TOWARD OUR HIGHER IDENTITY
A Moment for Greatness
by Kesha Rogers
[Print version of this article]
The dignity of man into your hands is given. Its keeper be. With you it sinks, with you it will arise.
—from Schiller’s poem, “The Artists”
Adapted from an oral presentation to the meeting of the Manhattan Project, Nov. 26.
Nov. 27—During a recent discussion with leaders of his U.S. national organization, Lyndon LaRouche made the following assessment in response to the rapidly developing global situation. He weighed just how this profound moment of great achievement and profound responsibility must be approached, as it confronts all thinking Americans and all others throughout the world who seek a more prosperous future for the whole of mankind.
“The things to be considered are deep,” he said.
They are not choices of program policies; they are not superficial. That goes to the space program, and once you look at the space program in a critical way in terms of the universe—not in a practical way, but in terms of the universe—then you really begin to see what the chances before us in the world now are. Understand that practical interpretations will not cut the mustard. You have to get at the idea of what the procedure is, the manner to create the new universe of mankind.
So, that is the question at hand. What is the procedure that must be put forth to create the new universe of mankind? I think that is the question before us: How do we bring this new universe into existence?
That’s the challenge that all of us have right now, as we see the rapid transformations in the world economy. At this very moment, the United States has a unique responsibility to join in the efforts for the global shifts now under way.
What we accomplish in the next four weeks will be decisive for shaping this new universe which mankind must bring about. The imperative fight before us is for the immediate implementation of Mr. LaRouche’s Four Laws, with the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall banking protection as a first measure. Mr. LaRouche has defined these Four Laws, not as a part of some sort of policy decision, but as a total transformation, which is now underway, to bring the United States up to the standard of what it must do in light of the global shifts taking place throughout the world. These shifts themselves have been a response to the leadership of Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche over the past decades, against the evils of a financial oligarchical system; that is what Glass-Steagall represents.
We are now poised to bring down the Bush/Obama/Cheney apparatus—the disintegrating financial system and evil empire—once and for all.
A Leap in Progress
Once you do that, what is it that you’re going to be bringing into existence? I think it is important to look at the developments, the rapid transformation that has been underway for the past several weeks now. Look particularly at the ongoing developments coming from the leadership of the BRICS nations—Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa—and particularly from the leadership of Russia and China. This is not something that just sort of fell into our laps, or that should be looked as a development of new events. It is really a transformation of mankind. It is mankind taking a leap in the development of a new system of relations among nations, throughout the planet and throughout the universe, which has to be understood in a critical way.
The conception of mankind, and of the intrinsic nature of mankind, as Mr. LaRouche has identified it, is imperative for understanding the ongoing global events. If, for example, you look at the global shifts manifest in the developments at the APEC summit in Lima, Peru, Nov. 17-19 and the role of China’s President Xi Jinping and others there, you see that you have to address this from the understanding that a new system of international relations is now coming into being.
View full size Xinhua/Ding Lin
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama in Lima, Peru, Nov. 19, 2016.
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In the aftermath of the summit, President Xi visited Peru, Ecuador, and Chile. China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, described the tour as aimed at building a community of common destiny. He told the Xinhua news service that the results were “impressive, making enormous strides towards building a community of common destiny with other nations of Latin America and the Caribbean by holding the higher banner of a peaceful development and cooperation.” He said they were coordinating their development strategies, upgrading their cooperation, and bringing benefits to their people.
In the midst of these rapid international developments, our leadership was also manifest. On the opening day of the APEC summit, November 17, Mrs. LaRouche addressed a meeting in Lima, Peru that had a profound impact. This is really characteristic of the leadership shown by Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche. She addressed the XXIII National Congress of the Association of Peruvian Economists. At the conclusion of the event, the economists issued a conclusive statement of endorsement, saying, “We share Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s perspective on world development.”
What is under way here has to be understood as a leap in the progress of mankind. We are now at a point where the evil of a system of empire, of degeneracy, of financial collapse, is now totally disintegrating and is ending. This result has been the ongoing work of Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche and our political organization. This is exactly what Mr. LaRouche addressed yesterday as the fight that is now under way, saying that these are not just choices of programs or policies that can be enacted in a superficial way, or that you can look at these world developments in a piecemeal way. As if this event is happening here, or that event is happening there.
It is imperative to recognize that a new definition of mankind is now coming to fruition. In addressing LaRouche’s conception of a corresponding economic platform for this new definition of mankind, my colleague Ben Deniston of the LaRouche PAC Basement Team took up the profound conception that has been uniquely identified by Lyndon LaRouche, that the platform must be conceived from the standpoint of the development of the Solar system, with the leaps necessary for our development of the Moon as a first priority.
‘Infrastructure’ Not the Answer
But why is all this necessary? How do you think about these things? First of all, you have to ask the question as Mr. LaRouche did:
What is the intrinsic meaning of the human being? Of the existence of the human being, and of all human beings? What makes the universe do what it does for the function of mankind as such? The question is, what mankind can do to change the behavior of the universe as such.
As he was making those comments, it reminded me of President John F. Kennedy, when he proclaimed, “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” If you really want to address that goal in the way that Kennedy intended, and which the financial British imperial system and oligarchy have completely opposed from the very beginning, you really have to address it from the standpoint of mankind’s unique role in changing the behavior of the universe as such.
View full size NASA
President John F. Kennedy (left) visits Mercury’s Flight Control Area a few days after John Glenn’s flight in February 1962. Glenn and astronaut Alan Shepard are to Kennedy’s right.
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That means we have to go to work to understand what the characteristics of the universe are, to understand the creative nature of mankind in being able to increase the leaps of development and transform not just our single planet, but the entire universe. I think that gets at the core of the “platform” conception of economic development of Mr. LaRouche. What Ben Deniston laid out yesterday were the fundamental practical applications that are absolutely necessary to get us to the point where we reject the notion of limits to growth and reject the notion that there is a budgetary crisis that keeps us from accomplishing these goals of mankind in mastering the development of space. We must understand the concept of leaps in economic platforms so that we can avoid addressing the needs of space development from a piecemeal standpoint.
The United States must enter into the new paradigm that is now underway and is being immediately defined by the nations of Russia and China. We have clearly defined the actions necessary to bring the United States into that new system of international relations in our publication, “The United States Joins the New Silk Road: A Hamiltonian Vision for an Economic Renaissance.” It outlines the programmatic approach of our movement.
You cannot create an economic renaissance, or even have a Hamiltonian vision for an economic renaissance, by addressing economic development from the standpoint of infrastructure. This gets to the very core of the discussion currently under way. What is the difference between piecemeal steps of infrastructure development, and the conceptual understanding of creating an economic renaissance through leaps in mankind’s creative progress?
Mr. LaRouche has taken up that subject on many counts. In a moment I will read a quote from him that addresses it from the standpoint of physical economy: increases in the creative potential of mankind, and the leaps of economic progress that come from these advances in the creative potential of the human mind. I am referring to advances in what we as a species have that is uniquely different from all other species.
When you talk about leaps in economic platforms—my colleagues and I were just discussing this today—it probably would have been mind-boggling to people in the pre-Lincoln era of the Oregon Trail if they could see where we are today. Then, it took four or five months to travel from Missouri to Oregon under very harsh conditions. Now, because of leaps in transportation technology, you can make the trip in a matter of four to five hours.
Then you look at what it took for us to get to the Moon with the Saturn V rocket. That technology—as essential as it was at the time—would not be sufficient now to get us to Mars safely—in the context of the necessary leaps in economic, scientific, and technological platforms. We have to actually develop the region of low-Earth orbit and the region of the Moon, as a platform for launching to Mars. This is something that really has to be taken up.
Higher Conception of Human Identity
Let’s go back to LaRouche’s conception of an economic platform in physical economics. What I am going to quote from—and I recommend that you go back and read it—is the book that Mr. LaRouche wrote in 2008 after his famous economic forecast of July 25, 2007. It’s called The State of Our Union: The End of Our Delusion! In that programmatic work, he writes:
In physical economy, for example, it is those creative powers of the individual human mind associated with the means by which the human mind generates, or replicates either a discovery of a universal physical principle, or a modification of the application of that physical principle as such, which is the essential marker of cognitive activity. This includes discoveries respecting the principle of life itself. It is the processes of discovery of such principles, of amplification of the categories of application and range of application of such discovered principles, which are the core subject of creativity.
So, that is what is at hand right now for our understanding of the embodiment,— what lies at the foundation of Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Laws. They represent a transformation in the prevailing conception of who we are as a species, and state the corresponding policy that must be enacted now. This is not a policy that can be eventually adopted, nor can we wait to see what President-elect Donald Trump is going to do.
Our role and responsibility is to shape the institution of the Presidency and to shape the new Presidency. That means not just shaping relations within the United States and within the process of political activities in the United States. Understand this as a process shaping the universe as a whole, shaping the global developments of the world as a whole, and that is imperative now. There is not a choice in the matter; this is not just a nice idea. It has to be undertaken immediately! We have to now realize the Hamiltonian vision for an economic renaissance. There has to be a new conception of mankind underway to do that.
 San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives
Krafft Ehricke, known as the father of the Atlas, here demonstrating his model of the Atlas Space Station.
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We go back to Mr. LaRouche’s emphasis on development in space as a key to how we address the needs of mankind on the planet, how we address this higher identity of who we are as a species. He continues to bring up the role and leadership of the great space pioneer Krafft Ehricke, who has become a dear friend of mine in this fight to understand what is required to lead this nation from the brink of despair, under the evil and destructive policies of the Bush/Cheney/Obama regime, which now has to be ended.
Ehricke’s Insight
I want to read a quote from Ehricke’s article, “A Case for Space.” It is phenomenal, because he writes this eight months after the launch and landing of the Apollo 11 mission. This is February 1970; the Apollo mission had landed in July 1969. It’s really fascinating just to think that Krafft Ehricke was not just an engineer, aeronautical scientist, and engineer who looked at space from the standpoint of practical applications. He looked at development in space from the standpoint of the human creative process; we do not go into space because it’s there, he wrote, but because we need its potential and we need to develop its potential for the development of the human species as a whole.
On March 25, 1961, President Kennedy had announced the program to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade is out. There was then a major fight by the limits to growth, anti-human, anti-scientific progress, budget-cutting people, who were prepared to do everything to make sure that it didnt happen. After the horrific events in 1967 that halted the space program—the cabin fire that killed all three crew members of the Apollo 1 mission—there was a two-year period when it was very uncertain whether we were going to accomplish that goal that Kennedy had set into motion.
 NASA
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon on July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission, the first spaceflight that landed humans on the Moon.
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But as soon as that goal was accomplished and we had succeeded in “sending a man to the Moon and returning him safely to Earth,” despite a major (and continuing) fight, Ehricke wrote this paper, because the budget-cutting, imperialist, anti-development agenda was rearing its ugly head as never before. In his “Case for Space,” Krafft Ehricke writes:
Among the many important challenges of our time, space is the only major challenge that is not borne out of past acts of ignorance, indifference, or man’s inhumanity to man.... Space opens new horizons beyond Earth and offers new beginnings in the ways we can manage this precious planet. It offers noble aspirations, opportunities for creative action, for bringing the human family closer together and contributing to a better future for all.
After further developing this thought, he identifies some of the attacks on the space program: Why would we want to spend this money in going into space; we have poverty and so many other concerns, so why would we want to actually spend the money to go into space? Ehricke writes that you do have to deal with war, with poverty, and all of the things that confront the nation and confront mankind; and he says,
Like the space program, these other efforts have important positive goals—badly needed in the era in which loss of identity is feared by so many young people, though never with less justification if they would just tune in rather than out.
He continues,
Improving living conditions and education, conquering disease, and overcoming social injustices are positive goals. The national space activity contributes to many of these efforts and certainly does not impede the others.
Ehricke understood that the inspiration and development of mankind’s purpose to enhance our development in space is absolutely imperative for accomplishing these goals, for addressing these concerns confronting mankind. Because they are not concerns that cannot be addressed; you have to look at what is bringing such injustices about.
Mankind has suffered under a limitation on its creative potential. A limitation on growth has been put on mankind. Until we remove that limitation, we will never be able to address these concerns. To remove those limitations, we must define mankind’s true purpose: What is the intrinsic nature of mankind? How do we create this new universal system? It is accomplished through the development of space and through bringing forth the vision, once and for all, of a true economic Renaissance in which the development of space is at the core of that mission.
