Prometheus in the Twenty-First Century
These are edited excerpts from Lyndon LaRouche’s dialogue with the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee on Feb. 8.
Host Matthew Ogden: You have a quadrupling of the NATO expansion, the troop presence, and the advanced hardware on Russia’s border. You have the admission by top leading economists in Europe that this entire economic system is on the verge of disintegrating, and people are even talking about a debt jubilee,— cancelling the debt. And you’ve got the fact that there’s a very clear recognition of your leadership when it comes to shutting down Wall Street and reinstating the full Franklin Roosevelt program.
 President Franklin Roosevelt delivers a fireside chat to the nation.
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Lyndon Larouche: One of my favorite sports. [laughter] It’s become that. I didn’t intend that to happen, but it did happen. Despite all my fervid intentions not to do that. But it is of that nature.
We have to understand a lot of things, but most of all, we have to understand exactly what the world is like. Because what’s happening now is that most of the nations which are trans-Atlantic nations, are actually in the mud right now. They’re not performing well; quite the contrary.
The options are concentrated largely in Russia, China, and their immediate friends. The British Empire is the cause of this general problem which the whole planet has been going through for a very long time,— that’s the thing that’s dangerous, and that’s the thing we’ve got to destroy.
But then in the process of destruction, we’ve got to try to see how many parts of the human species can be rescued from this. You take, for example, California and the population of California, including the students and the young people. In general, they’ve been destroyed, and the youth especially. And therefore, we recognize that China, Russia, and a few others, are well-organized to accomplish something, whatever the difficulties may be that they run into. But the point is that the United States, its people, the Americas in general,— they are actually in a degenerated condition, and other parts of the world are also, with people who are running away from parts of the planet, dying at a great rate, great batches,— all these things. Therefore, I think what’s interesting for us, is that we do know what is happening in terms of the Eurasian area, the Eurasian population is progressive.
The drive is against that from Europe, or from the trans-Atlantic area; and therefore, our problem is, we have to on the one hand, make sure that this one factor, the Eurasian factor, that that is kept as protected. And then we’ve got to put the leverage on to cure the other parts of the planet, which are in terrible and deteriorating condition, accelerating rates of degeneration. And so, these I think are two of the practical questions: What is good? What can be good? And what is very bad, and could be worse?. . . .
Kesha Rogers of Houston, Texas: I would start from what Lyn presented last night to members of the organization (lead editorial of EIR No.7), in terms of the discussion we had, from the standpoint of FDR as the image of leadership, because most of the population has no conception of what the idea of a productive society looks like. And this gets to the heart of the flaw in education, the corruption of our education system. It gets to the heart of what has been done in the takedown of our space program.
But I think that what should really be emphasized throughout, is that what you’re fighting for is the defense of the human mind. That’s what’s being targeted right now. And yet most people look at the space program as just a thing in and of itself, to protect certain programs, or so that people who have certain specialties will get money for their specialties, over other specialties.
 NASA/JPL-Caltech
Self-portrait of the Mars Rover Curiosity, surrounded by the tracks of its wheels, with Mars’ Mount Sharp in the background. Curiosity took the photos for this composite image on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 2012.
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But once again, a national mission has to start with a higher conception of the fight for the human mind. And this is something that Mr. LaRouche has been addressing,— you have been addressing— for quite some time, from the standpoint of: Look at what we have done in terms of our ability with, say, the Mars Curiosity mission, that everyone got extremely excited about. This showed a new direction for mankind. And China is developing it even further, from the standpoint of the idea that the extended sensory apparatus of the mind of man would be able to go out into the distances of space, without particularly having to send human beings there. But you have a different conception of what these instruments are, and what are the data that it’s bringing back, showing to the population how it is actually bettering our understanding as human beings of the universe that we live in.
One thing that I really want to put a focal point on, from the standpoint of the fight to defend NASA, is first of all, that we have lost touch with the idea of what NASA represents in terms of a fight to really protect the identity of the human mind, and what it really is supposed to represent.
I’m reading about and investigating a powerful lady by the name of Henrietta Leavitt. And I’ve mentioned her before. There’s not a whole lot of work out there about her. There’s a book called, Miss Leavitt’s Stars. The idea is that she gets to this very point. She was a lady who was really spectacular in her discovery, because her discovery was not made from the standpoint of sending humans out into space, but from the standpoint of how far the mind can go, and how much the mind can discover, from the standpoint of understanding relationships. She made the discovery that by measuring the brightness and the period of pulsating stars we could determine the distances of stars and galaxies that later led to the overturning of the prevailing notion that our galaxy, the Milky Way, was the only galaxy out there, which was not true. And her discoveries helped us to better understand that.
 Henrietta Swan Leavitt at her desk in the Harvard College Observatory.
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But more, her discoveries helped us to understand that we have a lot to learn about the universe we live in, and that only the human mind can help us to make that discovery. And that’s just an example of what we can accomplish with the space program. And it also is an example of the fact that China is committed to doing that, and we can use that as an example, and get the United States back on that track. But once again, there has to be a national mission, and it has to be a mission centered around that type of identity.
The Two Systems Can’t Coexist
LaRouche: In practice the area which is controlled, largely by Russia and China, and the nations which are now coming together grouped around them, are the only thing of any significance in a group or large-scale significance, which is going to do any good for mankind.
In a sense, what you have to get rid of, is the trans-Atlantic community. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re going to eliminate the people, but it means you’re going to eliminate their habit. And that’s the only way you’re going to do it. As a matter of fact, the only way you can get a healthy population on this planet is by crushing what we have in the trans-Atlantic region. You’ve got to clean it up! You can talk and say, well, are we going to help cure people of their disease? How can you cure a person, when their life is based on their disease? And that’s the point.
You get things in Germany, for example. You have a complicated state of mind among the German population, because the German population is one of the least diseased in particular, of the trans-Atlantic community. There are reasons for that, but there also are reasons because the Germans were treated as pariahs on the basis of the Hitler phenomenon. It was just an arbitrary thing.
The French system is a system that’s rotten to the core! Yes, there are people there who are decent people among the French, but the system stinks! It’s evil! And it spreads the evil, it’s spread it into Germany! That’s how the evil got back into Germany: It came by way of the British, the British by way of the French.
So the French system is one of the chief instruments for the destruction of the minds of people in the trans-Atlantic community, especially in Europe. And you see this all over the place.
So, we are going to have to actually,— not wait and say “cure people of their bad habits,”— that kind of thing, as we know from experience, doesn’t work very well. When people get into bad habits, they generally defend the bad habits first. And they comment on the subject afterward. No! We are in a situation where we are ready for a global war. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen that way; it means that the condition of life in the trans-Atlantic community has reached such a nature, which is a British-dominated nature. It’s British; and that’s Satanic.
So we’re in a situation where we are going to come to something which is tantamount to the edge of a war, a general war throughout the planet. Because you cannot have the two systems coexisting. You cannot have the kind of system that the British Empire represents in the trans-Atlantic community, at the same time that you’re trying to rebuild an economy in Eurasia. So the conflict is going to be very tough. Perhaps even disastrous. But that’s where we are right now. . . .
A New System for Mankind
LaRouche: Let’s take the case of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: What we’re looking at is a phenomenon very much like that, which is happening throughout the trans-Atlantic area. What we saw in the case of the Roman Empire was that this thing never cures itself. It was always evil. It was never purified. Only population reduction resulting from its policies made the disease of the empire less manifest.
 The last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, reigned 475 to 476, when he was deposed by Odoacer, who called himself King of Italy. Here, a coin issued by the teenaged Romulus.
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We’re now in a situation which is comparable to the fall of the Roman Empire. What is the Roman Empire? Well, implicitly it’s the trans-Atlantic community, and the trans-Atlantic community is ready to go to Hell. And the point is, don’t worry about that, don’t try to save it. If you try to save the Roman Empire,— if you read the Roman legacies and so forth, you find that didn’t work very well at all. They got killed!
Therefore, the point is, you’re going to get an extermination of a policy, a mental case of outlook, which is going to be comparable to the decline of the Roman Empire. And as I say, the British Empire is the new Roman Empire, and the problem is that the British Empire, which includes the United States, still does mean the United States!
That’s what’s happened to the United States; it happened immediately with the beginning of the United States as a nation. The destruction was massive: most of the Presidents of the United States were actually enemies of the United States; most of them were! And that’s why the problem keeps coming back, and still does. This is the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire model.
And you’ve got the Eurasian model now, the resuscitation of China, and what Putin has done on his part. He was inspired on this thing. Remember, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, his family, Putin’s family came from an area which was a concentration of death, because of the location of the battles there [Leningrad, now St. Petersburg]. And Putin has managed to be a factor in bringing about a strengthening of both China and Russia, to save Russia. And examine what the implications are; and what I’ve seen from the areas I used to poke around in, you know, in India and so forth, areas which I was working in.
And what we’re seeing is that this area, this Eurasian area contains within it elements which are the basis of creating or recreating a new system for mankind. And what the result will be,— the characteristic built into this thing, the characteristic is, the space program.
What do we mean by the space program? Well, not the space program the way the idiot thinks about the space program, but the space program as a reflection of the fact that mankind is getting wise. With the new Chinese far-side-of-the-Moon operation, mankind is getting wise to the reality that mankind on Earth is not the power that rules Earth; but rather, there is a force beyond that, which controls the achievement of space, and that means that mankind is a creature that lives in space. And it’s in that area, that domain, and the activities and development in that domain, which is the future for mankind.
The important thing here is, you have to just take a little, short trip and think about it. What does this mean? And right now, the new Moon project is probably the key to bringing this idea not only into what’s happening in China right now, but for the entire human species. But we’re going for a change in the species characteristics, from what had been traditional and what is going to emerge, now, from the new change.
And so therefore, the idea, if you want to do something good, look at that. Don’t ask what somebody says, “well, I think that that is this; I think that that is that . . .” That’s no good! The problem is that mankind has been a failure, but why has mankind been a failure? Not because of mankind’s inherent nature. But because of his corruption. . . .
Mankind Has To Change
LaRouche: Einstein. Einstein was a unique figure in history during his generation. He was unique. That is, the scientists around him were failures, and those who would follow in the footsteps of those failures, are still failures; and they’ve become worse failures than they were before.
 Albert Einstein in 1921
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So mankind has to change. This is the thing I keep reminding people, from time to time,— that mankind has a mission in the Universe, and it does not lie in some local area or some local scheme. It’s like a harvesting process, that mankind is able to find in their own hands,— like they have the right seeds, and get the right seeds in the process, and then the process of natural development of mankind proceeds, as being located within the Solar system. Now, that’s not an extraordinary thing; it’s true! And Einstein is an example of exactly what that means,— that is, his record, his legacy represents that. What was the difference with Einstein, what was the difference?
Well, you’ve got two cases of his categorical discoveries, that these things introduce something. Then he died. Well, I don’t know who to blame for his dying; but the problem is, his approach to science was killed! And you have people who are actually decent scientists, but they’re stuck on the implications of this thing.
And we have a mission, and to me the mission is very clear: We’ve got to get rid of the legacy which we cling to, like desperate people. And you have to understand that what people say is “practical” is what is evil. You want a definition of evil? Be practical! . . .
They Want an Explanation
LaRouche: You can use the term “God,” but I think that when people use those terms, they get trapped into a misunderstanding of what the whole meaning is. Look, what’s the nature of mankind? What makes mankind different than any animal, what? Unique. What is it? It’s the power of creativity.
Now, what is this power of creativity? This can be expressed in a child’s mind, in the question of the development of that mind. Because in the course of mankind, each generation of humanity should be making an original contribution to the future of mankind. And that’s the intention here. So people say, “God will do this, God will do that.” Wait a minute, buddy! Who’s this “God” that you’re talking about? I mean, anybody that you know, personally, that you have worked with personally on this thing? Of course not!
The problem is, they want to come out with an “explanation.” They want to create an image, an image of a Creator in whose existence they don’t believe. That is, they don’t believe in it in practice. Because they are not a person who has been generating creativity for mankind. And therefore, Einstein is very important for this, because here’s a man who’s an example by his life, by his work,— and he was a creative person. What did he create? He created people! Well, didn’t they already live? Yes! But what was the difference with the ones that worked with him? Under his influence, they’re quite different! Mankind is not waiting for birth out there, as such. Mankind is waiting to discover what mankind already has.
The idea is that the human individual is able to create a power of creativity in the human being! And that’s not something that dumps on you; that’s something that comes from the process of your existence. And if you can achieve that progress, that’s the proof of creativity. And the idea,— the creativity which lies beyond the past,— that is what the truth is.
People say we’re going to inherit this, we’re going to inherit that— no. Mankind as a species, develops within the body of mankind, the aptitude of creating creativity beyond anything that any living mind has heretofore done: the creativity of the individual.
And it’s when you understand this, which has been my particular emphasis,— that’s what makes the difference. The human species is the only species we know of, which can voluntarily create a new state in the universe.
All this other stuff, this substitute, “Oh this is my explanation, my explanation, this is my opinion.”. . . It’s nonsense! The question is, mankind is unique in the Solar system, in the system as we know it. Mankind is unique, and the point is, if you don’t get your children to grow up a little bit and become smarter and so forth, then you’re working for Satan. We have a lot of those, like Trump, for example. [laughter]
Michael Steger of San Francisco: Well, Lyn, implicitly, you’ve just taken the discussion to the area of what is your unique contribution to this whole idea, which is to make clear in a more scientific way the role of Classical music and composition in shaping the question of scientific thought in the human mind. It was understood, but yet really hadn’t been made conscious; maybe you have more to say. But that seems to be where we’ve taken the discussion now.
The Baby Genius
LaRouche: It can be taken further, obviously,— that’s presumably an approximation. But no, the idea of mankind, inherently — inherently — within mankind, within the body of mankind, of people, mankind; that is where the creativity lies. You get a little baby started, and the baby functions, and the baby becomes a little genius as they call it; and you say, that is a creative force, that kind of creativity in the individual human being, as from a child, from a very young child who is fortunate enough to be able to develop a real force of creativity. You take the greatest, most creative people we know of in history, and they stand out for that.
 Prometheus carries fire in this painting by Seventeenth-century Flemish artist Jan Cossiers.
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Kepler’s an example of that. Kepler’s a perfect example of that. And so, he was a genius; he died on the field of battle, but he wasn’t fighting. He was just not getting fed; those were the conditions he was living under. But his discovery was unique! What he discovered on the question of the Solar system was unique! What we should be looking for is those things which are unique acts of creativity, and the promotion of them, and the development of the appreciation of them!
And that’s where the weakness lies, that we don’t do that. We want an explanation, like a ready-made explanation. We don’t have the force inside us to force ourselves to create something which is an absolutely new idea, which never came to any other person before. Never! And that’s what you’re looking for. And Einstein is a model of this kind of existence.
Megan Beets of the LaRouche PAC Science Team: If you go back to what you brought up in the beginning about education, and you were just referencing the child, you’re really discussing a process of play, of creative play; and in the child it takes one form, and in the adult it takes a slightly different form, which is what you’re saying, the creation of something new which has never occurred before.
LaRouche: Well, I’ve had children, and I’ve watched this, and I’ve watched people at an earlier age in this sort of thing, and I’ve seen it. We used to get fascinated by babies, you know, young babies, because you would see them doing something like that; you would see them doing something which was absolutely original; they would look at something and they would discover something. It was often silly, and this and that, but it was unique! And the very fact that it was something new which the child created—the parents didn’t do that, the child did; or the environment for the child. And therefore, this process in mankind which is unique to mankind, is the real principle of humanity.
And when people don’t do that, they fall out of the category of being useful. But this process,— the universe obeys the principle, which is the same principle. The universe behaves according to that principle; that’s how the whole system works anyway. Without that it doesn’t work!
Diane Sare of Manhattan: You know, in music, they go to great lengths to discourage creativity, and there’s also a great deal of confusion people have today between creativity and what they call “innovation.” But I was just thinking, Furtwängler discussing why people love certain symphonies, where there’s clearly a quality of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or Ninth Symphony, or certain pieces that have survived hundreds of years, and others that have fallen by the wayside; so that even in a dark age, there’s something which is recognized as a certain unique quality which is accessible to the human population.
LaRouche: Well, I think mankind has never, generally, with some rare exceptions, understood the truth about mankind. They always say, “the baby was born” or so forth, and that was what did it; but that wasn’t what did it. It was a process, because the baby being born is a vehicle which may be a source within mankind as a community, of the development of the creative powers. And it’s the creative powers of the human mind which distinguish mankind from all other known living creatures.
Rachel Brinkley of Boston: And so, history which seems to be a continuous process to many is more like Planck and Einstein would have viewed it, that there are characteristic changes, like supernovae, which actually are important; it’s the burst of activity, not the continuous wave of activity which actually defines the process.
LaRouche: That’s the idea of having children, you know. The real motive of that. That since you have not produced enough creativity, yourself, go have a baby, and make sure that that baby makes an accidental discovery or what appears to be an accidental discovery; and you watch this child, and you say, “this kid’s smarter than I am!” [laughter]
This is the way it all works! You see it, I mean, you’ll see it; a child coming in and making a statement which is actually a statement of a discovery that the child’s mind has made! That’s the fun.
So the question of creativity means that the whole system of the Solar system and beyond, is essentially dominated by these events, the same events which are the events who are characterized by the system, as a whole. It’s there! The question is, what do you want to do? You want to create people who are creative. You want to be able to create babies, which are themselves creative in an original way. And you see that: Einstein was, for example, a good example of this,— if you take what we know of his history,— that human creativity is a unique matter; it is what really should dominate and control the history of mankind.
And the problem is we then try to play around with games and tricks; it doesn’t work. Einstein was against Satan. That’s the issue; it was Einstein. Oh, he’s the guy who that hated Satan,— taught him algebra.
Filippo Brunelleschi
Rogers: That is an interesting image, though, that you painted on this question of the baby being born as the source of creativity, because if you think about,— it puts a whole different conception on the idea of, for instance, not just the human born child, but, I would say, the Baby Jesus. And that being a real source of,— what is this idea of creativity that has been given to mankind? And I don’t have a full idea about it, but that was just something I was thinking about, when you said that; and it brings forth this conception of looking at what Cusa was thinking about in his investigations from that standpoint in the De Docta Ignorantia [Learned Igorance. 1440]. But that’s the first conception that came to my mind when you were saying that: Is this idea of this conception of the creativity from the standpoint of Christ being born into humanity and bringing forth this idea of what is the access of creativity to humanity?
LaRouche: Take the case of Brunelleschi. Now, Brunelleschi was actually a unique person. And the discoveries that were made by him. He made them! And the people who were supposedly his rivals would sit there, foaming at the mouth, or something like that, and they would just sit there, because they couldn’t make an invention.
 Wikimedia
Bust of Filippo Brunelleschi in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence.
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Now, we know that in the course of history there are people who seem to be unique in their ability to make these kinds of discoveries, that is discoveries of new principles, as opposed to the application of a known principle. Education at its best is the development of a known discovery of principle. But there are some people who are a little more creative and actually made creative discoveries as a matter of character. He was that: Brunelleschi.
And you see, the Renaissance comes out of Brunelleschi, the Renaissance as it emerged. There were earlier forms of Renaissance. So what happens is, you find one person, like Brunelleschi who made greater discoveries than anyone in his lifetime, and from earlier! And there were people like that, in a similar way in earlier parts of history, the knowable people.
So what you should search for is those kinds of cases where people do become original creators, and you want to understand how that works. And you may not make a discovery, but the discovery may make you. And that’s the principle. You want a creation of people who can be creative.
The other side of course, is the fact of what is evil. Obama is pure evil. You know, what’re you going to do? Get rid of him: He’s evil. He is Satanic, explicitly Satanic. So therefore, the question is we’ve got to eliminate Satanic influences inside our society.
I think Trump is a failure as Satanic. He’s nasty, he’s got all the disgusting characteristics you could possibly want. And yet, he’s only a Trump. He steals a lot, tries to steal. But I think he has to beg more often than steal.
This is the thing I keep saying repeatedly on these occasions: What is the nature of mankind? And mankind is a creative force unto itself; it is not something else. And the object is to get an environment in which you get more people who are actually truly creative. How do you do that? By protecting them as much as possible from the bastards who try to mold them. And our job is to do as much as we can to contribute to that process.
