A MEMORANDUM TO OUR STAFF:
The Rebirth of Our Nation
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
February 9, 2013
"Some among you know how to keep excellent track of the fact that this is Saturday; but, just can't seem to remember which decade this is!"
In fact, shortly before the time of the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, who died April 12, 1945, OSS director "Wild Bill" Donovan had held his last meeting with that President. Another OSS officer, who would be, later, a close collaborator of mine, had accompanied Donovan into the White House anteroom to the President's office.
Donovan, walking out from the President's office, had turned to the prominent OSS officer who had accompanied him to and from that visit, then murmured to his companion: "It's over."
About a quarter-century later, as I came to know it at the beginning of the formation of what was about to become the Presidency of the elected Ronald Reagan, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, much of the "inside history" of what had been the OSS became known to me, largely through the then confidential nature of my own, various, later obligations respecting the tradition of the organization and development of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which came to me in my then continuing role as among the founders of the Fusion Energy Foundation (FEF). On this account, now more than thirty years since my part in launching the SDI, more than the matter of age has now determined, that I am presently among the last of those still functioning as leading representatives adhering to that same original and continuing dedication.
There had been, and remain what were sundry currents of development leading into the formation and establishment of the SDI among which my own association with some veterans of the OSS, had played a particular leading role in the part I had played since during my visits to Europe beginning the late Summer and early Autumn of 1977. The channels leading into this development, had included such an institution as that with which I had become prominently associated as the FEF (The Fusion Energy Foundation: Thermonuclear Fusion) in the U.S.A.
What became my own relatively unique, special role in such matters, paralleled, and later converged upon the process of development leading to what was to become Present Ronald Reagan's adoption of what was to become known as the "Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)," an initiative which had featured leading strategic organizations ranging from such as U.S. notables, and veteran French Gaullist, German, and Italian leaders, and touching India, most of whom had qualified as strategic specialists of senior military and functionally related rank throughout many nations of the planet. I had found myself playing a leading role in the assembly of such an international commitment for war-avoidance, including, prior to the unfortunate choice of a new Soviet chief, veteran influentials from many nations in Europe, and elsewhere, that up to the point of President Ronald Reagan's resolve to adopt a commitment to the SDI, a mission which he maintained to the close of his Presidency, and, implicitly, at least, to his retreat toward retirement.
Had we succeeded in the promising developments for SDI since the formation of the Fusion Energy Foundation (FEF), the world would not have entered the presently endless collapse of the physical economy of the trans-Atlantic sector of the world (most emphatically), a collapse which had been threatened since the moment of the infamous "cover-up" of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and, later, his brother Robert.
I know with an exceptional degree of precision, that it was the Soviet officials, such as the inherently failed leaderships of Yuri Andropov and Michael Gorbachov, who had intervened, on their part, to oppose the SDI from the Soviet side, and who have been the particularly most notable, among those, from several leading nations, who had misled the world away from safety, to the present threshold of threatened thermonuclear extinction, a connection with the past which is still presently a greater threat than ever before, today
Worse, for the greater part, many among them still lack a needed quality of insight into that past history, still today.
As that true genius, Douglas MacArthur, had proven at Inchon, and still later in his role in the matter of opposing the foolish entry into an Indo-China war, that in warning against the specific nature of the trap which that prospect of war represented: reason, rather than unkempt passions, are, in the end, the only road to a truly attainable victory for mankind in general. Foresight into future developments and related actions, had been a notable quality of true genius met in the work of MacArthur, as in the success of the Inchon landing.
Therefore, nonetheless:
Actually, for me today, it all goes back to OSS Director Donovan walking down the hallway from President Franklin Roosevelt's office, muttering, softly, his insightfully prophetic: "It's over. It's all over."
Donovan was right. Truman's Presidency had, from its beginning, been a stroll into the prospect of sheer Hell, a prospect crafted under the ties of President Truman to his then-master Winston Churchill. As a result of that trend in history since, we have now reached the brink of what that history has portended on this account, that during the entire span since "Wild Bill" Donovan had muttered so prophetically, "It's all over." Real history, as opposed to the merely pompous gossip, is often, even usually like that.
However, despite all that, and more, history has not yet come to an end, and probably never will, at least for so long as the prospect of a continuing future for mankind still exists. That fact, and that alone, must be the conclusion for this history I am presenting here and now. No mere calendar from the past could predetermine the unfolding of future history. Some of us, who understand real history better than most do, are not fooled in the fashion which most putative leaders of our United States, recently, have made fools of themselves, on one occasion, or another, in their misunderstanding of history, until now. Hopefully, the awesome peril now descending upon us all, must be, and can be turned into an escape from the present virtual hopelessness of the fate of nearly all of our citizenry at the present time.
It is under circumstances more or less as threatening as global thermonuclear warfare now, that only a few are able to muster themselves into an urgently needed mission-orientation, one so urgently needed presently. The rest do not know what they are doing, whatever their supposition might be.
Hence, that much said this far, here is what follows.
1. Persons & Weapons
Which Depend Upon Higher Order of Insights
What I have found to be the greatest among the common errors of judgment of not only people of the northerly trans-Atlantic region, in particular, is the substitution of the desire for what might be merely considered as a personal success, rather than primarily a needed success for present and future humanity alike. In the end, we all die; therefore, if our personal gratification is our primary issue, or even that of our immediate household, we have failed to have secured a real meaning for what had been our life, because we had not adequately considered those whom we will not know during generations yet to be delivered to us. Most among us mistake that which we expect, for what must be brought into existence in times beyond those during which we have actually lived.
The practical importance of the principle which I have just described, if continued as an intent for what will have happened even after we are deceased, is a fact more or less easily stated as a matter of the use of the spoken word. Yet, there is a touch of hypocrisy in asserting such a spoken promise of an intention, if there is a lack of the true passion for creating that actual future which we must craft, even as if at all costs.
It is one thing, for a soldier to assert the existence of a future value more important than the continuation of his personal life, and, another thing, not to wish that death, but accept the termination of that life, if that life, even if terminated, has a durable meaning for the necessary future of mankind. Death as such is certainly virtually inevitable for the individual member of the human species, ultimately, but it should be neither desired, nor feared, in and of itself.
The argument which I had just so stated on that account, must not be read as an a-priorist quality of presumption. The needed quality of argument, without which the stated commitment would possess no true commitment to the future needs of our human species, is that which must be considered above all other opinions. For the purpose of truth, the otherwise merely affirmed commitment must bind practice long since the person were not deceased. A mere "oath" were not sufficient; the commitment must be in the likeness of an efficiently sworn and realized set of obligations to the relatively immortal future benefits for the human species on that specific account. How could anyone sincerely promise to contribute what they neither have, nor could be able to discover in reality?
Ah! But once we have agreed to such stipulated commitments, what would make that which is otherwise merely stated, efficient in and of itself?
Actually, we must conclude, provisionally, at least, that the great majority of the presently living could not yet actually fulfill such a kind of promise. Simply, most of them are not yet made sufficiently competent to foresee the actual future. That widespread, popular quality of deficiency, is lodged, in fact, in the commonplace inability of most living human individuals to foresee the actual future in which they might wish to be realized, a future which they should have recently expected to perform as their act of willful entry into a newly created future of, probably, their own intentions.
Most human individuals whom we might expect to encounter today, have no serious form of such a comprehension.
However, there are numerous actual cases which do conform to such a prescribable intention, although the experiencing of such a commitment by the putative giver, is very rare. The reason is the inability to supply what would seem to be the promised gift, since they do not know a nameable such existence, nor the reality of a promised soul. How could anyone know, or, honestly claim anything which they are not yet capable of actually knowing? This paradoxical thing has certain varied, sometimes useful implications for practice. The essential point in all this, is, could the considered persons actually know the object which they are attempting to promise to deliver?
The essential point to be emphasized, is that the "absolute present" is that which does not actually exist. All is caught, as if in midstream-motion, between past and future, as a celebrated ancient philosopher, Heraclitus, for one, has strongly emphasized. Only the realization of the willfully create-able future, really exists. It is, therefore, the induced obsession with the idea of the future as a series of fixed objects, a notion famously rejected by that Heraclitus, which needs correction. Or, better said, truth exists, actually, only in a process of ongoing creation.
What Those Facts Mean
That is not a mere recipe. Those who should be recognized as actually representing "creative minds" such as the cases of Max Planck and Albert Einstein (as in full rejection of the likes of Bertrand Russell and his dupes), typify the proper answer to the types of questions which I have presented above.
Whereas, creative physical scientists who are occupied with making a seemingly endless, simplistic form of flow, represent a typical expression of creativity, the underlying principle of such processes of discovery, confronts us with a still more profound challenge. The remedy for the latter case has been typified by the discoveries of Nicholas of Cusa, as in his exemplary De Docta Ignorantia. If we consider Cusa's leading scientific works in their proper role for predetermining an accessible future, we must prove that for ourselves in terms of reference to the crucial discoveries by Johannes Kepler, most notably, the prevalent failure of even most certified scientists to grasp Kepler's rarely understood actual meaning for vicarious hypothesis.
As I have spoken and written, now frequently before this point in the report, what should be adopted as an indication of the actual meaning of Kepler's vicarious hypothesis, is to be recognized more readily through a deeper understanding of the notion named metaphor. That paired set of terms must be recognized properly for their truly appropriate—also physical-scientifically appropriate, meaning, all to the effect that the achievement of a proper experience of a Shakespeare tragedy must be as actually lived by the members of the performance on stage, and also, sympathetically, the audience. On this account, I have rather long been greatly amused by the ironical way in which Das Spukschloss im Spessart (German 1960 film comedy) presented the refrain: "Die Hauptsache ist der Effekt." ["The main thing is the effect."] For me, the significance is that which implies that the effect is the reality of the experience: thus, the truth of a performed tragedy, when done on the living stage, is the reality of the tragic drama.
While there is something hilariously funny pervading that named motion-picture production, there is also an echo of a much deeper, bitterly ironical meaning, to be recognized as lurking among the characters played on stage during the precise date of that production on the screen. Irony is sometimes an urgently needed antidote within whose cloak to hide a consuming pain, as, perhaps, for the people of almost any nation which has suffered a terrible recent past, as for Germany in the aftermath of two recent, terrible wars, and now, the presently threatened virtual extermination born of a self-inflicted consent to folly, of, at the best, most of Europe.
However that reference might be a relevant case in point, there is a much deeper meaning which must be considered in the subject of this report.
2. The Prescience of the Actual Future
As I have stressed in some earlier, published reports, the most commonplace, and also most widely accepted of the mistaken judgments respecting the functions of the human mind, have been premised on the profoundly mistaken presumption that the discovery of the ruling principles of the known universe are metrical rules adduced from the merely deductive experiences of sense-perception when it is treated as implicitly self-evident.
The absurdity of such beliefs as that, would perhaps have been recognized as foolishness long-since, except for the fact that no one seems to have recalled where and when that nonsense-belief had been adopted as ostensibly "self-evident." Otherwise, think! Think of the absurdity of believing that the principal knowable "laws of the universe" which we presently inhabit, are to be worshiped as the religious worship of pagan gods which are alleged to inhabit our fields and forests. In fact, the directly opposite logic is the only sane origin of truthful conclusions.
Mankind is, indeed, an inhabitant of a closed set of relationships typical of the habitat which envelops our mortal existence. Therefore, when we seek to locate the principles which govern our existence within such realms as the Solar system, our galaxy, and beyond, it is the laws prescribed by the authority of the universe, which are the actual sources for the authority of our judgment respecting even the possibility of the existence of the planets and more themselves. Or, in other words, the principles of the universe which are, in fact, known to us, are those principles by means of which we can exert control over the preconditions of life on Earth, even the powers presently known to us as being specific to the human mind as such.
For example, the case of Max Planck's collaboration with Wolfgang Köhler respecting the concept of "Mind," demands attention to the distinction of brain from mind. Or, to restate that same point in evidence, the question to be asked, is whether it is the mind which is the fundamental reality, and the sense-impressions merely the shadows cast upon opinion by reality, as relatively merely shadows. The same argument as that, flows naturally from the conviction of reality which is adducible from the experience of a masterful Classical drama, such as some among Shakespeare's. This, for example, is the issue posed by the experience of a wonderfully crafted drama on stage. Thus, we are presented by such quality of drama, as to question which is real: a mere script of the drama, combined with some apparently living parts, or is the shadow-like apparent reality of the experience of the performed drama, the reality expressed as the biological functions, the efficient conception of the true meaning of the principles which govern the ruling processes of the existence of societies? Hence, the enigma of sense-perception as such. Which is the substance, and which the shadow?
If we, as mankind, can control processes among processes in what are classed as Solar or galactic "space," as implicitly discovered principles present us with such ironical forms of evidence, what remains for us as matters of certainty, is the ironical conjunction of part and process of the existences in what we know, as, for example, some large regions within our Solar system. The common feature, which supplies an assurance of sanity to the human so challenged, is the fact that the system works in a lawful manner, to the effect that, whatever else it exhibits, it exhibits as provably willful processes expressed by the success of our willful actions within such domains as nearby aspects of Solar space.
Sense-perception does not enclose space. The space inhabited by the nearby planets, asteroids, and so-on, is to be defined from experience by the distinction of what man can do to nearby space (within the parts of Earth which we inhabit, and beyond), and what the "kick-back" does. The implications which include cases such as the progress in development of the exploitation of Mars by mankind, present signals which may aid us in sorting out which aspects of experience are shadows or substance of actualities.
That argument which I have just presented, in this fashion, is required now by the implications of the development of human processes operating and developing within and beyond the reach of what is identified as "sense-perception." The importance of emphasis on such points as this, is to be located essentially in the ironical connections between biological and cognitive human processes, as these are demonstrated, for example, by those systemically principled processes at the roots of all that we term "Classical musical composition," such as that of Bach and his successors.
For example, the present challenge to the protection of the continued existence of our human species, brings us closely into the concern known as "the defense of Earth," which, of course, means the efficient defense of Earth by the actions of mankind from Earth. The obligation which that thought, when seriously examined for practice, presents, takes us beyond the previously standard rules for defining efficient human behavior, and to the principles that now requires since the systems of landings on Mars, for change in mankind's outlook. No longer can serious-minded scientists accept the notions premised on an Earth-bound science of so-called sense-perception, when the laws of our Solar system, are not subject to systemic inferences of man's obligation to defend continued human existence, on the higher order of challenge, beyond that of merely the system of experiment-place "Earth," to the larger domain which the case of Mars, in particular, now poses respecting the elementary challenge of the role of Mars in "the defense of Earth."
There is, of course, much more to come. This is only the beginning of a new issue to be answered. Call it, for example, "Science for Shakespeare and also Bach." Wilhelm Furtwängler had already pioneered in such directions.
