achieved a great degree of success, especially, notably, under the leadership of Bismarck, and the elimination of Bismarck by the Crown Prince of England through the assistance of his nephew, unleashed in Germany a wave of cultural pessimism, typified from Austria for example by the case of Ernst Mach with his idea of mechanics; and then later, in the beginning of the last century, by Bertrand Russell, in a way expressed by his Principia Mathematica which is the ultimate degeneracy, the ultimate statement of cultural pessimism. And it’s this disease of cultural pessimism, which arose by the process of denying the necessity of scientific and technological progress, and scientific and technological progress as a development of the human qualities of the human individual, which resulted in cultural pessimism. That becomes reified, in the kind of pessimism which says, “What’s man exist for? Aw! There’re too many people! We all know there’s too many people, let’s get rid of the excess. Let’s go along with Prince Philip—he’s a smart guy, right? He’s a smart guy, his World Wildlife Fund says reduce the human population to two billion people and our problems are solved!” Hey! Adolf Hitler was a piker compared to this sonuvabitch!

So that’s the problem. And when we see things in that way, in those terms of reference, we really don’t have a problem, that is a conceptual problem. We have to win! Not win, in the sense of triumphing as individuals over society, but we have to win, in turning society’s orientation away from this evil, which is typified by Al Gore and Al Gore’s master, Prince Philip. And we have to eliminate that, and restore cultural optimism in human beings. And it’s the force of cultural optimism in human beings which is really what we have to concentrate on. And we do that, not by simply saying, “be confident, be optimistic,” but we have to perform the kinds of actions, the kinds of changes in mode of action, which demonstrate to people that they should be confident in themselves as people. That’s the solution. [applause]

Moderator: Thanks a lot, Lyn for sharing your precious time with us for a while.

LaRouche: Yeah, well, it was enjoyable. I hope you enjoy the rustic circumstances in which you’re operating.

Moderator: Yes! [laughter]

LaRouche: Very good. Tschuess.

 

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