SDI TODAY!:
Next, Beyond Mars
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
August 17, 2012
Now, since the successful landing of "Curiosity"on Mars, there is no good reason for continued use of the term "empty space"—except to identify the usual run of slapdash opinions. The nature of that successful landing on Mars, presents us with a notion of "closure" of the region which includes that "inhabited" Solar space, which is, for us, up to just beyond the orbit of Mars, down to Venus: all this as a presently single domain of what might become inhabited "real estate" for mankind. It is now a matter of grave urgency, that we accustom our leading scientific and political authorities to change their ways more than a little bit, and then think again, and act accordingly.
Most notably, what has been mistreated as "empty space" is filled with what must now be considered as deadly, and some more or less immediately mortal threats to the continued existence of our human species, threats which we must prepare ourselves to evade or overcome otherwise. For a moment, consider how foolish, popular opinion on this subject has been, until now. It is virtually common knowledge that we must consider the known density of actual threats from "empty space" to much, or all of mankind, threats which might be expected to strike seriously upon us Earthlings within the span of even a generation, or so, of some part of the inhabited region of our planet, as within a normal life-span measured in today's experience of North America or North Eurasia, during one or two successive life-spans. Consider the hits on Earth which have actually happened, and include cases which would have exterminated the human species if it had then been in existence. Or, worse, consider the massive scale of the threat of a "hit" on Earth by a deadly comet.
Or, better, ask: what would be required to prevent such catastrophes from happening at all? Look at the density of such missiles and related "space threats." Should you say: "Why should I worry? I will be gone long before that could happen to me"?
How about those man-made major wars of virtual human extinction, here on Earth, which threaten to happen during the generation or so immediately ahead, even the weeks or months ahead. Think about today's varieties of "really big wars:" such as the fraudulently composed splash of thermonuclear war which President Barack Obama has been pushing, in his hysterical efforts to bring it on since his launching of the war which he carried out against Libya—which had also been intended to be continued in Syria and Iran now as a lead-in to a thermonuclear war against Russia and China. Without the blocking of such warfare by such as both our Joint Chiefs of Staff and the governments of Russia and China now, the United States might have already gone out of existence.
Or, if warfare just now scares you into (hopefully) coming to your senses, how about the relative mass-death from starvation and disease, now descending upon western and central Europe currently, under current "Euro" policies of practice, or the foolish neglect of requirements for food during the recent years inside the United States itself?
You reject my warnings on this account? Look back to the interval 1977-1983, during which I had played a key, rising role in pushing for the international adoption of what became known as a "Strategic Defense Initiative" (SDI). Consider the fact, that that SDI, although supported repeatedly by then-President Ronald Reagan, was rejected, repeatedly and massively by our own foolish, leading political circles-in-power during the 1980s and beyond, as, similarly, throughout Europe at that time. Most of our adult citizens living then, failed practically, and also morally at that time. Can you suggest, in good conscience, that the present voting population of today would do any better, now, when the danger is already far worse?
Or, consider those occupied in space exploration who carefully disregard the presently intervening promise of thermonuclear warfare which the continued presence of U.S. President Barack Obama almost ensures presently—but for the relative handful of political circles which include me and my associates. Just as warfare can not exclude the factor of both political and physical science, science can not evade the realities of global, even solar-systemic warfare.
Ask yourselves: "Are you really ready to act as a person truly fitted out to live in the full meaning of such terms?"
1. On a Matter of Background
"It could never actually happen to me!"
Since almost anyone will die at some time during one or three generations of individual life, what is the meaning of our lives for those who will live after you are gone? Admittedly, I have done well personally on that account this far; but, my relative success on that account obliges me to think through the issues which that has implied all the more carefully, as I had been compelled to reckon with such matters earlier, or will perhaps a bit into the future, always with much greater care than those most numerous persons with poorer insight into such matters.
Generally, I am more careful in viewing the fate of those who are among our younger folk, who have relatively fewer old friends to mourn than I do. Also, consider my role in pushing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) since the late 1970s and 1980s, in contrast to what most of my relevant contemporaries had done. I remain far more responsive, even now, at my present age, on those relevant matters of our human species' now imperilled survival, than most others who claim to be "officially responsible." How little do even the suffering among us care for the future of the "others" of mankind, even beyond a year or so ahead? Mine is a double duty: what I have done on the relevant account of our own and other nations' future security, and of the authority which I bear for reason of the relevant aspects of my combined intentions and experience in notable matters. I think it most important, on the record, respecting such matters: that I have been fortunately right most of the time on such crucial matters of my concern as the professional which I am, both as a professional, and otherwise.
I do not deny the existence of the serious injuries and insults which I experience, but am not complaining as much about those matters, as about the massive and repeated frauds which have been perpetrated against me as revenge for my leadership in putting forward the inherently human-life-saving SDI, and certain other missions of great importance, which I had been prevented from accomplishing. For me, those political blows I have received have been signals of honor gained in the course of time. I mean to include the suffering of those who bear the guilt for having "done did me wrong," but, also, those who must be judged as having had simply deserted the good cause. My passion is reserved on those accounts, in part for what should have been then, but, must, more urgently, be done now. The issue, is who is doing what is necessary for him, or her to do, in these present times.
For Example:
From my experience, our "World War II," as we were led under President Franklin Roosevelt, was the most recent case of a necessary warfare which might be classed among the major wars my U.S.A. has fought this far, even though the last months of that war were contaminated by the role of President Harry Truman, and mightily soiled, early and often, by Winston Churchill. (Eisenhower identified what I call "soiling," strictly euphemistically: as a "difficult alliance.") The U.S. war in Indo-China, was a tragedy conceived out of virtual treason by those who relished the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (and his brother, Robert Kennedy, too).[1] Not only the virtually treasonous launching of warfare over the body of the assassinated President Kennedy. All of the wars fought with the prompting of the likes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, such as the fraudulently composed long war in Iraq, and that fraudulently composed in Libya, and that against Syria and aimed at Iran composed by the morally wretched, mass-murderous U.S. President Barack Obama.[2]
Such have been the wars and related things over the course of these times.
There is also the mass-murder by swindlers in the business of food, as such shortages are currently promoted on the great plains of the central United States, especially that under the recent three terms of the Presidents of the U.S.A. Amid all this, the most disgusting crimes-in-fact have been the work done in the service of a spirit of political compromises by our own Federal and state governments. There are few real heroes out there any more, but many needlessly wasted lives, and for the most part, the record accrued in proverbial "high places," presents us with, speaking frankly, a sickening prospect of the depths to which only the habit of compromise could reach.[3] Remember: I was there when the majority of our incumbent leaders in government sank the SDI, the SDI which would have saved the planet from most of the evil of the wars which the planet, especially our ordinary citizenry, has endured since the defeat of the SDI proposal in 1983. The worst crime is that which those who should have known, did not wish to know.
I used to say, "Tell me." Experience encourages us to say these days: "Don't bother to give your excuses. Just, please end your swarms of hypocrisies; tell the truth instead."
2. The Lesson from Mars
The landing of "Curiosity" on Mars has, at the same time, also changed the functional identity of the human species' habitat, that in more ways than most observers have yet recognized. "Curiosity's" success now represents a qualitative change in the nature of defining man's function, with respect to Mars. We, the human species, are now defined, in functional terms, as also a "Martian race" in effect, even though no human being known to us has yet set foot to take up regular duties there. To illustrate my point, I remember the days of such as Antarctica's solitary winter sentinel, the Charlestown Navy Yard's U.S. Admiral Richard E. Byrd. The "collective personality" of the virtual sentinel who has put "Curiosity" in place on Mars, is like that in more ways than most observers from Earth today will have yet imagined.
The principle of the point which I have thus just introduced to the readers, runs as follows.
The development of the aggregated operation which will "naturally" unfold around the mind of the principal Earth-bound astronauts "handling" the administration of the operations conducted to, from, and on Mars, will have the effect of a human mind, that of the relevant personnel, actually working on behalf of a Mars team. The natural effect of any competent such team's efforts will be that the "collective mind" of that team will be, in its required effect, a human mind (e.g., "minds") operating as if being directly on Mars ("through remote control"—despite the lapsed-time factor).
The following illustration leads more efficiently to the crucial point.
The mind which is acting as if on Mars, but from Earth to Mars and reverse, is apparently composed of the aggregation of "sensing apparatus" connecting the "information systems." The configuration of apparatus and persons engaged in the operation has the effect of defining the human inhabitant as being implicitly as on Mars itself (lapsed time considered). This, implicitly, places the personality of the team assigned to be the virtual "man on Mars," as located functionally, as a virtual immigrant to—a colonist on—Mars.
The included function of this working arrangement will be dominated to a large degree by a security function: the role of the Mars team in directing the defense of Earth against "large rocks" streaming in the direction of intersection with the Earth orbit, and therefore a likelihood for hitting Earth as such. Therefore, that consideration requires the immediate re-establishment of the Earth-based space-program. The Mars-based operations will be a crucial element in the development of the systems essential to the defense of Earth, systems modeled on the conceptions which went into the 1970s-1980s U.S.A. Strategic Defense Initiative.
For the purpose of enabling the ordinary citizen to understand what this means in practice, there are two presently leading, identified types of aspects to that notion of "a defense of Earth." Objects within space which are of a type which might, potentially, target Earth with destructive effects, and the more problematic comets. The details of that as such, belong to a different report than this one.
My principal scientific concern here is of a different nature. I explain.
The Lesson from Mars
Heretofore, it has been customary, on Earth, to regard gravitation within adopted physical space-time. The implications of the Curiosity landing compel us to abandon that tradition. Bring the following set of considerations into view.
Among the greatest strategic threats to the continued existence of the human species, are those expressed, most obviously, as both deadly rocks striking planet Earth, and the ominous surges of murderous comets. What must not be overlooked in this regard, is that the placing of a surrogate "occupant" of Mars by "Curiosity" now, is, in fact, the efficient placing of humanity's representatives as operating on Mars. Most observers today, even among relevant scientists, would commit the cardinal error of assuming that the placing of "Curiosity" on Mars now, affords man "a merely symbolic" quality of functional occupancy of that planet.
That problem to which I have just referred, is a crucially important strategic consideration, an error which is commonplace among even scientific professionals now. It is a problem which I have laid out for those among my relevant associates, with the intention of conveying what will be an initially very difficult conception for most observers. It is a problem which is now of crucial significance for defining mankind's crucial need for pushing a "full steam" approach to mankind's Mars mission at this time. The issue is the challenge of recognizing the true nature of the human mind, as distinct from that of all other known living species, and the distinction of the human mind from the relatively lowly human brain.
First, I shall present some helpful pieces of the evidence leading us to such a conclusion as that. I strongly recommend attention to the deeper meaning which must now be attached to the concept of the human mind, as this had been presented, successfully, by Wolfgang Köhler, to his associate, the great Max Planck.
The distinction which I now emphasize, is the distinction of the human mind from what we classify as human sense-perception. "Curiosity's" mission-performance provides us now with a most appropriate upgrading of the Köhler-Planck conception of the human mind, as distinct from the "mere" human brain. In other words, this should be recognized, also, as sharing a special quality of coincidence in the outlook of Planck and Albert Einstein.
Curiously enough for this specific occasion, the essential basis for the argument which I present in this present report, is among the most ancient elements of the scientific world-outlook, the concept known otherwise as "metaphor," and, as by Johannes Kepler, among others, as the principle of "vicarious hypothesis." It is also to be recognized as the target of the rabidly reductionist fraud of the personally silly Sir Isaac Newton as promoted by Newton's "handlers," and by their followers, which had been directed, first, against Kepler, and then, was shifted to serve as that fraudulent attack against physical science by the "Newtonians," which was launched in its now prevalent, later expression, aimed against Gottfried Leibniz as soon as Newton et al. were assured that Leibniz was safely dead biologically, and thus prevented from responding.
The principle of physical science to be emphasized at this moment, is the presently urgent consideration of a needed return of attention to emphasis on the subject of metaphor. I mean metaphor as properly used to reference human experience of realities which lie outside the domain of sense-perception: Kepler's "vicarious hypothesis." That is, ontologically, the domain of the agreed conception shared by Max Planck with Wolfgang Köhler. The Twentieth Century view in categorical opposition to those scientists such as Nicholas of Cusa, his follower Kepler, and, in turn, Gottfried Leibniz, Bernhard Riemann, et al., is located as the "radically modernist" variety of philosophical reductionism.
The folly which stands in the way as an obstacle to scientific progress still today, is the so-called "reductionist" conceit, which presumes that the objects of human sense-perception as such, are to be recognized as what are the misconceived notions of sense-certainty.
"Curiosity" turns out to have been a brilliantly successful term for prompting a much-needed insight into the folly of empiricist reductionism, an insight which the success of that landing represents for the human species' existence now. That term should be considered as a sound of the trumpets of reality.
Now that "Curiosity" has actually landed, the last major bastion of empiricism has been implicitly reduced to a term for mockery. I present that case as follows.
The Arrival of the Evidence
The prominent fact presented to the innocent observer of "Curiosity's" Mars-landing, is the fact of the impressive array of instruments mustered for this arrival. Let us compare the array of those incorporated instruments and of the "sensing perceptions" which that array provides, with the role of sense-perception as an adopted view of the quality of the human brain's role in sense-perception, as contrasted with the foundations of human knowledge embodied in the higher truth of metaphor.
Whose mind is functioning? That of the instruments? Or, is it not the human mind, which is the means through which the meaning of the work of the instruments is made real in the specific sense of a truthful metaphor? Now, with that much said as introduction here, we have prescribed a rigorous distinction of the human mind (in principle) from mere sense-perception.
That fact which I just summarized in that pair of immediately preceding paragraphs, has two aspects: one, as a matter of actuality in its expression as a matter of formal argument; secondly, as a profoundly practical challenge of a functional physical principle of scientific method. Where is the location of the ideas which depend upon the practical use of the "sensory-functions-as-such" represented by the organized concatenation of which the functions of "Curiosity" are composed? They lie not in the data-stream, but in the function of the human mind as such, in the domain of the human mind which is known as "metaphor."
In the case of our present experience with the fact of the functions assigned implicitly to "Curiosity," there is a variously significant "distance" between the lapsed time between Earth and Mars, as measured in speed-of-light terms, and, otherwise, in other measures of physical-space-time in the linking of events among Earth, Mars, and so on. The fact that the communications are implicitly within speed-of-light limits signifies that the human mind's actions of relevance in the relationships differ from the rate of transport from Earth to Mars, which becomes a crucial fact of increasing importance. The mind is the paramount human mind.
That is only a beginning of the matter before us.
Among the subject-matters which confront "Curiosity," is the massive threat to the continued existence of human life on Earth, now to be considered in terms of the panoply of asteroid relics menacing human life on Earth. The trajectories of those "rocks," and the tracking of those trajectories, as also of the awesomely monstrous threat from comets, are examples of the implications of the essential role of the human mind's actions on the basis of developments within Mars and Earth. Anyone in relevant official positions, who is blocking a full-scale return to the space program, is a criminal against humanity in effect.
That is a fact. The additional facts depend on the immediate expansion of collaboration among relevant powers, such as Russia, China, and others which are leading factors in any effort to support the implications of what "Curiosity" has already accomplished this far.
However, those points of emphasis, while absolutely essential subjects of scientific investigations and related actions, must be accompanied by the more profound issues posed by the need to free the living human minds on Earth from the reductionist mental-world-outlook associated with the superstitions inherent in the prevalence of belief in what is worshiped by many as "sense certainty."
The human mind is not to be assessed as located inherently in the living biology of the human brain per se. Rather the mind must be considered as that to which the function of the human brain is to be tuned. Now, through means typified by the implications of the broadcast between human minds connected in function at the "speed of light," we have brought the human mind to reign in Mars, whence we shall organize man's fate within accessible reaches within our Solar system. It is the interaction of those minds in that fashion which now becomes the focal point of human civilization and its defense.
[1] Who could have gloated over the death of President John F. Kennedy, as some prominent personalities did and why? For me there is no mystery. Their answer is, "We won! We got the war we wanted so much," (as a way of slapping down true patriots such as General Douglas MacArthur, and MacArthur's associate Kennedy, as if with a single stroke). The gloaters intended to ruin the United States' "ambitions" for the sake of "the triumph of the different god which they admired." Virtually all the wars which were launched since, were designed to weaken the United States in a similar manner, and have had a similar motive.
[2] The recent wars fought by the United States since the death of President John F. Kennedy, have been either "unnecessary wars," or wars which were, themselves, crimes against humanity. The cases of the U.S. warfare in Indo-China, and Tony Blair's fraudulent (second) long war in Iraq, are only typical of the kinds of wars which should have been outlawed from the start. The cases to which I have thus alluded, have been typical copies of the colonial-imperialist wars fought by the British empire, as, in principle, virtually all the wars organized by the British empire, or fought, as against Nazi Germany to defeat an evil state which the British empire, or its likeness had, in fact, created. We have now entered an age, during which major warfare, is thermonuclear warfare—extinction warfare!, from which no party could triumph. Admittedly, there have been wars which our United States—for example, was properly obliged to fight; but, the time has come, when "major warfare" can no longer be fought (as distinct from "police actions"); efficient other means are now available.
[3] Take the case of the long war against Iraq which was launched through the fraud perpetrated by the combination of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his nasty little wretched accomplice, President George W. Bush, Jr.
