LAROUCHE'S APRIL 11 WEBCAST
`Seven Sequential Points' on Science,
Economy, and the Future of Humanity
Lyndon LaRouche gave this webcast address to an audience in Northern Virginia on April 11, 2009. Following introductory remarks on the the severe policy problem of the economic and strategic policy drift of the Obama White House, LaRouche developed these crucial points, beginning with the question of human scientific progress and the environment. An extensive question-and-answer policy dialogue followed. The complete video is available here.
[PDF transcript of LaRouche's complete webcast]
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Now, I'm going to deal with seven questions, now, with technical questions, and the first one, I'll formulate carefully, as I've done here, again because of sensitivity. But then, I shall just take the other six questions, in my usual style.
Fraud of Global Warming
First thing, is clear the decks. There's something we have to get out of our system as a nation, now. It's a hot subject, people don't like to take it on, but it must be taken on. If we don't take it on, this nation is not going to survive.
The first popular delusion—I'm going to address a total of seven delusions, which affect policy now—the first popular delusion, we must clear off the table of our nation's policymaking immediately, is the following; otherwise, our nation has no chance of surviving this presently onrushing global crisis:
This planet has recently entered two phases of a relatively long-term process of global cooling! In the immediate present, we have entered a relatively shorter term, of some years to come, which is already a solar phase of global cooling, as indicated by the recent, ominous drop in sunspot activity. That is, sunspot activity dropped, as this happened now, which demonstrates we are entering a solar-determined global cooling, as typified by the recapping of the icecap on the Arctic. The Arctic melting has ended; the Arctic freeze is back, bigger than ever! We are now in global cooling! Not global warming: Global warming is supposed to happen in Hell. And those who like that should go there!
All right. At the same time, we've entered a long-term tendency toward an expansion of glaciation, as the freezing-over of the icecap on the Arctic has shown. This second cooling phase has to do with three, long-term systems in the Solar System, which are the usual reason for the past 2 million years of the ebbs and flows of a continuing process of glaciation of the planet. In other words, from about 17,000 B.C., there was a significant melt, after about 100,000 years, which resulted in the Mediterranean becoming a Mediterranean Sea, not a lake; and later transformed the Black Sea from a freshwater lake, into a salt sea! And so forth. And this has gone on.
We're now back; we have reached the peak low, in terms of the melt, and the glaciation process is now increasing. And this is increasing because of three long-term factors in the solar orbits which create this condition. There are other factors, like radiation, or the Crab Nebula, which is a distant part of the same [Milky Way] galaxy. It gives us regular pulses of cosmic rays, which interfere with solar activity. So there are all kinds of factors which moderate and adjust these trends. But for 2 million years, this planet has been, and remains in a period of glaciation, which gets bigger and then gets smaller, and gets bigger. And generally, these periods are broken down, these ebbs and flows are broken down, in longer-term trends of about 100,000 years.
So we're now coming to the phase where, the freeze is on, boys! Get your overcoats out: Global warming is not going to happen. It could happen for other reasons, but it's not happening naturally.
So this is a fake! Global warming is a fake. Anybody who says they're a scientist, and says they believe in global warming, is a fake! And is not to be listened to. There are tens of thousands of competent scientists on this planet, who have signed on to attest to the fact, that global warming is a fraud. And therefore, the attempt to organize this planet and its economy, on the basis of an assumption of global warming, is a fraud! And it's deadly. I'll get to some of the considerations on that later. But it's important that this be understood.
The World Wildlife Nazis
Now, the entirety of this so-called global warming trend is a deliberate fraud, which has been concocted by the joint action of two principal founders of the World Wildlife Fund: The one, now deceased some years ago, is the former Nazi, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands; and his buddy, is Britain's Prince Philip. The policy of genocide, as expressed by Prince Philip, as in his intention to reduce the world's population by no less than two-thirds! as fast as possible—that's his global warming project—is the same doctrine, which was uttered earlier, and often, by the Satanic figure known as Bertrand Russell, who was the first, in September 1946, to propose the early launching of global nuclear warfare, for this same purpose.
Some will protest that I'm accusing Princes Philip and Bernhard, like Bertrand Russell, of Hitler-like thinking: That is precisely what I intend to say. And there is absolutely no error, and no possibility of error, in my stating the fact of what I'm saying about that matter, and them, now! That danger, today, is typified by the cases of the burgeoning accumulation of associations such as MySpace and Facebook, whose particular relevance is that they represent, together with devotees of the killer computer games, a lost generation of young people, such as many children and grandchildren of the 68ers, who have fled from the real world, into strange, cultish withdrawals, known to scientists and other scholars from the old times of similar cults: I refer to similar cults, such as the ancient cult of Dionysius, and the modern Nietzschean versions of that cult, such as the Nazi party, the green leadership of the 1920s, the drug cults, the LSD cult, launched in the United States and Canada by the British trio—the Satanist Aleister Crowley, H.G. Wells, and Bertrand Russell—during the 1920s and the 1930s, are the proximate origin of the neo-Dionysian drug- and related social-withdrawal cults, proliferating among many of our young people in the Americas and Europe today.
The cases of the circle of kooks, exposed by Time magazine, are expressions of the Dionysian cults, which sprang up under the auspices of the notable 68ers, as spawned as the offspring of the European Congress for Cultural Freedom, during the course of the 1945-1989 interval.
As Time magazine has performed a much-needed service in exposing the organized efforts to brainwash our incumbent President, so most of the wicked social phenomena which afflict society have been manufactured by witting agencies, which hide their influence behind that cult of the stupefied, the cult of those who profess: "I don't believe in conspiracy theories."
We must remember that virtually all great achievements, in the history of mankind, have come about through the awakening of a large portion of an entire population, to recognizing the absurdity and danger, represented by the kind of Dionysiac and kindred cults of "true believers," which include the social withdrawal cults such as Prince Philip's and Bernhard's World Wildlife Fund of today.
LaRouche's Forecasts
Now, I proceed to the other six points: certain popular delusions about the nature of economy. It should be noted here, and on the record, that I've been forecasting economic developments, with success, since my first forecast, made in 1956, which was a short-term forecast, when I forecast that in about February-early March of 1957, there would be the heaviest, biggest recession in the post-war U.S. history. And it came on time, as I promised.
Then I made a longer forecast, which pertained to the late '60s and the beginning of the '70s, in which I forecast, at that time, unless there were certain changes made from the policies which were operating at the end of the 1960s, that by the middle of the 1960s, we would enter the beginning of a breakdown process in the economy, and we must expect, then, that by the end of the 1960s—if that condition continued—or by the beginning of the 1970s, we would be on the way to a general disintegration of the economy.
Now, since that time, I've made a number of forecasts. None of these forecasts are based on statistical methods. Because I do not believe in statistics. Statistics do not determine how an economy functions. Because monetary processes do not determine how an economy functions. Monetary processes may reflect the decisions by governments and others, which cause these effects, but it is not statistical processes that determine these processes in economies. These trends in economies are determined by the will of powerful influences who shape policy.
Now, the long-term policy, here, is: It happened on the day, on the 13th of April, 1945. On the previous day, Franklin Roosevelt had died. On the 13th of April, Truman cancelled the polices of Franklin Roosevelt, and adopted the policies of a fascist, known as John Maynard Keynes. John Maynard Keynes' theory, at that time, and later—and his followers' later, to the present time—was based on a book written by John Maynard Keynes, in 1937. This book, which was published in German, with a preface in German, identified the purpose of this publication, that Keynes said, in the preface, that it was his intention that Germany under Hitler was an economy better suited to his methods than others states. And he was right! He was right.
Keynes, by the way, was quite a kook, in his own right, in many dimensions of kookery; I don't mean in the oven, either.
Remember what had happened: We, in the United States, under Roosevelt, had, beginning the day that Roosevelt entered office—we were headed on the road to Hell, economic hell; we had been moving in that direction, as a tendency in policy-shaping, not in trends in economy as such, but in trends in policy-shaping, since the assassination of President William McKinley, which had brought Teddy Roosevelt, and later Woodrow Wilson, the Ku Klux Klan man, into the Presidency. The Ku Klux Klan man, Woodrow Wilson—his family were members of the Klan, and it was Wilson, who as President, relaunched the Ku Klux Klan in the United States, from the White House, personally! And the same kind of thing was going on in the 1920s under Coolidge, who kept his mouth shut, because he knew he was a criminal, and might confess; and Herbert Hoover, who was a competent engineer, but had bad politics, and he worked for people who had worse politics.
So, when Roosevelt came in, we were in a long-term process of destruction.
Maritime Culture and Astral Navigation
One more step, which you have to take into account: In the known history of mankind, the superior form of culture was never on land-based development, inland-based development. All successful leading currents in culture, in economic culture, have come from maritime culture: people who lived on the sea, or on the coasts as seafaring people. Because they were working, for one thing—they were more intelligent, because to navigate on oceans, you have to know something about the Solar System and the stars, particularly in long-term navigation.
And during periods of the recent 200,000 years of ice ages, most of the civilization of the Northern Hemisphere was done by people who were living in the Arctic during one part of the year, and going down to other places the other time; or in the Indian Ocean, where there was an important culture, at the time when the levels of the waters of the planet, were 400 feet below, approximately, what they are today. Because the water was in the ice on top of this process.
So, the development of a scientific culture—the very use of the word "universal" typifies this—reflects the necessity of using the stars for navigation, because we have a population, which is going around in a flotilla of craft from one part to the other, as the seasons change. They can not do this, they can not migrate, without the ability to navigate, and you navigate by the stars. And the long-term navigation depends upon looking at the star system, rather than just the planetary system. And so, the culture of mankind has always been based, up to a certain point, on maritime culture.
The other aspect is, that until the middle of the 19th Century, it was more efficient, and easier, to trade by water, than by land. Rivers, but especially seas and oceans, were the basis for culture. You had people who were trying to live inland, but under very poor conditions. And the dominant culture of the planet was, for a very long time, maritime cultures, seagoing peoples. And the people who lived inland, were always relatively backward, because it was more costly, they couldn't move around with the facility and so forth, so that was the case.
Now, a change occurred, in the middle of the 19th Century. A change occurred, for two reasons: First of all, the system of empires, that emerged from the Mediterranean, in particular, about the time of the Peloponnesian War, from that time on, the maritime cultures were the dominant cultures of the Mediterranean. They were the dominant cultures, also, of the Indian Ocean. Remember, there was a time, when the Indian Ocean was 400 feet below the level it is today, in which the coast of India was much wider. And during the period of glaciation, the amount of water flowing in the great rivers was much greater. So you had a very important culture in the Subcontinent; and you had important cultures in the maritime areas where culture was occurring. So these were the dominant cultures.
And so, empires, as they developed, developed on the ocean, as maritime empires, not land-based empires—the leading empires were just exactly that.
So what happened in the 19th Century, with the development of the Transcontinental Railroad system of the United States, a development which took this territory, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Canadian to the Mexican border, and developed in us, a land-mass nation-state, a sovereign nation-state which was more efficient, in its internal land-based transportation, than was ocean freight.
It's still the case, today. If you want to ship something of importance long distances, you want a transcontinental, high-speed railroad system—not a car system, but a railroad system; which is more efficient, makes you more productive per capita, than any other way, in shipping for example. Aircraft is not an efficient way to carry freight long distance, except emergency, premium freight. Ocean travel is not the efficient way to get around this planet. The efficient way is modern railway systems, or magnetic levitation systems. That's the best way to develop a continent.
So, what happened then, when the United States developed, in the aftermath of the Lincoln Administration, developed the Transcontinental Railway system—an intention which had already been devised as Secretary of State John Quincy Adams had devised it—this policy made the United States the greatest power on this planet, in terms of its character.
This, therefore, meant the victory of the United States over the British, who set up the invasion of Mexico, and who set up the Civil War in the United States. The defeat of the British on this point, with the development of the economy around the Transcontinental Railway system, was the greatest threat the British Empire ever faced.
And thus, when Europe, after 1876, particularly, 1877, as in Germany, as in Russia, as in France, as in other countries, began to move immediately, toward the development of transcontinental railway systems, this was a revolution, which eliminated the power, the maritime power of the British Empire. And all the struggles and wars we've had since that time, are prefaced by the determination of the British Empire to eliminate the United States as a power and to restore secure power, forever, to a British Empire, an empire of money, not of Britons; the British can't think, but the money moves.
So that's the problem we have. That's the issue of the crisis.
British Imperialism Is the World Empire
Now, the other side of this, the complement of this, is that the development of mankind, the development of the power of the individual, the development of the nation, depends upon scientific development—fundamental scientific breakthroughs and their byproducts, which are then used to increase the power of man, per capita and per square kilometer, to increase the potential for population and so forth. Whereas, the desire to have an empire, an empire of money, an empire of usury, depends upon suppressing the scientific knowledge and practice of populations, and keeping them backward and dumb, and thus controlling them.
And the fight we have, the fight on this planet today, the fight against Prince Philip, that fascist; the fight against the dead fascist, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, is the same thing: They try to make us stupid, they tell us we can't have science, we mustn't have high-density energy sources. We must not have this! We must go backward, we must go back to the caves. We must protect the bats! Aren't the bats just as good as we are? It's a sucker society.
So the point is, the fight for progress, the fight for development of science, the fight for capital-intensive investment in the productive power of mankind, is a fight to free mankind from this bestial state of imperialism! And British imperialism is the world empire! There is no other empire on this planet today! Any jerk can say he's an empire; he can sit on a street corner and have a little tin can out there and say, "I'm an empire." But he's not an empire! The British Empire is the only empire on this planet, today.
And so, thus, what happened in 1865-66, and then into 1876, was a revolution, which affirmed the United States in its character as a sovereign nation-state, and held out to the people of the world to free themselves from empire! And to establish a system of cooperating, sovereign nation-states on this planet. And that's the key issue here.
And this issue—it also comes intellectually, in the question of how we think about economy. If we understand, that it is scientific progress, fundamental scientific progress, which is the basis for our ability to meet the demands of mankind, and provide a future for mankind, then the great struggle on this planet, is not a struggle of wars, of military forces. It's a struggle between those who wish to develop the mind and capabilities of the human individual and peoples, against those who want to keep the people down! And keep them on the level that the so-called environmentalists want.
Now, since you can not sustain a population of more than 5 billion people on this planet, without nuclear power and similar kinds of technological progress, therefore, those who want an empire, of one form or the other, want to reduce the population of the planet to less than 2 billion people.
And that's what the environmentalist movement is all about: Is genocide! A program of genocide. And that's what Prince Philip means. And that's what that fascist, that ex-Nazi, Prince Bernhard meant.
So, the delusions we have about an economy, arise from the fact that someone thinks an economy is a matter of money, or business in terms of money, or selling your neighbor. Selling your neighbor himself, not what he has to offer.
So, money is not the determinant of wealth. And the statistical measures of money flows have nothing to do with actual forecasting of wealth. They may affect things, because the policy is that direction. But the thing which affects the planet, is the development of the mind of the individual. And the development of the mind of the individual which means a higher level of culture, a Classical culture! Classical art, Classical music, so forth. This is the measure of mankind. If you're against Classical culture, then you're for the destruction of the mind of the society: You want to produce a bunch of animals, who don't know any better. And they grunt. They don't have to learn how to parse; they don't have know how to do counterpoint; they can just grunt. Or if they get tired of grunting, they can always scream.
So the issue of money is not the determinant.
It's Not Statistics!
What has happened, as in the case of the United States, as it was demonstrated again with the case of Franklin Roosevelt's reform, was, what you need is a fixed-exchange-rate system, among sovereign currencies of nations. Because value does not lie in money! Money is simply a vehicle to organize exchange: investment, and goods, and exchange. It has no intrinsic value. Statistical measures of money flow, do not really tell you anything about how an economy works.
I've always been right, since my first forecast in 1956, I've always been right. And every critical time, everyone's who's opposed me has been wrong: They use statistical methods, which are intrinsically incompetent. They measure in terms of money statistics. It's an incompetent measurement. The important thing is what do you do, to invest in the physical productive powers of labor. And also to invest in the development of the mind and social relations of people, which are essential for that increase in productivity. The physical productive powers of labor, made possible by inventions. No animal can make an invention; no animal ever discovered a principle.
So therefore, only man and only man's creativity, the creativity which is potential in man as in no other species, is capable of creating a modern human economy. No money system defines a human economy, except as rot in the economy. We need money, in a sense. Money as a deal of trade. But the productivity is the increase of the productive powers of labor, per capita and per square kilometer of this planet. And that comes from two things: the development of the physical power to produce, which is a reflection of physical science, including biological science. And the other thing, is the development of the ability to communicate ideas of that type, which has to do with the culture, a literate culture of a people, and the development of that literacy, and the development of the use of that culture.
So, that's what economy is.
Also, there are other things that I'll get to here, but that's the point. The reason people fake it, they say, "Well, what do statistics tell us?" You're listening to statistics? Hmm? Who's your psychiatrist?
It's not statistics.
The Auto Industry, for Example
For example, just to make this point clear, because it is a contentious point: My forecast in 1956, of course, was based on my work in Riemannian physics, as applied to economy. And what I understood, because I was a practical consultant, also, dealing with whole sections of industry, especially the automobile industry and related industries, among others. And therefore, I knew, because Wall Street, and the automobile industries, were producing automobiles which had an approximate useful two-year life. That is, after about two years, the cost of repairs would exceed the cost of buying a new automobile. So what happened was, an effort to have a credit-based expansion of the automobile industry, and some other industries, hardwood industries; they began issuing credit, as for automobile sales, on a 36-month basis, when the typical automobile was stabilized only at 24 months: That is, the physical value of the automobile would begin to deteriorate after 24 months, because Detroit was really producing some awful crap, in quality!
So therefore, they had a 36-month credit allowance. Now, 36 monthly payments on a new automobile was the basis for that section of the economy. But the automobile was only good in net value, for about 24 months. But 36 months wasn't enough, so they came up with another scheme, called the balloon note, in which, what you would have, is 36 months, payments; for the first 35 months, the payments were equal, monthly. The 36th month might be many times larger. And this was reached in many areas of credit utterance, during the 1950s.
So, at that point, I knew that when March arrived—because in the United States economy, we function generally on a 13-month cycle, it's 12 months from the end of the first quarter to the first quarter of the next year. I knew that when the next annual term was going to come, in about March of 1957, that this thing was going to blow, because I had a knowledge of all these industries which were making this particular kind of mistake, under the encouragement of the government policy. So it blew! We had the biggest recession in the post-war period.
People were coming to me and saying, "What's your statistics?" I said, "I don't need your statistics: I know, that out there, you've got automobiles which are on 36-month maturity, with balloon notes in the 36th month, and they're going to hit; and when they hit, this economy's going to go down, in a deep recession. Because it was not just automobiles, but a whole lot of other things—housing and everything else, were in the same racket. So, we knew, or were able to forecast, because we knew the conditions of physical production, the relationship between infrastructure and physical production, for those things, the physical realities are the things that give you a tip-off as to what direction current policy is moving things into.
The crisis is caused by policy.
For example: We had a 1987 recession, which was as big as the 1929 Depression. October—I forecast that one, too. It came in October, just as I forecast. Why? Because of the quarterly cycle, and the physical conditions of that time. So, what happened then, is you had Greenspan come in, and he came up with this crazy, self-inflating system of credit. And so, since Greenspan entered the position to replace Volcker, in the Federal Reserve System, the United States went insane: We operated under an insane credit system.
The reason we are bankrupt now, is two reasons: First of all, we're bankrupt because of Greenspan; a self-inflating debt. A self-inflating debt! Plus, the fact that, what had happened, when we should have put the thing into bankruptcy, and gotten rid of the worthless debt, what we've done, is we went to bail out that debt, through the firm called Goldman Sucks, and similar kinds of institutions. So, instead of putting the thing into bankruptcy to get rid of the crap, we decided to save the crap and kill the baby! You know, save the diaper—kill the baby. And that's what they did.
So, in these cases, it is not money, it is not statistics, it is not monetary theory, that determines the way an economy works: It is physical! But physical includes the fact of the human brain, which is not like any animal brain, no animal can make an invention—only human beings can. And it's the kind of way in which we organize our social system, by adopting social conventions, as to how we behave, and the physical effect of these conventions. Therefore, if we have defective conventions, which are not functioning properly, we're going to have problems! And these problems are foreseeable—in physical terms! Not in money terms, in physical terms. However, of course, if you're printing money, you know, without limit, then you're going to have hyperinflation. But that's a not a monetary thing, that's an idiocy problem.
Delusions About Profit
The other thing, is the question of delusions about profit, the third point. Now, mankind is the only creature on this planet, which is not an animal—though some of our people try. Human beings have creativity: That's the ability to discover a true universal principle, as typified by Johannes Kepler's discovery of universal gravitation, all by himself. And that's an example of a discovery of a universal physical principle, as this was later explained in more detail by Albert Einstein, and so forth. So there are these principles. And thus, man's ability to discover universal physical principles, and similar kinds of principles that affect art and so forth, are the means by which mankind is able to increase our productive power.
Now, in the case of an animal species, or a group of animal species, like a habitat, this group of animals, has a limit on its population, which is determined by the condition of the habitat. And the animals can not go above that without a favorable change in the habitat.
Human beings are different. We create the habitat. We create a new kind of habitat. And the typification of that is our use of the discovery of universal physical principles. We invent the ability of the human population, which has otherwise the potential of the gorillas or the chimpanzees, for earthly population. Mankind is not a chimpanzee, though some people seem to try to qualify for that. And therefore, mankind is capable of increasing the human population above the chimpanzee level! That means, you've got an ecological problem: Because, if you want to monkey around, behaving like a chimpanzee, you're going to be in trouble. You're not going to have much of a family life!
So therefore, human society is able to develop a large population—we have now 6.7 billion people on this planet! There's no species in existence that's able to do that kind of thing! It's because of the human brain! Not the brain as such, but the human mind: the power to invent, the power to invent social processes as well as physical processes. So therefore, that is man.
Therefore, what does this mean?
Take the case of the Biosphere: A Biosphere normally has a certain limitation on its population, and it's not just on the particular species, it's on a group of species which interact in a habitat. Mankind has long outrun the kind of potential that an animal species would have had, say baboons, or whatever. So therefore, also, we are using up some of the resources available to us near the surface of the Earth. So, how do we live, if we're doing that? How do we violate what the biologist would say is a law of nature?
We actually increase the power of mankind to live, by what most people would call "overpopulation." We increase man's power to exist! And [increase] our standard of living, by doing that.
So therefore, what do we mean by "profit"? We don't mean money profit. We mean something that may be reflected, apparently, in accounting figures, as monetary profit, but it's not monetary profit. What we do, is we increase the productive powers of labor, per capita and per square kilometer; that's the margin of profit. This comes largely from innovation, from the application of discoveries, or their application in an improved way. Mankind is using up—most of the resources we use are what? Most of the resources we use to live, come from the Biosphere.
For example, we dig minerals out of the soil in the upper stratum of the Earth. How'd those minerals get there? Well, animals died! Little animals died; and when they died, their skeletons, or their equivalent of skeletons, are deposited in certain areas. That's how you find things. All these kinds of things are left as deposits by dead little animals. We dig down, and we find an ore, a lodestone. We find an ore; and we dig it up. But we're using it up! Ah! What do we do? Well, then, we have to build up our productive power by new discoveries, which means, we increase the capital investment, in life. We invest more, physically in maintaining a human being, to compensate for the fact that we're draining down some of the so-called raw-materials sources, which have been left behind, as a heritage for us, by dead animals. Their little dead bodies. You find most of your minerals that way.
So therefore, profit really means, that mankind, through the mental powers of mankind, in developing not only physical-scientific discoveries, but in terms of increasing capital-intensive investment in mankind, we increase mankind's ability to outrun what would have appeared earlier, as the limits on population. And this is real profit. Profit comes from the mind of man, who is able to make inventions and realize them to increase the productive potential of mankind to live, even while apparently otherwise depleting the Biosphere environment.
The planet is composed, chemically, of three elements. The total element of the planet Earth is about the same as it was a long time ago. At first, it was mostly abiotic, non-living processes, was the composition of the planet. Living processes took over, and began to develop the Biosphere. So the Biosphere began to grow, which meant, even though the planet was a fixed total volume, the Biosphere began marginally increasing, increasing, relatively at the expense of the old material, the abiotic.
Mankind comes along; mankind depletes the Biosphere, which we grew up, by life, eating up some of the pre-Biosphere. Man now does the same thing. So therefore, the power of human creativity is increasing. The effect of human creativity is increasing: Mankind is demonstrating that mankind is not a part of the Biosphere: Man is something superior to the Biosphere: man's creative powers.
And that's what an economy really is. Economy is based on the development of the creative powers of mankind, those creative powers which distinguish the human being from any animal. And thus, it's the mind of man, and the culture of man, and the culture of mankind, the culture of society, that's important.
This is the delusion of profit.
Energy Is Hot Stuff!
Now, energy: Energy is measured largely in temperature, not calories. Energy is hot stuff!
A calorie is valuable in terms of the temperature it embodies. Therefore, the human race could not live on this planet on the basis of a green policy. A green policy for the planet, a so-called environmentalist policy for the planet, would mean the destruction of most of the human species. It's mass murder. And Bertrand Russell understood that, and probably Prince Philip does too. So that's the problem.
The value of a calorie, in energy terms, is its relative temperature: The higher the temperature, the greater the value of a calorie. The lower the temperature, the more worthless the calorie. And if your energy policy is counting units of energy, in terms of so-called "free energy," you're going to commit genocide against the human race—and there's no scientific excuse for that genocide.
Now, creativity: This is the most important question, in economics. The human being, the human mind is capable of discovering laws of the universe which are not mathematical laws as such. They may have a mathematical reflection, as a shadow; that is the footprint of discovery. But it is not the content of discovery. The content of discovery is the act of discovery, not the content of it, not its energy footprint. And therefore, what you want is a culture which has a higher degree of creativity in the culture; it means you don't want the kind of garbage we have as music and entertainment today! You want to go back to some time when we had a better culture, before the end of World War II, before the developments of the fake musical culture, the fake literary culture, all these kinds of things. You want to go back to scientific creativity: You don't want Facebook; you don't want MySpace; you don't want these other symbols of degeneracy! Of people who want to live, entertaining themselves, by doing nothing! But just talking about it. You talk about nothing, you call it something.
Then, world trade: Again, culture. The characteristic of human culture is located, associated with language. And why? Because language is a vehicle we use for transmitting creative work among people. But creativity is not language. Creativity is the use of language, and various senses of language, to be able to formulate problems and to create creative solutions for those problems. That's creativity. And the creativity of a population is located in its culture.
The Immortality of Mankind
Now, this again, gets to a theological question, but it's a crucial one you can't avoid in science. It comes into the question of the immortality of mankind. When people die, unlike animals, they don't really die. Think about it in terms of creative abilities, creative powers of individuals: Now, someone has made—like Einstein or Kepler, or someone—has made a discovery. How does that thing work? Well, he's made a discovery, and he knows how to apply it, presumably. He communicates it to others. Well, how does he communicate it? He communicates it by inducing them to go through the experience of making a discovery. How are discoveries promulgated in society? They're done by a process in which a person who dies does not really die as an effective part of that culture, if they're creative. Because, to transmit a creative idea, you have to re-experience it. And what happens in society, the principles we develop, among skilled people, who are skilled in culture, skilled in science, and so forth, is that what they discover is replicated in a continuing process by those who come after them. That's how it occurs. That's what a culture is: It involves language, it involves all the instruments by which we communicate culture, embody it.
So mankind is essentially the only known, immortal living creature on this planet. And immortality is expressed in the fact, that the ideas which are creative, actually creative, human activities, can only be promulgated by their experiencing them, in people who come after those who started the process of that particular discovery. That's the way science works! It's the way art works!
Take the case of all great Classical music, which generally has its origin in the discoveries of Johann Sebastian Bach: There is no part of Classical musical composition, which does not involve reliving the unique, original discoveries, in music, and in counterpoint, by Johann Sebastian Bach. You can not possibly understand music, you can not possibly replicate it—Beethoven could not have been Beethoven, if he didn't absorb Bach! Bach is living in Beethoven! In his work! Bach is living in Mozart, in his work! Bach is living in Brahms, in his work! And anybody, who doesn't like Bach, ain't a musician!
The same thing is true in literature: the same thing you see in Shelley, on poetry; the same principle is true. Human beings do not die in the same way. The flesh dies, the body dies. But the process of creativity set into motion within human beings, is perpetuated by other human beings, who continue the same process, the same thoughts, the same experience!
Why is it important to us, to think of our ancestors? Why is it important for us to think about ancient cultures? Why do we try to understand man today, by going back tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years, to the first samples of human existence on this planet? Because we have a hunger to absorb that which makes human beings human, and not animals. This is creativity. Creativity is something experienced.
So therefore, to have a society, not of dumb bunnies, you have to devote yourself to engaging our children, and others, in reliving the experience of the discoveries, upon which mankind's progress has been based. And the individual is, in that sense, immortal.
This immortality is expressed in a dynamical way, within the culture.
Therefore, if you want to have an economy, you've got to think about the language-culture, and associated features of culture of a people. And that is the basis for a nation-state. Does that mean we have a competition with or a hatred of other nation-states? Of course not! What do we do in practice? We're always trying to engage and understand the creative process in people of a different language and different culture. We're trying to absorb and transmit what they've contributed to humanity: To us, it's precious. We seek to protect it. We create museums. We do all kinds of things to keep knowledge of creativity of the past alive, and to share it among different people of different cultures. And that's true of an economy. And that's true of world trade: That's the issue of world trade.
National Sovereignty: The Cultural Framework
Now, the question of national sovereignty. Since human beings are creative, then, it's the interaction of human beings over successive generations, within a cultural framework, which is the collective thinking of that people. This is the true free will of a people, is its culture, the creative aspect of its culture, usually, associated with its language-culture, or associated with groups of language-cultures.
So therefore, we have this relationship, as typified by the principle of 1648, of the Peace of Westphalia: peace among cultures. Love between cultures. But respect for the sovereignty of the culture, because the sovereignty of the culture is the location in which the identity of creativity is located; its expression is located in a language-culture. Therefore, respect for the language-culture, and the tendency to assist the other culture, to succeed, is the proper relation. So therefore, the society we want, is the society of nation-states.
We don't want globalization! Globalization is for monkeys, not for people! Monkeys can go around the world in different places; chimpanzees can do that, and as long as the habitat's friendly, one monkey's pretty much like another monkey. And I don't believe that human beings should monkey around.
So, I've said what I think sets the tone for discussion which we're now going to have. Have fun.
