Schiller Institute Conference The LaRouche Youth Movement |
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The following LaRouche Youth Movement Panel presentation, a "Report on the Work of the LaRouche Youth Movement" concluded the Schiller Institute conference "The Eurasian Land-Bridge Is Becoming a Reality!" held in Kiedrich, Germany, September 15-16, 2007. For other presentations and Discussion Papers, visit the Conference Program page. The moderator of this panel was Rhys McGuckin of Australia.
Rhys McGuckin: ... I think it's very important, now that we're discussing the question of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, that we consider that it's actually more than simply one continent that we're dealing with. And it's very important that people get a sense of what's been shifting politically worldwide. As it stands right at the moment, we literally do have people from almost every continent on the planet except Antarctica—it's a little hard to get people there. We actually have people from Russia, Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Bahrain, and recently acquired, or recently joined, some very important people from South Africa and Zimbabwe—and I would like to ask them to stand up so people can see our new additions. [applause]
The one thing that has stood out, I think, throughout the conference, is this question of a real mission-orientation that's required for us as a generation, to really take a grip of, and use, as a way to transform the way in which people see politics. It's very interesting that the process of discussion has unfortunately also centered a little too much around the question of money. I noticed that with the facts and figures that were coming up. And this is one of the reasons why we, as a political movement, have been studying LaRouche's economics, which is more oriented around the transformation that occurs when we, as human beings, do use our minds, make discoveries, and then apply them across the board....
Politics Means Big Ideas
Oyang Teng, United States: I've been thinking, as we've been hearing presentations the last two days on the subject of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, that this is first and foremost a political question. And what I mean by that, is that when we're discussing the concept behind a reorganization of the entire world economic system, a reorganization of the entire world paradigm—a paradigm shift, as Jacques [Cheminade] was saying: that a shared dream is a political mission. And the organizing mission of the LaRouche Youth Movement has been, and is, to actually see through the creation and development of the Eurasian Land-Bridge.
And there's the story I heard from an organizer, a friend of mine in California, who a little bit before my time, was organizing in the heart of Silicon Valley, during the height of the Internet bubble, when every other person that would walk by was a 25-year-old retiree, you know, a millionaire who had made it big on the Internet bubble. And he was out there at a booktable, telling these people, "We're actually in an economic crisis. And we've got to build this world development project called the Land-Bridge." And people would look at him like he was crazy. Now those are the people, since 2000, who have gone back to move in with their parents, are re-enrolling in college, and finding a way to live on macaroni and cheese.
But this is also the first encounter that I had with what this movement actually represents; the first meeting I came to, this was the subject of discussion. The question of potential relative population density came up, which is a concept that LaRouche has developed as a physical economic measurement for the growth and development of an economy; that you can measure the reproductive power of your economy, by looking at the potential to support a given number of people on a given land area with the technologies available at the time—in a first approximation. And we were looking at maps of population density, looking at Germany, for example, with 600 people per square kilometer, or something like that, and contrasting that to countries in Africa, where you have 20 people per square kilometer. And in that context, discussing this idea of a Eurasian Land-Bridge. And this is really the first political idea that I can say that I really had. I mean, I was against the war that was soon to be beginning; I thought that poverty was a bad thing. But as a political idea, as an actual power to act on, and a sense of what is the principle required to organize that power, that's a political idea, that's the essence of a political movement.
And I think it's important, especially given what passes for political movements today, to consider what the LaRouche movement, what the LaRouche Youth Movement actually is, as a political movement. Because politics should really be about the biggest ideas. It should never be anything less than the most ambitious, the most beautiful idea. The politics of, particularly our generation, should never be anything less than that. Because it's actually the only way that somebody is going to have a sense—like this first meeting, I came in, I knew nothing about any of the details, any of the particular names, dates, places. I had a general sense that I wanted to do something, that I wanted to do something good. But what I did not yet have an understanding of, was that there was a movement that had, as Helga [Zepp-LaRouche] said earlier, a thoroughly composed idea about how to deal with the entire world. And when people have that knowledge, that's something that changes them, whether they join a movement or not. It's something that you can't ignore: You have to face the fact that there's a movement out there that actually has an idea, and is committed to an idea of how the entire world should be organized.
Organizing in the United States
So, this has really been the mission of the Youth Movement. Now, there've been a number of battles along the way, and there's a number of steps required to get there. But the difference between a movement based on the small steps, and a movement based on the idea, is going to be the difference between whether we actually succeed or fail. And the secret of our success is something that I'm going to disclose right now. And it's something that Mr. LaRouche said once, in discussing how it is that our movement has been so successful. You ready?
He said: We've fought many battles, and we've lost most of them. Now, I'll come back to that—I think it's something that I'll let people think about. In the context now, of looking at what we're in the United States doing around this "firewall" legislation. Again, it's a step, it's the first step that's required in initiating this worldwide project: but to take the country as a whole and say, "We recognize that there's a need to get into the pores of society at this point, to implement this Homeowners and Bank Protection Act through the Congress in the next month."
And we have a unique kind of army, a political army that's able to do that. And that's what we're doing right now, from both coasts, East to West, and North to South, wherever we are, in taking the state-by-state, county-by-county, city-by-city warpath, to actually bring people into a conception of saying: We're going to get every state legislature, every county official, every advocacy group, every homeowner advocacy, whoever's out there that exists in the population that's ready to move, into an organized force, to push this through Congress at the top. We had 52 meetings in the Texas state legislature over two days; we had 36 in the Massachusetts legislature in Boston in one day. We have people calling us back—people in the Congress, people in the communities—demanding everything that we have on this legislation, which is, as LaRouche described, a "firewall," a first step, to actually create the room and the ability to act, for each of those next steps.
I think the only way to understand, politically, where we're situated right now, with respect to this legislation, and everything that we're doing as a political movement, is, if you look at the developments of the last year, you're seeing what it means, this thing I said about fighting these battles. Because, we can go back 25 years, you know, when some of those here were born, and LaRouche put on the table a proposal called the "Strategic Defense Initiative." And at the time, while Reagan, the President of the United States, did adopt that, it wasn't implemented as policy, and that's a well-known history that we've gone through. LaRouche was sent to prison, and then the [Berlin] Wall fell, and we proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge, and the Strategic Triangle. And, that wasn't implemented, as we heard from some of our speakers this weekend.
In the Summer of 2003, we began the campaign to impeach Cheney, and we said, "He has to be impeached now"—and he wasn't impeached. In 2004, we said, "Cheney has to be impeached now." He wasn't impeached. In 2005, we said, "The country's survival depends on getting Cheney out!" He wasn't impeached. In 2006, we said, "We've got to get rid of Dick Cheney." He wasn't impeached.
Now, in 2007, we actually got an impeachment resolution. Sometimes I think these things happen slower than we like. But we have an impeachment resolution; we have 20 signers on that in the Congress right now. And we've created a condition where it's actually dangerous for Congressmen to come back into their hometowns, because of the beating that they're going to receive from their constituents. We have to actually protect the Congressmen from the people in their districts, so that they don't beat them up. Give them enough time to get them back to Washington—so we can beat them up!
The SDI: We had a situation these last few months, back in April, May, June, with Clinton in Yalta, LaRouche in Moscow, Putin in Kennebunkport, and the issue of the Strategic Defense Initiative was back on the table for the world, as a war-avoidance policy.
So, we could ask ourselves, "Were those battles that we lost?" What's happening now, is, we've got a situation where the accumulated authority that we've generated, is putting us now in a position where people who have maybe said, nine times out of ten, that they're not going to listen, are now calling our offices demanding meetings. And it's not just the fact that there's a crisis. There's sometimes the idea that when there's a crisis, you know, your shirt's on fire, then things will change, automatically. But it's not just the fact that there's a crisis: It's the fact that there's a crisis, and people now have a conception of where they need to go to figure out the solution to that crisis.
Our Authority Is That We Are the Future
So, in the type of political organizing that we're doing, our authority, especially as a Youth Movement, doesn't come from the money that we have; it doesn't come from the position that we occupy; it doesn't come from our experience, either. Most of the people in this room have more experience. But it's the authority of the future, and that's something that, as a political movement, we're actually leveraging, now that the entire system is coming apart, and people are experiencing that, whether or not they are willing to admit it. For example, several weeks ago, the head of the state Democratic Party in California, which is the largest Democratic Party in the country, spoke at our meeting in Los Angeles. And that's a process of opening the discussion and the debate within the Democratic Party, and as Jacques said, it's not just a question of getting the debate, but it's giving people the ability to actually have the debate. And so, that's what we've done, any time we've had these people within arm's reach. And you'll see with maybe some of the later presentations, how we are using the work, to create the capability to actually have a discussion, so that people can think about the policies and the ideas required.
So, I think that's the way to think about our ability to act, now. Because the question right now is, do we, as a political movement, have the power, have the capability, to act on an idea, and get other people to act with us? And what we're seeing right now, with this campaign around the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, is that this is going to be the test of the population: the ability to respond to an idea—to respond to a piece of legislation—but the ability to respond to an idea, where they know there's a movement here, that has been right about the economic crisis—we've been organizing around that; we were right when they were telling us we were wrong. And now, as we see, for example, with the head of the Democratic Party coming to speak to us at our meeting, they recognize that. They may not fully understand it, but they recognize that that power is there.
So, it looks good. I think there's definitely going to be many more battles ahead. But we know how to win the war, and that's what's important.
McGuckin: One thing I will add, is that we do have a lot of fun with what we do, in the discussions that we have. I think it's also very important that it's not just something that's oriented, obviously, towards the U.S., but we do have colleagues, for instance, from Mexico, who've been waging a very big fight there, which I'll get Ingrid to give you an idea of.
Reviving the Legacy of López Portillo in Mexico
Ingrid Torres, Mexico: I would like to just give a brief idea on what's going on with Mexico, also because you saw yesterday, this very beautiful video of [the late President José] López Portillo,[1] his speech to the UN General Assembly. And right now, we're going to celebrate on October 1, the 25th anniversary of that speech. So, in Mexico we've been preparing a series of events commemorating this speech. I will say, only people from the LYM, the LaRouche movement, and a few other people in the government, old people, know this speech, but the majority of the population in Mexico really doesn't know who López Portillo was—just as a lot of people you encounter on the street know the name of LaRouche, but they really don't know who he is.
We have been fighting in the universities and public places, to make people understand what Mexico would be, if López Portillo's policy had been followed throughout these 25 years: that we could have 20 nuclear plants, and we could have a National Bank, and we could have infrastructure and development. And basically, Mexico would have been a First World nation, in developing technology, with the oil that we have, that now is just used to pay the external debt, and other things. And it's not just to give a pessimistic view, but just to say the type of potential we had, that we have really had true heroes in our country. And that the significance that López Portillo has, and his collaboration with LaRouche, is because that's exactly what needs to be understood to act, right now.
I remember, when Lyn, in one of his conferences, said that Mexico needs to recognize its heroes, not to spit on them, not to attack them; but that we need to recognize our heroes, to morally overcome these crises, to morally react in these crises. And I think, in the process of organizing, we have thoroughly understood why this should happen. Right now, we're going to have a couple of conferences at universities, with this speech with some people who are relatives of López Portillo's, and some people who worked in the construction of our only nuclear plant, in Veracruz, which was constructed during his period. This is going to be in a couple of universities, and also in a public place on October 1, where we're going to be transmitting the video that you saw yesterday, with another part that you didn't see, in which López Portillo was in a meeting with Helga. That's going to be shown on a big screen, publicly.
We need to point out that there was a person proposing a new financial system, López Portillo then, LaRouche now. And that we need to revive this type of memory.... In Mexico, people get hysterical; if you mention his name and you say he was a good President, people get crazy. And I know Helga and Lyn have said, we shouldn't be Jacobins and attack people at this time of crisis, we should organize minds; sometimes that's hard, but we're trying! It's hard, because people don't really understand what happened in 1982 in Mexico. And we have to make people realize that we're in that process right now.
I think that it could be done, because we have found people who are moral, although they don't go beyond that, to publicly defend López Portillo, as it also happened with Lyn, that no one has publicly had the guts to go with his policies, except for people like López Portillo in Mexico.
So, we're in a process of making the younger generation understand what the Baby-Boomer generation, 68ers in Mexico and worldwide, forgot, two years ago. That's what I wanted to say. Thank you.
McGuckin: We do have a significant fight, also occurring in Argentina, Venezuela—unfortunately, we don't have representatives here to go through that. They've had significant discussions, including with the President of Argentina. But I think you should get a sense that that's one whole section of this world bridge, that we're aiming to build.
So, I would like to shift to another continent, in this case, the Eurasian Land-Bridge, by asking Arnaud Vivrel, from France, to give you a sense of something which I find very inspirational, what the French have actually been organizing.
The 'New Politics' in France
Arnaud Vivrel, France: I've been part of the LaRouche movement since the end of 2003. I would like to give a short report on how we mobilized in France, with this very idea that Lyn put out, of the New Politics. And especially, I would like to address the cultural aspects of how we organize in France. And to illustrate, I would like to talk with you about the Presidential campaign, where we had, as a candidate, Jacques Cheminade, and where we mobilized for a year and a half, to get signatures from mayors. Because, as you may know, in France, to be a [Presidential] candidate, you need 500 signatures [from mayors] to run as a candidate.
So, we started this campaign in January 2006, and we started to discover our country. We had about 1,000 meetings with different mayors, all over France. We decided to have, as an idea, to create what we call in physics, a magnetic field. So, we built up a network in which we had 5,000 mayors who received our e-mail weekly, on all the interventions of Jacques Cheminade during the campaign, and also, the international issues that Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche put out. And we created also a network of people who received our newspaper, about 3,000 mayors during the campaign, so that they could think more deeply about our ideas. And we also distributed 100,000 pamphlets of the program of Jacques Cheminade.
And so, what is interesting is that we could say, we lost the battle, as Oyang said. We lost the battle, because we didn't actually get the 500 signatures. We got about 250 signatures; but, what I should say, is that we've fought, and all the culture we are discovering and transmitting to the mayors—science, music, and especially leadership; and especially, as Oyang said, we fought with the authority of the future.
A typical example of the problem with the mayors in France, is what Jacques said already during his presentation: the Cartesian attitude. Because, we would meet with a mayor, he would say, "Okay, I agree with you, you're totally right. The world is collapsing. I know, I have a lot of problems in my city, and so, and I'm fighting for the good, also like you. But, I cannot do more. I have my limits. My parliament deputy is from the right-wing party, so I can't afford to be disagreement with him, signing for Jacques Cheminade and so on."
So, when you have a person in front of you, who says, "I totally agree, but I will not sign," it's exactly the problem that Jacques said: It's the problem of the Baby-Boomer generation, where the mind, reason, and the emotions are divided. And we were fighting hard with this issue. We were calling mayors. We had a team of 20 people, including youth and Boomers, who were calling mayors for a year and a half. And we tried some different approaches, such as the musical approach, where we wrote songs for mayors and we would sing to them, in the face-to-face meetings. And we had also a Rabelaisian approach, with poetry, using humor, to make them laugh. Because, if you can make someone laugh, he is more inclined to do something.
So, we lost the battle, as I said. But then, Jacques Cheminade wrote a leaflet, and we printed 20,000 leaflets, saying, "Ségolène Royal: A Vote for Reason," and we organized for Ségolène Royal. And what was interesting was that Socialist Party, and especially the youth of the Socialist Party, didn't understand why were fighting so hard, distributing more leaflets than they. And they'd go, "Wow! Wait a minute, is that Jacques Cheminade? The right-wing guy? I don't understand."
I'll explain that to you. A month ago, after the election, at the end of August, we had an intervention at La Rochelle, in the west of France, where we have been organizing every year since 2004. We've tried to organize the leadership of the Socialist Party, without being naive about it, but the most important thing was that we organized the base of the Socialist Party, the people who are really, really angry with their leadership. And on this occasion, we had a lot of success, and openness, and people recognizing we were right. And even ex-government ministers or high-level Socialists would ask us what we think about the international situation. And we also mobilized a lot of the youth in the Socialist Party.
Since 2006, we have split into three different branch offices—in Rennes, Lyon, and Paris. And now, we want to create, for the future, we are organizing in the north of France and in the east, in Lille and Metz. And it's very interesting, because there, you have a post-industrial area, where people are very politicized, and they're very angry about what's happening right now. And if they're not pessimistic, we've seen that we can mobilize them very quickly. And that is a good direction for the future organization of our movement in France.
The last thing I want to bring up, is that we've mobilized a lot over the Internet. We follow the marching orders of Lyndon LaRouche, creating a daily website [www.solidariteetprogres.org], where we have every day the "Brèves d'Actualités"—News Briefs. And in July, we doubled the number of visits, and in August, we doubled the number from July, meaning, we had about 56,000 hits per month for August. That's interesting in itself, from the standpoint that people can see for themselves what's happening on our website, what is the reality of the subprime market crisis.
So, in conclusion, I should say that we've set up the preconditions, as I said earlier, a magnetic field, to organize in France. And I'd be happy if some more people from the international organization will join us to have fun, actually to organize all of France. Thank you.
Ingrid Torres: I would just like to say something I forgot: This is a very beautiful day to have this conference, because today we celebrate in Mexico our Independence in 1810.
McGuckin: Well, obviously, France isn't the only one in Eurasia, so we're going to have Karsten Werner, from Germany, speak about what's been happening, with a lot of people that we do have internationally, from Denmark, from Australia, from various other places.
Breaking Through the Fog in Germany
Karsten Werner, Germany: Thanks to the speakers before me, I think there's not too much to add—maybe a little bit. Maybe some of you have been wondering, why we are singing. You know, it's nice. You have young people coming together and singing. And I hope, at least with the Jesu, meine Freude, yesterday, that we did something with you, which you might not have expected. Because if you do music right, and you perform it right, and you put the necessary amount of work into it—which we've assigned to ourselves and this is the curriculum which Lyndon LaRouche has given us, next to the science work, which is not something separated—if you do it right, you touch something in people, in every person, and I've seen it multiple times in the street, which is uniquely human: You touch that quality in them, which is not their daily life, entertainment, identity which people usually have put on; it's something real. And people usually don't even realize that—"Oops, is that me?" It's like something just hits them.
And just to make this a little bit more concrete, I just want to give you an idea of how we've been organizing in the last weeks, in Germany, in Berlin, where we have our headquarters, with about 40 full-time youth organizers from all over the place; but also in Saxony. And just to fill you in, again, it has been mentioned before, but the situation in Germany could not be more dire, and could not be more connected to the crisis we're seeing worldwide, especially as triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market. Because, in the United States, you face a situation where you have, at least, 7 million families about to be thrown out of their homes, because the adjustable rate mortgages are resetting to high interest rates; people who have lost their jobs can't pay, so on and so forth. The mortgages have been sold to Wall Street types or to the big banks who don't care if people are homeless.
But people here in Germany or other European countries give you the line, "Well! But that's America. They're stupid, we know that." They have a stupid President, right? But that's a fantasy, because every bank, not only every German bank, but every bank in the world, and especially German banks—even the state-owned banks, on the state level and the Federal level—have been buying paper which is directly connected to these fictitious home values. And they're now blowing out.
So, what has been happening, a few weeks ago, is that a state bank, the state where I am from, Saxony, has been sold off, overnight, in a Nacht und Nebel Aktion, a "cloak and dagger" operation or whatever it's called in English—to another state bank. Because, all of a sudden, they found out that some of this money was not even worth the paper it was written on. And to be able to sell that bank, they just lifted, dismissed, the constitution of the state of Saxony for two days! Didn't even bother to tell the Parliament what's going on. This could not be more severe, this kind of crisis.
So what we decided to do, as Helga had already, a few weeks before, renewed her call for a New Bretton Woods, which, if not everybody has already signed it, I would encourage people to do—she wrote another leaflet, calling for a similar measure as we're doing in the United States, which is to have a firewall also for the German economy. Because, as you might well imagine, if you bring your savings to the banks here, and the assets they're holding against it are all these fictitious mortgage-based securities, the values which are connected to this blowing-out subprime sector in the United States, people may well lose their life's savings! That's going to create social chaos, too. Banks are going to close their doors.
So what we need here, too, is a firewall. And that's what we've been organizing around in these last weeks in Berlin. Also trying to set up meetings with Federal members of Parliament, with people on the state level, very similar to what we've done in the United States. And the reactions are actually very interesting: Because there is a consensus, unfortunately. There is still this line being propagated, inside these "houses of institution" (or you might call them differently)—that there are actually no losses! Everything is fine for now, there's only risks.
That's what we've been told, over and over again. You see banks blowing out, you see hundreds of billions of dollars being printed, but "it's just risks for now. We can't estimate any losses. There's no problem." But what people did react to, was when we briefed them on what we're doing in the United States, and how dire the situation is over there, what's really facing us, as an overall crisis here, not just financially, but physically, economically. And people would respond to that. Because, let's say, one person from the state parliament, saying, "So you're saying the BüSo (the German party) has an influence in American politics?"
So, you have to give people a sense of what we do, and they respond to the fact that we're not just observers of the situation, but we're moving on things. And people look at us as an authority on what to do, since we've been talking about this crisis for about 30 years!
Why We Sing
But I really want to stress that the most important task that people in this room, and beyond, whom we've associated with, and who in the future are going to be associated with us, have, is, to uplift people. And that's, I think, what Lyndon LaRouche yesterday very well stressed: this question of optimism. It's very easy to get dragged down in the day-to-day organizing, talking to people, other things you experience. But you do have to have a sense of mission, where you see that what you're doing is right.
And that's, I think, where the singing, again and again, strikes a real nerve. Because, we came back from Saxony, we had this one very funny event here in Berlin, where the head of the Federal Reserve, "Mr. Helicopter Money" himself [Ben Bernanke], was going to speak, somewhere in the center of Berlin, and of course we couldn't help but welcome him. So, we made this banner with the headline: "Solution to the Financial Crisis," and it showed the map of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, which left a lot of people wondering, "What do these have to do with each other?" But the most striking thing for people coming there, who were mostly, as you can imagine, bankers, financial advisors, lawyers, consultants, the Financial Senate of Berlin, which hates us—these people were struck by the chorus! Because we were singing all the time, our whole repertoire: We would sing from the German National Anthem, the things you've been hearing here. And people who had not heard the chorus yet, would talk to us and say, "No, no, no! You're completely wrong! There is no financial crisis!"—exactly what I've just been saying—"you only have risks. No losses, yet. No problem! No problem, okay!"...
And then, they hear the chorus, and they would turn around completely! Saying, "Omigod! What're these young people doing?" And then, one guy ends up giving his card, immediately. Because, what you see—not just in our chorus, but when young people, and people in general sing—I think it's sort of the epitome of mankind. It's the best that we as humanity can do, because it's a unique thing to sing, to sing polyphonically. It represents this certain streak of creativity, which is embedded as a potential in all of us. You know, only human beings can sing. I could never imagine somebody like George W. Bush singing—it's just impossible.
I think this sense of optimism is really, really important. We've heard a lot of things, from Amelia, enlightening things from Helga, from Jacques, from all the other participants here. But I really think what we need to develop in ourselves, we should really challenge each and all of us, to develop—especially for Germans—a sense of patriotism, also as cooperation amongst the nations, and what this crisis also needs, is balls. [laughter, applause]
McGuckin: And yes, I think it was very important, that Jacques actually made two sort of challenges for us, I think also for the youth to do some work on. Because I think it represents the kind of process that we have to put forward to mankind, to really bring the best out of people, to really look for the good in people, as has been said, that we need to actually put challenges down for mankind. Not simply just a matter of actually building and developing the continents of this planet, but there are quite a few others out there, which need to be examined. And with the work that's currently being done, in the Basement, the Catacombs, that we would like to actually put forward a challenge to people in the audience, to really work through some of these kinds of ideas.
So, on that note, I'll ask Danny Buchmann, of Germany, to present what he has.
Restore a Real Scientific Method
Daniel Buchmann, Germany: I'm actually opening a subject area that would require many "Fidel Castro" speeches to elaborate it and go into it. It's quite a challenge.
One of the things that comes up in organizing, that comes up in everything we're doing, is the problem of, quite quickly, what is human cognition? How do we know anything? And Lyn, of course, as a forecaster, can speak for himself. What is his forecast? Where? What was involved? But he has been quite successful, more successful than anybody else. And Lyn is saying there is a natural science behind this, you can understand these things, you can master this, and it's not some kind of Oracle of Delphi kind of operation, but it's hard, scientific work.
And Lyn is challenging the Youth Movement to take up that work, and the Basement in his house in the U.S., the crew there, is really just kind of the forerunner, but it's work that's being done, so that everybody else participates in it. It's not something for some kind of elite group, but it's supposed to spread everywhere.
I would like to ask Kai-Uwe to show the first picture, the Sun.[2] I'm going to talk about some things that are going on in the Solar System, that I hope will puzzle some people, and will cause a similar sense of wonder that Karsten mentioned in the case of music, and I hope people will start investigating these things. Because some of the answers are simply not known.
How did the Sun come into existence? How did the Solar System come into existence? Most scientists today, or so-called scientists, make reference to a work by Immanuel Kant from the year 1755: Allgemeine Naturgesichte und Theorie des Himmels; it's like "General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens," or "Celestial Theory," where he just makes the argument, that you have a big cloud of dust that is the universe, or part of the universe, and by forces of gravitation, some of that dust condenses and becomes the Sun or planets, and somehow matter is formed. And along with that, goes a notion that you have some very small particles, atoms, of which we consist, that either attract each other or repel each other, and that's kind of the basic forces that are operating in the universe, and people like Newton and others, they fall into that category, and the universities today are full with that.
And what Lyn attacked with the Second Law of Thermodynamics also goes into this: the notion that you have a universe in which you have all kinds of materials, you have energy, somehow it's a big machine that is operating, certain forces that are operating, but at some point it's just running down, and that's the end of it.
But if we look at the real universe, it has been developing ever since—I don't know how or when or under what circumstances it came into being. But we live in a universe, and it has been developing until now. Some people say, it's not going to develop in the future—this is now the end of development, and now it's going to decay. But I would make the wild guess that it's going to continue to develop.
And so I just want to show some of the things that we have in our Solar System. That's another picture of the Sun. Here you see the different planets, the smallest ones; Earth, also—the biggest one, Jupiter, Saturn, the Earth is among the smaller planets....
What you see here, is how much space the planets take, or what is the eccentricity of the orbit, and you find, for example, that Mercury's orbit is quite eccentric. And then you have Venus, which is almost circular; you have Earth that is more eccentric than Venus, but it's still close to a circle. Mars is more eccentric. Then of course, you have this gap between Mars and Jupiter, where you have the asteroids. Then you have Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, which has quite an eccentric orbit; big difference between aphelion and perihelion. And Neptune, again, almost a circular orbit.
So, if you have an idea of the Sun that spins, and spins off material, and that material forms planets; how is it that these planets have different orbits? Is that by accident, or why is that the case? And for example, we know that most planets are more or less in the same plane, around the Sun, moving around like on a gigantic disk in the same direction; but interestingly enough, some planets spin differently. For example, everybody knows that the Earth's orbit is inclined by 23.5°—that's why we have Summer and Winter. But for example, Venus is flipped completely; that is, Venus rotates around itself differently from any other planet, as if it were rolling backwards around its own axis. There, for example, is a question where scientists are supposed to give an answer, they're supposed to deal with this, and they developed theories that some big planet came by, or some comet, and turned Venus around, with some gigantic gravitational force so that it spins differently. But how much sense does that make, while Venus's orbit is almost circular? It's almost a perfect circle? Doesn't make much sense to me, at least.
Another problem that scientists run into, is, why does the Earth have a Moon? Where did it come from? ... To give an idea of how Newtonian the thinking of official science today is: The best theory that scientists, so-called, today have, is that the Moon came into existence because some big object just bumped into the Earth and two pieces were left, Moon and Earth. And there's no better theory that exists, in official university textbooks....
And I'm sure that many people have heard of such thing as Gauss and imaginary numbers to explain certain things that occur, and algebraic calculations, that do not correspond to what we know about how these things are supposed to work, that will not correspond to our axioms or assumptions. Somebody just said, "There must have been another planet back then: Gaia, which is the Earth, and Thea, which is this other planet, and they crashed into each other and formed Earth and Moon." That's the best theory they have up to now.
So, why do we have Moon and Earth in that way?
So, let's go to the picture of Mars. It comes up, because, for instance, Mercury and Venus don't have any moon. Earth has one moon, and a rather big one, that has a big influence on what's going on on the Earth, for example, with tides and things like that. Mars has two moons, but they're rather small—so why that dissimilarity between Earth and Mars? Another area, where for example, Earth and Mars are very similar, is the days are almost equal: The Martian day is just 24 hours 30 minutes, so we could go there and have the same rhythm of being asleep and being awake, we would not have to change it much. On most other planets, that wouldn't work.
Let's jump to Jupiter: Jupiter as compared to the others, is a very, very big planet, and it has many, many moons. I don't know how many moons Jupiter has—they're discovering new moons all the time. On the list I have, it's 39, that are known. And Saturn, 30. And some of them might be suitable for human colonization at some point; we have some similarities to our Moon there. From the standpoint of geology, they are quite interesting.
Now, let's have a look at Uranus. Uranus is also almost flipped, but flipped by 98°, so it's basically rolling over its orbit around the Sun, but quite fast, while some of the inner planets are extremely slow: For Mercury to rotate around itself, takes 58 days (our Earth days). For Venus, it takes over 200 days. Earth, around 24 hours, Mars is similar, but then Jupiter is only 10 hours, Saturn the same thing; Uranus, Neptune, are about 16-17 hours, so they rotate extremely quickly. Why is that the case?
And so, you find many, many paradoxes, where for example, Kepler could not see these things; he did not have access to the kind of data that we have. But as far as I know, there are no answers to why the planets move in these ways that they do—and it's up to us to find out.
I could show you more paradoxes that are involved in the Solar System. One of the things that comes up, is that while the Sun carries a big mass of the Solar System, about 99% of the mass of the Solar System, it has very, very little of the angular momentum of the Solar System. Most of it is in the planets. How much sense does that make?
I just wanted to put these things out, as challenges. I looked at these things because I wanted to understand better, how the Solar System really works. And I don't have the answer to this. I called up Bruce Director and Larry Hecht,[3] and asked them, and they told me, "Read Nicholas of Cusa, that's the best you get. Read Kepler." And that's because in terms of scientific method, there's not much advance since then. We don't have any scientists, universities, institutions today, that have access to any kind of method with which they could deal with these kinds of paradoxes.
So, it's really the Youth Movement that is taking the original works of those people such as Nicholas of Cusa, such as Kepler, to establish a scientific method again. And then hopefully we can answer these questions.
To go back to Pluto—Pluto is also interesting! You may have realized, if you look at our Moon, our Moon always shows us the same face. The same thing with Pluto and Charon, and not only has Charon always the same face to Pluto, but also Pluto to Charon. So they behave in a very fascinating way, and we don't really know why that is the case. Maybe some people do—maybe Lyn knows—but he definitely gave the Youth Movement a challenge to study these things, to study Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum, study the New Astronomy, study the World Harmonies, to find an approach how to find out about these things. Because if we want to colonize Mars, if we want to go to other planets to live there, as I said yesterday, build infrastructure out there in space, we have to find out. And maybe the way to find out, is to go there and find out! Maybe that's what we have to do; maybe there's no other way to do it.
Then, there's other galaxies. Or, there's other stars within our galaxy, maybe 100 billion or so, and then there's probably hundreds of billions of other galaxies. And so, people who say that there are limits to growth, or that economy is about money, are really blocked individuals. Because the universe is so big, and it's up to us to go there and find out.
Just to give another example, I heard the story of some of the German engineers who were important in the Apollo Project that took place in the United States in the 1960s. They started to experiment with rockets at the height of the Depression in Germany in the 1930s, and the story goes—I don't know how far that is true, but it's like an anecdote—there was a movie in the '20s called, "Die Frau im Mond," "The Woman on the Moon," which is supposed to be the first science-fiction movie; one of the first movies with special effects. And they watched that movie, and said, "Damn! That's exciting!" So, they started to build rockets, to experiment with these things.
And then, of course, after World War II, this was extremely important in the whole Apollo Project. And as Lyn said repeatedly, the Apollo Project was one of the last projects where the U.S. economy had really an in-depth, scientific, technological growth, which was not really there after the paradigm-shift.
And so I just wanted to throw out a few things to poke people, to challenge people to take up these things.
We started also some work on the question of the Isotope Economy. Because now we're looking at the universe in the large; but, if you look at the universe in the very small, you find the same problems, where today's universities, today's institutions, run into extreme difficulties, where they come up with all kinds of very, very complicated equations with which to determine what's going on in an atom. And most of these equations work for hydrogen, which has one proton and one electron. But it fails for all the other atoms! Today's universities have no really coherent picture of how to understand these things. So what we really need is a kind of Mendeleyev or a Kepler, who takes up the question of the Isotope Economy, that takes up these phenomena in the Solar System.
So, that's what I have, and it sounds like a lot of work.
Lyn, I had this in mind as a question for you, actually. So, I would like you to comment on these things.
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.: Liberate Man From Shackles on the Mind
(download MP3 audio, which includes the last minutes of Daniel Buchmann's speech)
Yeah! Well, when you get a question like that, you always say, the problem now is the question. And if you want to solve the question, you have to come up with a different question. And that's what is going on in The Basement, up there in Virginia.
Now, I did this for a reason, which is relevant to the proposition that's been thrown at me: I discovered that you're not going to educate and develop youth, if you let Baby Boomers supervise them. Because Baby Boomers will always interrupt them, in the very process when they're trying solve a problem; they'll destroy the concentration span, they will come in with a different agenda, other kinds of things.
So, we revised the program which we'd already started, with the emphasis—and Jonathan Tennnebaum played a useful role in this on both sides of the Atlantic at one point—on calling attention to what we'd agreed on a long time ago, which is to emphasize the work of the Pythagoreans and Plato. And to take one problem as a way of insight into a modern problem, which is Gauss's attack on the incompetence of Euler and so forth and so on; or the actual fraudulent character of the work of Euler, and so forth and so on. Euler had been a competently trained scientist, but he became totally corrupted politically, and as a whore, he did much more poorly in scientific performance than he had before he became a prostitute.
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Johannes Kepler |
Vernadsky |
But my concern was to give the young people a chance to develop in a way which is relevant to politics. And I took a program starting with Pythagoras, and Gauss's exposure of the fraudulent character of the work of Euler, for example. And I said, that's the starting point. And then, the first thing we did, is I took the question of working through Kepler in two phases. The first phase was simply to look at the question of how gravitation as a principle was discovered, and defined as a principle—and I'll come to that point, because that's crucial. The second thing is to determine how the Solar System as a whole operates, and what the relationship is to the orbiting of the Sun by the Earth: What is this relationship to the way in which the principle of gravitation organizes the whole Solar System?
And then we went on to the other things, which was the Harmonies,[4] which I think some of you have seen; that's a fairly ample report and there was some work done here in support of that.
The Problem With Understanding Gauss
Also, we're now working on the Gauss on the orbit of Ceres. That contains a very interesting problem, which I had laid out as a special challenge. I had a crew of people, two successive crews going through the Kepler, and the product, I think you've probably seen on the website, the reports of it. But with Gauss, I warned people, "Hold off." When you're studying the work of Kepler, you have the most frank and detailed exposure of a process of scientific discovery in all history. Because the project starts—and Kepler keeps rewriting, effectively, his books. When he changes and corrects an error, he doesn't eliminate the error; he reports the error, and then explains why he recognized an error, and how he dealt with that. And that's right next to it.
So, in the case of Kepler, you have the clearest demonstration on a large scale, of a great scientific mind, understanding the universe better, by examining its own effort to understand the universe. So, Kepler is reciprocal: Kepler presents you science, as the study of the behavior of mind, which is making scientific discoveries; and the process of correction that involves. That's unique.
Then we came to Gauss. Now, Gauss is fun, because Gauss never tells the truth. That is, in very few cases, does Gauss actually present the method by which the discovery was made. Now Gauss tells the truth about one thing: When he comes up to a discovery, to present the resulting discovery, he then gives you a presentation of the way in which this discovery can be validated. Usually mathematically. But he doesn't tell you the truth—and there's a very good reason for it, which is relevant to what we're doing here, today, and in society.
The reason he doesn't tell you the truth, is because there's a reign of terror going on. Gauss had destroyed the credibility of Euler and Lagrange. Lagrange went on to Paris, where he became a protégé of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1799. And Bonaparte took the first step toward breaking up the Ecole Polytechnique, which was the leading scientific institution of Europe at that time, which had been formed on the brink of the French Revolution, but actually had a longer basis in the work of Gaspard Monge.
So, what happened, of course, is that the French Revolution, which is based on a bunch of bastards—the French Revolution was out to destroy science, as the case of Lavoisier shows, during the Terror, the same kind of thing. And they wanted a mechanistic conception of the universe, instead. They had adopted the conception which Euler, Lagrange, and so forth, had represented in that century, as the anti-Leibniz conception, actually an anti-scientific conception.
Now, as Napoleon came to power, remember he was a part of the Reign of Terror; he was a protégé of Maximilien Robespierre, and he was a complete opportunist who was trained by Joseph de Maistre, who gave him a new personality. He did a personality re-profiling of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon Bonaparte was actually modeled upon Torquemada, the great Inquisitional figure of terror. And Joseph de Maistre was a key person who justified and defended the French Terror.
So this crowd, a bunch of thugs, were used effectively by the British, to destroy France, and the rest of Europe as well. Because Napoleon was not only involved in the defense of France, which had already been adequately defended by Lazard Carnot, who was the real Author of Victory; but Napoleon was an instrument, who could be compared, in effect, to Lynne Cheney's agent, her husband Dick. Napoleon Bonaparte did the same thing for all Europe, as a traitor to France and a traitor to Europe, that was done, the role that was played by the Great Elector's successor, that is, Frederick the Great. Frederick the Great was a stooge for the British. The British were in the process of building an empire. France was still a powerful nation. Other nations in Europe were emerging as powerful nations. By the Seven Years' War, as a part of a series of wars organized by Anglo-Dutch Liberalism, which had taken over England and was out to destroy everything. They destroyed France in stages, with Louis XIV's folly.
So, in this process, you had the ruin of all Europe, in which a very capable commander, Friedrich der Grosse, is running defensive wars with financial support from Britain, engaging Russia, engaging France at certain times, engaging the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and so forth. All of Europe was torn up in the Seven Years' War, as one of a series of wars, which led into the Peace of Paris of February 1763. Which was the birth of the American Revolution.
Because what happened is, the Anglo-Dutch Liberals—and remember, the ignition of this was actually by the Dutch. The Dutch conquered the British, and turned them into something strange. But this process created the empire of what? The empire of Paolo Sarpi's system, the system of that evil swindler, Galileo, and so forth. Which I've explained in some detail elsewhere—that's another story.
But to get down to the main thing: that Europe has been destroyed, again, and again, and again, since William of Orange's takeover of the English monarchy, and the rape of the Irish, for which they've never forgiven anybody. This process has been going on to the present day, with a series of long wars, designed as imitations of the folly of the Peloponnesian War by which Greece destroyed itself: long wars! And before that, from the attempt to destroy the Renaissance by religious warfare, organized by Torquemada, which started a wave of religious wars, which was ended only by the intervention of Cardinal Mazarin, in 1648, with the Peace of Westphalia.
But it was resumed again—with Louis XIV. The policy led by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, was undermined. The most successful growth of science in Europe in that century, was under the direction and sponsorship and guidance of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Leibniz was a part of this process; his development as the leading scientist in the world of that time, was a part of this process. There were movements in England; there were movements in settlements of English colonies and other colonies, moving in this direction: towards a civilization based on the achievement of 1648.
The Wars of Liberalism
So, what did they do? Religious war of one type had ceased, with 1648. They started it all over again, with a series of Liberal wars, the wars of Liberalism to destroy civilization! And 1763 was the culmination of the process: At which, the Venetian bankers, of the faction of Paolo Sarpi, who had first infested the Netherlands and polluted the dikes; moved across the Channel, into England with William of Orange, and took over England, too. You had the birth, therefore, of this process, which went between the occupation of England by William of Orange, until the accession of the first Hannover dynasty, with George I of England. This entire period, the period from 1648 to about 1812-1814, is occupied by the struggle, by the Venetian influence, led at one point by Sarpi, to destroy science and so forth, and everything else. And to set up an empire—not of Kings and Queens!—but an empire of bankers! A system of usurers, modeled upon the ancient model of ancient Venice; actually the ancient model of the Cult of Delphi! Which created a synthetic called "Roman," out of the bowels of an Etruscan civilization, by similar methods. And used that instrument later, to destroy Europe, through the Roman imperialism.
So, this was the problem.
Therefore, this force—don't think of Napoleon Bonaparte as a hero of France. He was the worst disease France ever got—including syphilis.
So therefore, you have a process there. The United States has been established as a republic; it's essentially largely isolated, it's intended to be destroyed—by the British monarchy! But it wasn't the British monarchy, it was the British East India Company. It was a collection of bankers and thieves: who have been the chief force of evil on this planet ever since! Including Hitler! Hitler was a creation of the British monarchy. Hitler was brought into power by them. As I've explained—to do what? Again, more wars! World War I didn't start in 1914, it started in 1894. When the British monarchy succeeded in getting the Japanese monarch to start a long war against China, which started officially, in 1895, and continued until the defeat of Japan by MacArthur, in 1945.
This period was a period of consistent war, organized by the British Empire! The British Empire, which is the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system! And the name Liberalism means "syphilis," in the sense of moral syphilis, every kind of syphilis. Liberalism is evil!
This goes right to The Basement question. Why The Basement?
Therefore, the problem has been, how do we keep this use of long wars, and Liberal corruption, Liberal ideas, Liberalism in science, all of these pestilences which are a fraud: How do we keep them from destroying us again? Again, and again?
This was the problem that Gauss faced, from about 1800-1805 on, which is why he would never tell the truth about his discoveries, from that time on. His first published discoveries, his first two—one became his doctoral degree, the other became his habilitation paper—these two things he did honestly, and was able to speak frankly, as a scientist. After that, he was no longer able to speak as freely. And he always would discover things in one way, but then, after validating his discovery, would then come and give an official interpretation of the discovery. And what you read in many of the Gauss's writings is the official interpretation, not the actual process of discovery.
Well, of course, I knew this. So, when we came to the Gauss project, I got them together in The Basement, and said, "This is different. You've been working with Kepler. We've had two teams in here with Kepler. Your work has been open, you've done it, it's worked." And they made individual discoveries which I'll get back to, which I think is Daniel's point. "But now, you're faced with a new problem. What Gauss tells you is truthful. His explanation is not dishonest, it's a representation of the way he describes his process of discovery, after the fact. It is not the method he used, to make the discovery."
Because Gauss was actually—to tell you a secret; now that they've discovered this, I can tell you the secret—what he discovered was that the geometry of the universe is Riemannian! Gauss did not fully understand what Riemann did later. But Gauss's conception of physical space-time, is the same conception which existed with Nicholas of Cusa; in the work of Kepler, in particular; in the work of the greatest minds in the time of Jean-Baptiste Colbert in France, in that great project; in the mind of Leibniz—it's all implicit in the work of Leibniz. Hmm? All there. And it works in the key work of Gauss! And many other scientists associated with that.
The whole fight inside the Ecole Polytechnique, in succession, after the Duke of Wellington had put an English stooge on the French throne, as the Restoration monarch. (I don't know why they call him a Restoration monarch. It's like calling it like something from Dracula.)
From that time on, to the present, the essential thing: Science has been dominated by a fraud, called "Anglo-Dutch Liberalism." Now the key thing here, which is what we dealt with in The Basement, and the importance of the Ceres project on Gauss, which they're doing, is the following (and the Riemann work will depend absolutely on success in doing this work, and people will then begin to understand how I think about economy).
Let's just step back a minute. What's the main question here? Some people think they've learned science; they haven't. Most of them haven't. They've learned something which passes for science under conditions of Liberalism, British Liberalism, Anglo-Dutch Liberalism, which is the enemy of humanity. Has been the enemy of humanity ever since 1763. And was the enemy of humanity, in another form, under Sarpi's influence before that.
What Is Creativity?
What's the difference between man and an animal?
Is there a biological difference between man and a beast? One that you can determine by medical science, in the normal sense, today? No. There is none.
What's the difference?
The difference is, the animal aspect of man is mortal, and dies. The human aspect of man is not mortal, and does not die. The human aspect of man, or the human individual, is not located within the confines of an animalistic body. Even though we do have an animalistic body; that's an appendage of us!
What the human being can do, that no animal can do, is make a fundamental discovery of universal principle, a true principle of the universe: Only a human being can do that. And it's only through that power, the power of the human being as distinct from the animal, from any kind of animal; or for any kind of study of biology, as known today, except the effects of some of the biology, like the power of the human creative will in sometimes controlling the way the human biology functions. The difference is, that mankind, unlike any animal species, can make a discovery, and apply that discovery, which will increase the potential relative population-density of the human species, or of the particular society.
This is the power which is called "creativity." This is the power which is the enemy of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, so-called. Because, if you believe that the universe is organized in a way which deals with some universal law of entropy, or a fixed system, you don't understand the universe, and you don't understand the human mind.
What is creativity? Well, by creativity, we mean, essentially, the discovery of a universal physical principle, as typified by Kepler's discovery of gravitation, especially in the Harmonies. The issue is already there, clearly, in the question of the orbit of Earth. But it is not forced upon you, until you face the Harmonies. Because, how is gravitation organized? It's organized as Bach would have wished! The principle of gravitation is a principle of the universe, which the fakers call the "Third Law." But it's not called the Third Law by Kepler. It's what the British came along with as an explanation, to try to explain it out of the way. It's the power of the individual human mind to discover a principle of the universe, such that that principle as understood by the human mind, can be employed by human beings to change the universe!
That's the difference between man and the animal!
That's why I had to get people into The Basement, away from the Boomers. Because the Boomer culture is rather soft on Liberalism, at least as a philosophical system, and saying, "Well, you have to be Liberal" or something. "You have to submit to this."
But if you want to be a scientist, you can't be a Liberal! If you're trying to be a scientist and you're a Liberal, you're wasting your time; or, you wasting somebody else's time and money.
The discovery of universal physical principles occurs in a universe which is anti-entropic, in principle. And only the human mind, among all known living creatures, can do that.
That's the difference between being an animal, and living like a beast! All ancient history is predominantly evil, in the sense, not that it lacks competent people, or leading people, or leading institutions. But the fact that it condemns the majority of humanity to a bestial existence, precisely as the great Greek tragedian Aeschylus portrays the fight of Prometheus in Prometheus Bound: People are not supposed to be allowed to discover universal physical principles, by which man is able to change the universe and man's destiny. Human beings are supposed to behave like the cow that is well cared for, and goes into the barn, and is well treated ... until the day it's slaughtered. That's the Physiocratic principle, the same thing. The fundamental principle of all British economics and Cartesian systems is the same thing: the denial of the existence of the powers of creativity, the denial of the existence of actual universal physical principles. That's it!
My concern is to liberate man from slavery. And the worst slavery is not the slavery of the shackles on your hand, it's the slavery of the shackles on your mind!
And you have to appreciate the fact that there is something, that you don't get taught in schools, these days; you don't get taught in textbooks, and you can leave universities quite successfully without knowing anything about it: the meaning of creativity and the meaning of anti-entropy.
And therefore, the only way you can teach this, is, you can't teach it with a whip; and you can't teach it at a blackboard: People have to discover it and experience it, in themselves. What you have to do, is know what the mission is, and try to create the circumstances and structure the challenge, on which it is likely, that people facing that challenge, in cooperation, will interact among themselves, and will actually make, what was for them, an original discovery of a universal physical principle.
That's what happened in the case of the work on the Kepler, the two phases. It became conspicuously clear in the work on the second part, on the question of the harmonics. Because, mathematics, as taught and believed by most people, does not work in dealing with universal physical principles—it does not work. And the Harmonies demonstrates it. Why?
What it demonstrates is this: The solution on the harmonics depends upon, as I've written about this matter, the fact that vision does not tell you the truth about what you think you're seeing. Nor does hearing. These are two different "organs" of the human body. Consider these like scientific instruments: These are only instruments of perception. They are not direct knowledge, of actuality. They're not means by which you can control the universe in which you live. They're not means by which man has power, as described in the first chapter of Genesis, of man and woman as being made in the likeness of the Creator, and with the powers and responsibilities, in imitation of the Creator. That's spirituality! That's truth. That's the nature of man.
So therefore, my job is to try to get people to experience the reality, the actuality, of creativity in themselves. And by getting an interaction, in which you catalyze and cause that to occur, you get a stroke of genius. What these fellows did, when they get at a crucial thing—I think Jean-Sebastien [Tremblay]'s not here, presently; probably driving someone home—but what we did with Jean-Sebastien's cello, is, we went through this, every bit of the data on frequencies in Kepler's work on the harmonics. And we had people re-experiencing what Kepler experienced in coming to the conclusion of his organization of the Solar System. And that's what you can hear on that thing.
Now anyone who doesn't do that, and tells you they understand Kepler, or understand the Solar System, doesn't know what he's talking about! Because he has not actually experienced a discovery! Because our visual sense, our sense-certainty is false! What we see, if we believe it, is false. What we hear, if we believe, is false! Only the human mind, and the creative powers of the human mind, which separate the human being from the category of the animals, is an experience of the human soul; is an experience of that power, of mankind above all beasts, which is characteristic of humanity. And which is the right of humanity! This is the only true meaning of freedom! Without this freedom, you don't have freedom. You have liberty, but not necessarily freedom.
The farmer allows the cow liberty, to go out of the barn, into the field, but brings it back in. The cow does not have creativity. The cow has been given liberty, not creativity.
So therefore, my concern, which Daniel refers to here, has been, and remains, that, to have a race of people—and there's only one human race—but the race of people, who have realized the actuality of man's destiny, as Genesis 1, for example, points to this. To have that, you must discover, in yourself, something you know is the power of mind, which is called "creativity." And you reach that, only by meeting a challenge.
Our Mission Today
And we have come to a point of desperation in history, in which we now are on the verge of the complete dissolution and disintegration of civilization, which would last for generations to come. Unless we, in the immediate period ahead, make certain changes, away from everything that's generally accepted today, this planet is not going to be civilized much longer. Therefore, we need the factor, the motive, the commitment to creativity, among some people who will infectiously impart it to others, and you impart it largely by example: Become creative yourself, and give an example of what you're doing, and hope that the interest, the infection, the influence, occurs and spreads.
And this is particularly possible, to do this, among young people between the ages of 18 and about 30; 25, 27, you're already in an area of risk, if you haven't started. When young people, who take a leading role in society, of influence, have experienced creativity in themselves, and recognize it socially, in themselves, they have become transformed, unless they're broken. They become transformed into an epitome of what human beings, in general, must become.
And our real mission here—when you think about all the crises that man has gone through with various kinds of societies on this planet, and yet this problem has not yet been solved. But the intention has always been there to solve this problem! To bring mankind into its true destiny! A destiny of creative beings, and in that respect, in the likeness of the Creator. And how do you do that? You take some people who are adults—18 is about the age this thing begins to hit, if it's going to hit—and make sure that they develop this power of creativity, probably before 30, preferably before 27. This is my definition of a Youth Movement. And the key thing is leadership within a Youth Movement, and leadership in a Youth Movement is the process of developing within the Youth Movement, between the ages of 18 and 27 to 35 at the most, to develop this sense among the whole Youth Movement; develop some within it, who epitomize this power of discovery of creativity in themselves.
And that's what my program is, for The Basement: to start with the beginning of truth, in terms of science, and the earliest definition of truth we know of, is with the Pythagoreans and Plato. We have done some of that work, and that still is valid for all of them. We then went directly to the student of Cusa, to Kepler, who created modern science—he, and no one else, created an actual modern, European science. All competent modern European science is derived directly from the work of Kepler. And without the work of Leibniz, and of course, people like Fermat and others, who were associated with him, we wouldn't have had any progress beyond that.
Gauss is a reflection of the creative process which wears a mask, in order to protect itself from being identified as a dangerous species. And the great student of Gauss, is Riemann. And since Riemann, there has been no discovery in science, in fundamental principles. Many useful things have been discovered; many useful principles have been discovered. But Riemann represents the highest level of knowledge, with one exception: a student of Riemann, Vernadsky.
Vernadsky has put the universe into fuller perspective, as a Riemannian universe.
And that's what I represent. Vernadsky was something I was groping for, for some time, and then later in life, found him. But my adult life has always been dedicated, first of all, to Leibniz, and then to Riemann. And then later, to realize that my desires were fulfilled by the discoveries and work of Vernadsky.
You know, Goethe is an interesting fellow, a contradictory fellow. And there's one work of his, which is incomplete, which is also typical of him as being contradictory: Der Gross-Cophta, which was an incomplete drama. And in that, there was another case of irony: You had a composer who set the "Song of Prometheus" to music—Hugo Wolf. Who is not my favorite composer, though I thought his "Mörike" is very good in general. But I heard it sung by a great Jewish German bass, Friedrich Schorr. Who was functioning in Germany at the time before Hitler. He was a cantor in the shul, in the temple, singing as the cantor in the Jewish religious service. He was also, at the same time, one of the great operatic basses of that time.
But in this, there's one passage, in which Goethe shows himself at his best, and also his weakest: in the conclusion of that passage, which I ran into, back about 1946, which has stuck with me ever since then: Prometheus shakes his fist at Zeus, and he says, "I condemn you. I damn you! I stand here, making men in my own image, who will despise you, as I do."
And I like that. That's my attitude. I say to the tyrants of the world: "I stand here like Prometheus. I despise you! And I'm trying to make men in my own image, who despise you, as I do!"
And that's what it's all about.
[1] Helga Zepp-LaRouche showed excerpts from a video of the Mexican President's speech, on the opening day of the Schiller Institute conference. López Portillo and Lyndon LaRouche had met in Mexico during the Summer of 1982, when the Mexican economy was under heavy attack. LaRouche then wrote Operation Juárez, a program of action for the integration of the Ibero-American continent. López Portillo nationalized Mexico's banking system to stem the speculative attacks by the world financier oligarchy. At the UN, he described the motivation for his actions. He was viciously attacked, and smeared by corruption libels which are responsible for the fact that most Mexicans today do not know the true history of what he tried to do for the nation. The transcript of his remarks is in EIR, September 7, 2007. The video, in Spanish, with English translation, is at larouchepac.com/media/2007/08/27/jos-l-pez-portillo-tuvo-raz-n-en-1982-y-tiene-aun-m-s-raz-n-.html.
[2] Check back soon for slides.
[3] Bruce Director is the author of most of the LaRouche Movement's pedagogical exercises titled "Riemann for Anti-Dummies," including extensive work on Gauss, which he has presented in classes to the LYM internationally. Larry Hecht is the editor of 21st Century Science & Technology.
[4] Kepler's work is available in English as The Harmony of the World by Johannes Kepler, translated by E.J. Aiton, A.M. Duncan, and J.V. Field (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997). For reports from the LYM "Basement" team, see larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2013/eirv40n49-20131213/16-21_4049.pdf.
Related pages:
More Conference Speeches from the Schiller Institute Landbridge Conference
Jacques Cheminade's Speech to the Landbridge Conference
Amelia Boynton Robinson’s Speech to the Landbridge Conference
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Strategic Studies - Links to More Articles
The LaRouche Youth Movement Website
Physical Economy Pages with Links to More Articles
