EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY JANUARY 18, 2023

Schiller Institute Sets Conference for Feb. 4: The Age of Reason or The Annihilation of Humanity?

Jan. 17, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute released today the invitation to its Feb. 4 international online conference:

The Age of Reason or the Annihilation of Humanity?
Schiller Institute Conference
February 4, 2023
Two panels, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2 p.m.-5 p.m. EST

We are in an epochal change, but a very different one than that about which Chancellor Scholz of Germany has been talking. We are at the end of the era of colonial suppression. The countries of the Global South are now demanding their innate right for development.

The old order, which neither follows rules, nor is in order, is trying to prevent a change in the status quo, which protects the rights of the billionaires, but neglects the billions of people who suffer from scarcity.

There is now an attempt to establish Global NATO through an interconnected network of military treaties, the NATO- EU agreement, the AUKUS (Australia-United Kingdom-United States partnership), the U.K.-Japan “Reciprocal Access Agreement,” which look more and more like a march towards a global showdown with Russia and China, whose rise is seen as an existential threat. In the mind of people like Evan Ellis, the U.S. Army War College’s resident expert on Ibero-American-Chinese relations, there will be an inevitable war with China over Taiwan no later than 2027 and that war will be global. Therefore, Ellis argues, Ibero-American countries cannot be allowed to cooperate with China, because the many infrastructure projects in the region could be used by China in the projected global conflict as “intermediate staging bases” for attacks against the U.S. supply of food and critical minerals, or perhaps directly “against the U.S. Homeland.”

It should be clear to any sane person: global war will be nuclear and that will be the end of civilization. So, it is completely insane to plan for it. And to deny the countries of the Global South access to cooperation with the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), which is, for the first time, giving hope to the developing sector to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, is outright evil.

It is therefore more urgent than ever to find forces for peace in all countries of the world, who understand that we need to move to a new paradigm in international relations. We absolutely have to overcome geopolitics, which led to two world wars in the 20th Century. We have to realize a new international security and development architecture, which takes into account the security interests of every single country on the planet—a lesson we should have learned from the Peace of Westphalia—and we have to realize that there can be no peace without development.

We have to discuss the principles upon which the future order of humanity can be built, in order to be able to self-govern ourselves. The future world order must guarantee the life and creative potential of every person on the planet, and therefore must eliminate hunger, poverty, and underdevelopment. We need to conceptualize and create institutions that can realize these goals. There are many useful historic reference points for the construction of a new order, such as FDR’s original intentions for the Bretton Woods System to massively increase the living standard of the countries of the Global South, as well as the UN Charter. There are the GSI, the Global Security Initiative, and the GDI, Global Development Initiative, proposals of China.

We have clearly reached a crossroad in human history, where we either self-destruct in a global nuclear war, or we realize our potential as the only known creative species in the universe so far, and therefore find a solution which overcomes the present conflicts by establishing a higher level of reason. A good example of that method of thinking was presented to the world by Nicholas of Cusa with his “coincidentia oppositorum,” the Coincidence of Opposites, which proceeds from the understanding that the One has a higher power than the Many.

It is high time that we bring the political, economic, and social order on earth into cohesion with the actual physical laws of the universe, which will also give rise to an unbounded optimism about the creative lawfulness which underlies creation. If we change our thinking in this way, we can shape our future in ways few people have an inkling of today. We will soon use thermonuclear fusion power commercially and solve energy scarcity; we will cooperate to make Africa the promising continent of the future; we will cooperate on international space science and travel; we will increase longevity by discovering cures for many diseases; and we will create a new cultural renaissance to celebrate the creativity of our species, just to name a few of the many wonderful things we will be able to do.

To discuss these different roads, which offer themselves at this branching point in history, join us in this upcoming conference!