This article appears in the August 3, 2018 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
You’re Human!
Do You Know What That Means?
[Print version of this article]
We conclude this report with a discussion of Mankind’s present and future prospects.
VI.—Spirit of the Belt and Road
Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing . . . The world wants to see us get along.
—President Donald Trump,
March 21, 2018
As we have explored in the preceding sections of this report, to be human means to act on the future. This is the singular distinguishing feature which sets the human species apart from all other creatures. Effective action, interventions which create new possibilities for human advancement, all arise from within the individual human mind (human soul). The self-generating spark, the power of hypothesis—a power capable of overturning past axioms and opening up new insights into the lawful ordering of the universe—is the essence of human nature. Of all the creatures which inhabit the Earth, only Man has this capability. That is who we are. Through such human interventions, we change our future course, transform our present environment, and redefine the meaning of mankind’s past accomplishments. Our discoveries of principle act on the past, present and future simultaneously, outside of clock time, so to speak.
Shall we have a future? Shall we accept the mission to ensure that a productive future exists for yet unborn generations of human beings? This is a decision that each individual must resolve for himself or herself. What shall I make of my life?
Space
On August 25, 2012, the space craft Voyager 1 left our solar system, having passed through the region of plasma known as the heliosphere, beyond Pluto. Voyager 1, still operational and still transmitting data back to Earth, is now 13.2 billion miles from the sun, as it heads toward the constellation Camelopardalis. Thus, mankind has already extended our reach out into the galaxy.
Since the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, 561 human beings have traveled beyond the Earth’s atmosphere into outer space. More than forty different nations have sent their citizens into orbit, including Brazil, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mongolia, Mexico, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran. As of June 2018, 70 different nations have established space agencies, including Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan. Of these nations, nine currently possess an orbital launch capability. These are Russia, the United States, France, Japan, China, India, Israel, Iran and North Korea.
Three nations—America, China and Russia—have launched men and women into orbit.
Twelve human beings have walked on the moon.
There are six humans in space right now (3 Americans, 2 Russians, 1 German).
At the same time, humanity has also reached out much further into the solar system. During the last forty years, we have successfully landed spacecraft on Mars, Venus, asteroids and comets, as well as on Saturn’s moon Titan. We have orbited Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, and visited Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. In addition to the mission of Voyager 1, Voyager 2 is also exploring the outer reaches of our solar system and will soon pass into the interstellar medium. And the New Horizons mission, which left earth in 2006, has just passed Pluto and will begin exploring the Kuiper Belt in 2019.
Through the deployment of a vast array of “deep-space telescopes,” the universe itself has begun to reveal some of its revolutionary secrets, in the process posing paradoxes which overturn much of what is currently accepted axiomatic mathematical belief. All of these discoveries will require new Keplers, new Einsteins, new Leonardos to unravel the hidden principles of universal creation.
These are not “machines” traveling to these outer regions of our solar system or investigating distant stars. This is the Mind of Man reaching out into the galaxy. All of the rovers, orbiters, telescopes and other pieces of technology were invented by human beings, and this often involved solving very difficult conceptual problems. The discoveries which are being made all now become a part of human culture—subjects of human deliberation and future action. This is the power of human thought, extending its sovereignty out beyond the biosphere of the Earth. This is the first step in mankind’s extra-terrestrial future.
This is our common destiny. It is a project which encompasses all of humanity; it is not the monopoly of any one nation. This is our shared mission which binds every nation and every human being on Earth together.
Present and Future Challenges
In past chapters of this report, we have discussed several of the galactic threats and extinction crises which have confronted mankind in the past. Those dangers are with us still. In one sense, modern human civilization has existed, so far, in a “grace period.” During the last 20,000 years we have never experienced a VEI8 super-volcano; we have never experienced an asteroid impact with global consequences (let alone the effect of the one which struck Mexico 60-plus million years ago); we have never experienced either a galactic or solar event which seriously threatened the atmosphere or biosphere of our planet.
Since the (temporary) retreat of the glaciers roughly 11,000 years ago, we have existed—more or less—in a relatively stable terrestrial environment. It is as if the universe is giving us a break to get our act together, to make preparations to meet the challenges that lie ahead. Yet, change, dramatic change, is a feature of our universe, and we must prepare for the future.
One recent example should suffice to illustrate the necessity for human scientific advancement. In 1994 the comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 struck Jupiter. Before its impact it broke up into fragments, the largest of which, fragment G, was estimated to have released an energy equivalent to 6,000,000 megatons of TNT (600 times the earth’s nuclear arsenal) upon impact, creating a crater almost exactly the diameter of the Earth. If, instead of Jupiter, Shoemaker–Levy 9 had hit the Earth, mass extinctions and a collapse of human civilization would have been a certainty.
That said, it must also be forcefully asserted that under no circumstances is it fated in-the-stars for the human species to go extinct. Unlike the system of oligarchical monetary empire, mankind has no inescapable Appointment in Samarra. Yes, current and future threats to our existence are very real, and if we sit here—bonobo-like—wallowing in gluttony, avarice and lust, the fate of our species is sealed. Any human culture which is governed by entropic principles—a self-imposed entropy which is contrary to the self-organizing creative nature of the universe—will not survive.
Saint Augustine, in his writings against the Manicheans, demonstrated that evil is not an inherent part of God’s creation, nor of actual human nature. Scientifically, the correct synonym for evil is entropy, as we see in all self-destructive oligarchical systems. Such entropic systems cannot survive in our self-developing universe. But the human species can.
America, Russia and China
At the recently concluded Helsinki summit, President Trump stated:
We (the United States and Russia) will have discussions on everything from trade to military to missiles to nuclear to China, we’ll be talking a little bit about China (and) our mutual friend President Xi Jinping.
As we pass midsummer 2018, the recent discussions among Presidents Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have unleashed what can only be accurately defined as a global Peace Initiative. The meetings and discussions among these three leaders have been unprecedented. The three most powerful nations in the world are joining together in the name of world peace. Nothing like this has happened before in human history.
China’s leadership is fully committed to the economic development paradigm of the Belt and Road Initiative. Vladimir Putin has made great strides in rebuilding the wreckage of Russia’s economy. Donald Trump is acting to overturn the pro-war policy axioms which have dominated the United States since 9-11. All three leaders are acting with great courage, and they are working together.
For the foreseeable future, this dynamic will continue; its effects will deepen and broaden. Were increasing numbers of citizens to actively and publicly proclaim their support for this new paradigm of peace and economic development, this will spell the end of British geopolitics. It will deliver a fatal blow to the imperial system of usury, exploitation and war.
From Syria to Ethiopia to Bolivia, hope is arising, and a great turning point in human history stands before us. This is a moment in which willful human intervention is critical, where the actions of individual human beings shall determine which path is taken. This is where the concept “acting on the future” becomes concrete: Shall each of us find new powers within ourselves to intervene now to aid in bringing the New Paradigm into existence? This is an individual personal responsibility.
Immortality
In one sense, it is legitimate to state that the physical existence of the human species is potentially immortal, and there is truth in such an assertion. Unlike all other earthly creatures, the human species possesses an anti-entropic cognitive nature. Only mankind has the ability to overcome threats of extinction, to continue to grow and develop as a species to ever-loftier accomplishments. Yet, there is a far more important way to look at this question of immortality.
Each human mind, as an embodiment of the individual human personality, already possesses a potential immortal existence. The still-living power of the human mind—the human soul—embodies a species-nature which reaches out over centuries, long after the flesh has died.
Lyndon LaRouche has spoken of this eternal quality of the human mind, of the reality that the creative discoveries of a human individual—that is, the mental action of discovery itself—never dies. He has called this the Simultaneity of Eternity, but I ask the reader to not just give this phenomenon a label and file that label away, but to consider the implications of that staggering feature of our species and to ponder what this implies as to our proper role in the universe.
Perhaps a personal note will make this clearer. There have been several books that I have read in my lifetime that have profoundly shaken me with such a noëtic power. One was my first reading of Dante’s Commedia, another was Blaise Pascal’s Provincial Letters, and a third was the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence. There have been others. These were not words-on-a-page. They were not merely “lessons” to be learned. In each case, the living mind of the author was grabbing me, shaking me, as if he were in the room, sitting in front of me. And, he was—an intangible human mind engaging another human mind over the span of centuries—debating, taunting, helping, and always challenging—an agapic dialogue that exists but can not be touched, or smelled or audibly heard. It is a compositional dialogue, as new thoughts and new discoveries emerge.
It goes further. Take John Keats’ On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Not only is he presenting an inner dialogue, within his mind, with both Chapman and Homer, but he is bringing you, the reader, into this timeless simultaneous multi-dimensional conversation. The mind of the author is still affecting the future, centuries after his physical death. The idea, the act of discovery, still exists as a living power within the universe. It is immortal, everywhere and at all time.
An even more powerful example is great musical composition where the inner process of discovery is even more explicit, more intimate, and the dialogue of the most profound essence. An attentive immersion in Beethoven’s Opus 132 seizes both the mind and the heart, in ways which are disturbing, uplifting, devastating, and even painful. This is where the real essence of human beauty, human immortality, might be touched.
Perhaps, you have had such experiences. Your predicates might be different from my own, but every human being has intimate moments of truthful reflection and insight where they catch sight of the beautiful potential which binds us all together. It is this intangible “touching” of the eternal which is the basis for all optimism. This is the realm from which all human creativity arises. It is daunting,—even terrifying—and many turn back, out of fear. But it is just at such moments that creative breakthroughs are made—timeless moments wherein one’s own sense of identity might “change in an instant” and where it is possible to discover and deploy new powers from within one’s self.
This is the lesson of Prometheus, tortured and chained to a rock, his flesh decaying—yet eternally powerful in what he has unleashed—and continues to unleash—within the universe.
The Wondrous Future
Ten thousand years ago, human beings lived in the final stages of the Paleolithic era; 5,000 years ago, we were creating machines from bronze. Socrates lived 2,500 years ago. Columbus discovered America 526 years ago. And a mere 49 years ago human beings walked on the moon. It is stunning. It is breathtaking. It requires, in the words of Friedrich Schiller, nothing less than an “Ode to Joy.”
Yet! —to take this even further, consider that the true revelation is not merely the brief span of time within which this has all been accomplished. There is a more crucial quality, one of “acceleration,” that has characterized it. The apostles of Jesus used to speak of the “quickening of the soul.” Contemplate for a moment the evolutionary anti-entropic “quickening” of the human species.
With his discovery of the principle of Potential Relative Population Density, Lyndon LaRouche has defined a measurement to judge the worth or worthlessness of any given human culture, much as Yahweh judged Sodom. LaRouche’s concept is not a formula, nor a mathematical measurement. It defines a process, a dynamic, and the rate of change in that process defines the ability of any given society to survive and perpetuate. As LaRouche correctly insists, for the human race to continue to exist as a potentially immortal species, there must be an ongoing anti-entropic increase in the upward rate of potential relative population density—i.e., a continual non-linear acceleration of mankind’s cognitive intervention into the universe.
This has implications for science, music, and economics—and most importantly for the requirement to encourage the emergence of individual human genius.
Our only pathway to progress into the future is to accelerate the noëtic power of Mind within the heavenly biosphere. That is clearly what the universe desires from us. And there is nothing, nothing, other than the murderous monetary policies of empire and a suicidal culture permeated by the Oligarchic Principle, to stop us. Our species role is not defensive, i.e., to prevent extinction. There are great tasks—and challenges to be met—as we move forward, to create a beautiful future for all human beings.
The universe is now beckoning us. It really is. If you listen closely you can hear it . . . not with your ears but with your mind and your heart. Human creativity and agapē are of one piece. They define who we are and the nature of the universe we all inhabit. The human race shall reach new galaxies we can, as yet, barely see. We shall create new forms of matter we haven’t even yet imagined.
Our first step is to eliminate the last vestiges of oligarchism which still infect human society, and then begin to move out into the stars. As Pip advised Estella, it is time to abandon the culture of death, throw open the curtains, and go out into the sunlight.
Thus . . . the Spirit of the Belt and Road.
Partial Bibliography for the Series
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Theodossiou, E.; Manimanis, V. N.; Mantarakis, P.; Dimitrijevic, M. S. “Astronomy and Constellations in the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Vol. 14, No. 1 (March 2011).
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Note: The first part of this series may be found here, and subsequent parts are in the following, consecutive issues of Executive Intelligence Review: Part II; Part III; Part IV; Part V.
