This article appears in the April 23, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Time for a True Paradigm-Shift: From the Baby Doomers to the Future of Humanity

by Peter Møller

[Print version of this article]

The following article originally appeared in the German magazine, Fusion, Vol. 40, No. 2, 2019, pp. 8-15.

They demand that we listen: “Humanity is destroying the Earth! Our CO₂-emissions are irrevocably over-heating the Planet! All scientists agree: We must act now! Who doesn’t, is utterly immoral!” Really? Is this actually so? What would the consequences be if it was not true? And if this was the case, would it really be the first time in history that entire nations—yes, even entire civilizations—were completely on the wrong ideological path? Would it not therefore be better to muster up the courage and ask the inconvenient questions, also when that implies swimming against the stream? And if the above statements are false, should we not inquire into the reasons why such falsities, which lead to a peculiar twisting of reality, exist?

These reasons, and a scientific, and quite fascinating insight into nature itself and mankind’s role in it, is what this article aims to explore.

Models Which Can’t Predict

To begin with: why is it, actually, that all the climate models are wrong?

The upper, red curve in Figure 1 shows the average temperature prediction of 102 climate models; the two lower curves are actual measurements by weather balloons and satellites. Henrik Svensmark—who has shown a revealing correlation between cloud formation and cosmic radiation—recently remarked that the models without the CO₂-component actually are quite near to the observations.[fn_1] In Figure 2 the models, both with (in red) and without (in blue) the factor of greenhouse gases, are shown together with the observations (in gray). One sees that the models without the factor of greenhouse gases show temperatures which are relatively close to the actual observations, while they almost always show too warm temperatures in the models with the factor of greenhouse gases.

If, say, a quarterback keeps overshooting the target with the same consistency as the above predictions, the coach would soon pull him aside and suggest, minimally, that he try out [for] a different position, if not a different type of sport altogether. But our environmentalist-friendly politicians, on the other hand, think that this is more than enough to qualify for the National Football League. Yes, according to predictions of these doomsday climate prophets, not even a cat, with its nine lives, could have avoided extinction as often as humanity has done this in the last decades.

Here are but a few samples:

Life magazine, 1970: “In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution.... By 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

The Washington Post, 1971: “Sustained emissions over five to ten years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”

Newsweek, 1975: “The central fact is that ... the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.”

But then in 1980s, as that moral compass which they portray themselves to be, they swung from due North to due South:

Associated Press, 1989: “U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER: ...[E]ntire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Miracle Planet, 1990: “Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.”

Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund, 1990: “By 1995, the greenhouse effect will be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…. The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the MLK Show, 2019: “…[T]he world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”

All these misses have—of course—not made them less sure of themselves, and with firm resolve do they declare their holy war against the CO₂-sinners of this world! One is reminded of the witch-hunts during the Little Ice Age—burned at the stake for having caused the catastrophic fall in temperature! The only difference from today, is, that there actually was a considerable change in the climate at that time—caused by the then low solar activity during the “Maunder Minimum.”

That is what happens when ideology, and not science, plays lead violin.

Here we should perhaps briefly mention that the often-quoted claim, “97% of all scientists support the theory of man-made climate change,” is based on a sophist distortion of reality. These supposed “97%,” which [number] originates from a study by John Cook, is a compilation of 12,000 scientific studies about the climate.

Of these studies, about 8,000 do not even mention man-made climate change, and are therefore not included in the percentage.[fn_2] Of the remaining 4,000, 3,000 of them only implicitly endorse the theory. That is, a number of the studies assume man-made climate change as a given, and only look at the logical consequences—the “if true, then….”—and never at the validity of the theory itself.[fn_3] Besides this, it even includes studies from scientists who disagree with the theory; for example, studies by the Israeli scientist, Nir Shaviv—who, at the end on 2018, testified in the German Parliament against man-made climate change[fn_4]—were counted as supporting the theory. This is not a statistical analysis, but political sophistry.

But if everything is so false, whence this widespread, fundamentalist doomsday attitude? How is it possible that so many of the world’s populations and politicians can be so wrong? Before we answer that, what are the underlying assumptions which lead them there?

Two Images of Nature

Which understanding of nature, then, is it, which our environmentalist romantics aggressively preach, and with which they even seem to demand a patent on the very laws of nature?

They believe that nature is in a perfect, even if fragile, balance; a balance carefully maintained throughout hundreds of millions of years, in which every species plays an indispensable role in maintaining: a precise, well-tuned harmony. But now mankind steps onto the stage and with violence destroys this sweet idyllic state! The imperialist expansion of farming and domestication, industrial noise and dirt, science’s unnatural understanding of nature’s enticing mystique, the breakdown by space travel of the boundaries laid down by nature itself; all these now bring the tender, artistic clockwork out of balance and ruin the cumbersome work of Mother Nature!

But does this view correspond to nature itself, which is recognized when studying it? Or does the above image rather describe the psychological projection of the fantasy-ridden romantic’s schizophrenic and fragile state of mind, whose maintenance is constantly threatened by scientific reality?

If we observe the development of nature over millions of years, we must conclude that far from a balance, we see a growing unbalance. Nature’s harmony—with which one is rightly impressed—is not a kind of “perfect chord,” but instead closer to a Bach-like composition of constant development and transformation. Change and striving to improve—that is, evolution—seems to be the law of nature.

The existence of individual organisms is important, but only insofar as they contribute to the development overall; and the fact that nature has been willing to sacrifice 80-90% of all species, if this meant progress for the whole, is proof thereof.[fn_5] “Progress,” here, seems to be an increase in the ability to transform the surroundings, such that these, in turn, can support higher forms of life. This is, for example, seen in the constant increase of the metabolism of organisms over hundreds of millions of years. Not adaptation, but transformation of the environment and the expansion of life’s own action is the fundamental law of nature.

But with this development—from the depth of the oceans to land and air—another characteristic follows as well: namely, the encapsulation of the environment’s characteristics in the organism itself.

When still only single-celled life existed, deep in the oceans, cell division (mitosis) was the same as a new organism. But as life developed, this process suddenly began to take place within the organism itself, and made possible a myriad of new species. These, however, had no motor skills—no limbs to move them about—and were moved from here to there in the streams of the oceans. But over time fins and tails developed, and they were now able to move about themselves. Their eggs, which had no hard shell, could relatively easily interact with the environment of the sea and were only fertilized after having been laid.

As life moved upwards and onto land, this marine environment was likewise encapsulated within the organisms themselves, protected by a harder surface. The egg shell became harder and the environment of the sea was encapsulated within it; the fertilization process also now occurred within the organisms. Until the emergence of mammals, body temperature was regulated by the environment; this process was now also encapsulated within the organism itself, and not only the fertilization process, but the development of the embryo itself also now began to take place within the organism.

So, we see—again—not an increasing adaptation to the environment, but on the contrary, an increasing independence, combined with an increased transformation and dominance of life over its surroundings. With humanity’s entrance onto the evolutionary stage, the ultimate process of encapsulation took place: the very process of evolution itself encapsulated inside one species, which could increase the independence and transformation of the environment without first having to wait for the biological development. It was as if the entire “Classical” composition had been summed up in the final repetition of the theme, which implicitly carries with it, not only that composition’s entire potential, but also its deepest and most truthful meaning.

So, mankind’s scientific and technological abilities are not the least, but the most natural—a reflection of life’s primary, ontological existence: evolutionary progress. To stop this, and demand that we maintain a given state forever—even if it seems unfathomably beautiful—would have been the same as forbidding J.S. Bach from playing in all but one key.

A Terrifying Argument

“But,” we will now hear a voice object—a voice with a mighty counter-argument, which we must answer, if not all previous ideas were to fall to the ground in a single blow— “Do we not also project? Is this progress-oriented view of nature not also simply a reflection of our subjectivity? Is there ever a point in time, where we do not project our own view? Are we not always “inside” our own mind? And if this is the case, is it then even possible to know anything at all?” Such voices, if they wanted to do so, could even make use of geometrical examples to support their argument.

For fun, imagine Figure 3, a plane [surface] and a sphere, each being asked what the sum of the angles in a triangle is. The plane would answer that it is always 180°. The sphere, on the other hand, would contradict this, and insist that it is always more than 180° depending on its size. Would they not both be right? And what now about parallel lines? (Figure 4) The plane would, with firm conviction, assert that these never meet, whereas the sphere, with the same firm conviction, would maintain that they meet at the “poles.” Would they here not also both be right? Do they not, each, have their own “truth”?

Is it therefore freely dependent on each individual’s viewpoint whether humanity is a destructive virus in the middle of nature’s artistic masterpiece, or if its progress is the most natural and further unfolding of the development of nature itself? How could we counter this argument of relativism? And if not, how could one claim to know the way forward for our society? We would have to simply give up and let ourselves get lost on the sea of relativism, and—with neither map nor compass—let its blind currents carry us to and fro.

How Do You Know Something?

Before taking the next step, it is worth remembering, that geometry, in and for itself, contains just as much—or as little—truth as any other form of language. The profound ideas of Plato were, just like the deception of the sophists, expressed in ancient Greek. English contains Shakespeare’s beautiful poetry, as well as Bentham’s hedonistic calculus. And in German, both Schiller’s sublime dramas and Nietzsche’s über-pessimistic philosophy can be found. Truth is never in the expression of the media in and of itself.

“Give me a place to stand,” said Archimedes, “and I shall move the world.” Where is our place to stand, our firm ground? Where is our map and compass? Let us, as the thinkers of the German Classical period did, lean on the wisdom of Gottfried Leibniz for help:

[O]ne created thing is more perfect than another, in this, that there is found in the more perfect that which serves to explain a priori what takes place in the less perfect, and it is on this account that the former is said to act upon the latter.[fn_6]

Let us take our musical example again. The compositions of Bach can be understood neither from the individual notes nor individual scales, which simply represent states in the overall development. The idea—the unit—which determines the compositional development, transcends the individual elements, and their “purpose” can be found only in the composition as a whole. The overall developmental idea is “more perfect,” more real, than the parts, because it is the foundation for the existence of these (that is, it can explain their existence a priori), while the parts, as isolated magnitudes, can explain neither the existence of the whole, nor even their own existence.

The same is true for evolution. Each organism has a role to play in the evolution as a whole, but these—a dog, a fish, a lizard—have no possibility of grasping their own role in it. Only from the holistic standpoint of the evolutionary process as a whole, can their role be understood, as necessary parts in the overall evolutionary development. The whole is therefore more important—again, “more perfect,” more real—than the individual elements, and it is this, which must guide us accordingly.

Only mankind—the only cognitive species that we know of—possesses the potential to make this developmental process conscious and acts from the standpoint of that knowledge, and therefore, as a consequence, is more perfect than all other species.

Let us, to be absolutely certain, view the question from a different angle, and thereby, hopefully, bury the foggy veil of cultural relativism once and for all.

The 20th Century’s Gottfried Leibniz, the statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche, Jr. defined knowledge, with his concept of potential relative population-density, as something that can be measured through mankind’s systemic effect in and on the physical universe. When we gain new insight into the processes of the universe, we encapsulate—much like life does this—these processes within our own actions, and thereby increase our independence, as well as our transformation, of the surroundings, seen, for example, through the development of new technologies.

As specific examples could be mentioned the understanding of astronomical cycles as the basis for farming, the understanding of circular action as essential to the development of machinery, Leibniz’ vis-viva concept as the basis for the steam engine,[fn_7] and Mendeleyev’s harmonic ordering of the elements as the basis for a systemic understanding of all chemical processes. The fact that such insights—which, by the way, have neither mass nor energy—increase our power over the processes of the physical universe, demonstrates that we, now, to a greater degree, act more in accordance with the underlying laws of the universe, than without these discoveries. How else would it be possible that our effect in and upon the world is qualitatively increased?

What is, then, the difference between the two above hypotheses of nature, relating to their systemic effect upon the physical universe, when we act according to the one or the other?

The environmentalist movement forbids mankind to intervene into and change nature, and seeks to minimize its effect—that is, seeks to minimize human control over the processes of nature—and seeks, as a logical consequence thereof, to maximize our vulnerability towards our surroundings. They are blinded from this fact by a romantic “Adam-and-Eve” notion, that as long as they worship Mother Nature and keep their hands off the “tree of science,” then she will provide them with whichever their desires are—call it “green mother domination.”

The other hypothesis seeks to maximize humanity’s systemic control over the processes of the universe, by—just like the evolutionary process itself—encapsulating all these within the sphere of mankind’s own activity, that is, mankind will come to control an always increasing portion of the processes of the universe. In religious terminology one would say, that our society increasingly is brought into a greater coherence with the intention of the Creator, His “standpoint.”

We know therefore, that this last hypothesis is closer to the truth, since it, in diametrical opposition to that of the environmentalists, increases our power in and over the universe. Consequently, to be “in harmony with” nature, does not correspond to a minimization of our influence, but the contrary, an increase. Power and harmony are, in this case, entirely congruent notions.

But if humanity’s progress is the most natural, where does this, the environmentalists’ aggressive anti-nature come from? Let us dive down into history, and try to discover the key to unlocking this question.

The Paradigmatic Baby Doomers

The environmentalist movement is nothing new under the historical sun. Here is a fragment from an epic poem, written in ancient Greece:

There was a time when countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the load of death might empty the world. And the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass.[fn_8]

The echo in the present—the environmentalist’s cry of “over-population!”—of this age-old ideology does not spring up, as if naturally, from a grass roots movement, but, on the contrary, was created by the tree’s oligarchical Crown; and here, through the 1001 Club, the World Wildlife Fund, etc., the roots get their financial and ideological nourishment.[fn_9] It is created by an oligarchical elite, which portrays itself in the light of Olympus, and sees the world’s populations like cattle, which can be controlled in Zeusian manner, if necessary. Contrary to this view stands the humanist idea, which sees mankind as a Promethean creature of reason, having been given the potential—yes, the mission even—to promote the universal process of creation. This has been, and is still to this day, the main historical conflict.

In modern times—that is, from the Italian Renaissance forward—this conflict has been expressed in the fight between the American Prometheus and the British Olympus. The American Revolution, aided by the humanist circles of Europe, was not a spontaneous disagreement about taxes or monopoly, but a century-long fight between these two diametrically opposed views of humanity.[fn_10]

In Europe, especially with the “students” of Leibniz and Bach, like Moses Mendelssohn, Gotthold Lessing, Friedrich Schiller and Ludwig van Beethoven, the humanist tradition found its highest expression in Classical Germany. This Leibnizian alliance between Germany and the USA, illustrated by Benjamin Franklin’s visit to Abraham Kästner and R.E. Raspe,[fn_11] was the cultural spine of Western civilization in recent time.

The economic high-point happened with Bismarck’s adoption of the American System in the second half of the 19th Century—an international alliance, led, at this point in time, by Henry C. Carey’s circles in the United States.[fn_12] But with two World Wars, the assassinations of American leaders in the 1960s and especially the 68er “revolution,” this historical spine was “broken,” culturally and institutionally, and both nations have now lost the connection to their better Promethean nature, and, consequently, their cultural sovereignty.

In the United States, under Franklin Roosevelt, humanism began to blossom again, after 30 years of Anglophile policy, and Churchill was forced to listen to how FDR’s America planned the freeing and development of all former colonies. But this intention unfortunately died with Roosevelt, and the American soldiers—who, more or less consciously, had shared this vision with the president—returned home to a society under the banner of anti-communism. The trust in a better future was now replaced with the distrust of anti-communism and the fear of loss of position, and safe employment replaced empathy and courage.

Under such conditions the generation which was later to be known as the 68ers, now grew up. With a constant threat of nuclear war hanging in the air, a morally insecure generation saw how the moral leaders of the ’60s were shot down, one after the other, with no meaning and no reasonable explanation. These circumstances created a shock-effect, that led to a flight from a reality too horrible to contemplate. Dionysian excesses in the form of psychotropic drugs, sexual innovations and new types of noise became the expression of this schizophrenic flight from reality, which increasingly invaded the fearful minds of the young generation.

Robert F. Kennedy—the brother of the assassinated president—said about these developments, shortly before he himself was shot in 1968:

I think that’s the explanation, really, of the hippies. They’ve reached the conclusion that they can’t affect their own lives and they can’t affect society … so they turn off. They pull the curtain down, and say we’re going to—we can’t get off the earth—but we’re gonna’ leave it as much as we can.

This “parallel universe” now equally reared its face in post-war Germany—a Germany whose earlier commitment to Classical culture had been weakened by hyperinflation and economic destruction stretched out between two horrifying world wars and the re-imposition, by certain Anglo-American circles, of a part of the self-same Nazi intelligence networks that had just caused terror and horror internationally, as well as in Germany itself[fn_13]; networks which easily could be blackmailed and controlled, given their past.

It is understandable that there was great dissatisfaction with the situation, but instead of reviving the Classical humanist tradition, the 68ers threw “the baby out with the bath water”; they rejected, as their peers in America the very idea of an historical identity, and adopted, instead, the idea of simply living in the sensuous here and now—as if an isolated dimension cut off from past and future—and rushed down into the dark Dionysian whirlpools.

But with the rejection of an historical identity, they also rejected the idea of a future; they rejected the right of future generations to exist. There was no future, and their own existence could only be justified through this absolute exclusion. This was not only a personal opinion, not simply a passive point of view. The future became a threat to their identity, and all ideologies and political initiatives that sought to undermine, yes, even destroy, the future, became the ideological refuge of the 68ers. Radical environmentalism—the “green ideology”—is, at its core, nothing but that: the justification for the destruction of the future. This is the ideology of the 68ers—or “baby doomers”—and it is this mindset which we are up against today.

Is There a Future?

The time has now come to reject this humanity-hating ideology with absolute determination; not just in its individual arguments, but as a whole. We must revive and defend that future, which the 68ers rejected decades ago.

How does this future look? Will it correspond to the same laws of nature, which we presented above? Even if we make no pretensions of knowing the entire answer, we do know some things with certainty. We human beings can understand the universe, because its fundamental laws harmonize with the laws of our own soul. As we encapsulate and take responsibility for an always greater part of the universe, our activities—and all life, which we bring along with us—is expanded not simply on this planet, but soon, increasingly out into our own solar system, and then, further outwards to the still unknown.

And the more we dare to touch this unknown, the more we will come to understand that it was never a hostile darkness, but merely a friendly, overlooked potential, yes, even the dearest of friends. We will come to recognize that the more we move out into the unknown, the more we will find our own soul’s true and unlimited nature.

With this in mind, let us conclude with a few quotes from this “future”—from the successful trips of the Apollo astronauts to the Moon and back[fn_14]:

When the sunlight shines through the blackness of space, it’s black. But I was in sunlight and I was able to look at this blackness. I mean what are you looking at? Call it the universe but it’s the infinity of space and the infinity of time. I’m looking at something called space that has no end, and at time that has no meaning. You can really focus on it because you’ve got this planet out there, this planet called Earth, which itself is in this blackness but it is lit up, because the sunlight strikes on an object, it strikes on something called Earth. And it’s not a hostile blackness. Maybe it’s not hostile because of the beauty of the Earth, that sort of gives it life.

I felt very welcome there. You know, the Moon’s been waiting for us for thousands of years ... millions of years, maybe, unless someone else has already been there before us, at some time. That’s possible, although we didn’t really see any evidence of that. I felt like I was the only one there, but not an alien ... not an alien in terms of invading someone else’s domain. I didn’t find the Moon hostile. I found it very majestically beautiful. Bland in color, but majestically beautiful—Gene Cernan, Apollo 17

Okay, Houston, as I am staying out here in the wonders of the unknown at [the lower slopes of Mt.] Hadley [on the Moon], I realized there’s a fundamental truth to our nature: man must explore!—David Scott, Commander of Apollo 15

The path of evolution is now in space, as much as on earth. Man has shown that as a species ... mankind was willing to commit itself ... to living in environments that were completely different ... than those in which the species evolved.... The curve of human evolution has been bent.—Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17

This is merely a split second of that continuous inspiration, which awaits us and future humanity. This future can be the most beautiful, the most fascinating, the most joyous of all until now experienced by our collective mankind. With the New Silk Road policy, with the optimistic return of space travel and with a new thirst for the true and the beautiful in human nature, we stand on the threshold of a New Era. The potential is visible for those who wish to see. But whether we will succeed in realizing this happy, human, unlimited future, or whether the green pessimism’s unnatural and humanity-hating darkness will spread out and extinguish this light, that, dear reader, is now up to you.

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