Hvorfor har vi alt for længe tilladt et Imperium at dominere vores eksistens?
LaRouchePAC Internationale fredags-webcast, 19. august 2016
Lad os sige, at, en skønne dag, f. eks. en søndag morgen, præsidenterne for hhv. USA og Kina og et par andre, efter et weekend-møde siger: »Vi har denne weekend besluttet, at vi, baseret på vore rådgivere samt den kendsgerning, at det internationale finansielle og monetære system er håbløst bankerot, som ansvarlige statsoverhoveder, af hensyn til almenvellet må erklære disse bankerotte institutioner konkurs og sætte dem under konkursbehandling. Og det er i vores interesse, at vi samarbejder om dette som nationer, for at undgå at skabe kaos på denne planet.«
Engelsk udskrift.
WHY HAVE WE ALLOWED AN EMPIRE TO DOMINATE OUR EXISTENCE FOR FAR TOO LONG?
International LaRouche PAC Webcast , Aug. 19, 2016
MATTHEW OGDEN: Good evening! It's August 19th, 2016. My name
is Matthew Ogden. You're joining us for our weekly broadcast here
on Friday evenings of our LaRouche PAC webcast. I'll be your host
tonight. I'm joined in the studio by Jason Ross, from the
LaRouche PAC science team; and we're joined, via video, by Kesha
Rogers and Michael Steger, both leading members of the LaRouche
PAC Policy Committee.
As we broadcast this show here tonight, the second edition
— newest copy — of the weekly publication, {The Hamiltonian} is
going to press. This is going to be flooding into the streets of
New York City close on the heels of the first edition, which came
out two weeks ago. Both Kesha Rogers and Michael Steger have
articles that are on the front page of this week's copy of {The
Hamiltonian}. Michael Steger wrote an article called "LaRouche
Was Right. End Wall Street, Now", and Kesha Rogers wrote a very
profound and beautiful article called "A Truly Human Culture —
an Expression of the Creative Human Mind."
What Kesha addresses in this article is the inner
relationship between the minds of Lyndon LaRouche, Albert
Einstein, and Krafft Ehricke, and their conception of what a
truly human culture is.
Joining us here today is Jason Ross, who has actually
prepared a condensed presentation on the subject of some of the
unique discoveries of Albert Einstein, which will add to our
discussion here today.
But before we get to that, we've agreed to begin today's
broadcast with a sort of travel back into time. Now that we are
on the verge of a total consolidation of this new Eurasian
system, which is based around the original idea of the
Russia-India-China Strategic Triangle, which was championed by
Lyndon LaRouche and also championed by Prime Minister Yevgeny
Primakov of Russia in the 1990s, we are finding ourselves in a
completely unprecedented situation. It's, I think, very clear, as
we approach the G-20 Summit, the Vladivostok Economic Forum, and
also the United Nations General Assembly, that the entire
strategic geometry of the planet has shifted and has realigned.
As is rightly pointed out in the lead of today's LaRouche
PAC website, this is not just a "practical" realignment of
nations, but, since we are talking about Einstein here today,
this is almost the "gravitational effect" of an idea which was
introduced almost 20 years ago by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche.
The video that you're about to see is a very short excerpt
of a speech that Mr. LaRouche made at a forum in Washington, DC
in 1997 in conjunction with the release of the {Executive
Intelligence Review} {first} edition of the special report on the
subject of the Eurasian Land-Bridge. This was a presentation that
was made as part of a series of so-called "development
conferences" that were held in Washington during those couple of
years — 1996, 1997, 1998 — and I think what you'll see in this
video is the fact that it was Lyndon LaRouche's "marching
orders." It was sort of his creative vision of what the role that
China, with the New Silk Road, and also the role that Russia
would play in completely reshaping the strategic geometry of the
world.
So, this is a short excerpt of that speech from 1997:
LYNDON LAROUCHE: There are only two nations which are
respectable left on this planet, that is, nations of respectable
power: that is the United States, particularly the United States
not as represented by the Congress, but by the President. It is
the {identity} of the United States which is a political power,
not some concatenation of its parts. The United States is
represented today only by its President, as a political
institution. The Congress does not represent the United States;
they're not quite sure who they do represent, these days,
[laughter] since they haven't visited their voters recently.
The President is, institutionally, the embodiment of the
United States in international relations. The State Department
can't do that; the Justice Department can't do it; no other
Department can do it; only the President of the United States,
under our Constitution, can represent the United States as an
entity — its entire personality, its true interest, its whole
people.
Now, there's only one other power on this planet which can
be so insolent as that toward other powers, and that's the
Republic of China. China is engaged, presently, in a great
infrastructure-building project, in which my wife and others have
had an ongoing engagement over some years. There's a great reform
in China, which is a "trouble reform." They're trying to solve a
problem. That doesn't mean there is no problem. But they're
trying to solve it.
Therefore, if the United States, or the President of the
United States, and China, participate in fostering {that}
project, sometimes called the Silk Road Project, sometimes the
Land-Bridge Project, if that project of developing development
corridors across Eurasia into Africa, into North America, is
extended, that project is enough work to put this whole planet
into an economic revival. I'll get into just a bit of that, to
make it more sensuously concrete.
China has had cooperation with the government of Iran for
some time. Iran has actually been completing a number of rail
links which are an extension of China's Land-Bridge program (or
Silk Road project). More recently, we've had, on the side of
India, from Indian leadership which has met with the
representatives of China, to engage in an initial route, among
the land routes, for the Land-Bridge program. One goes into
Kunming in China. I was in that area, in Mishana, during part of
World War II. Out of Mishana we had planes flying into Kunming,
"over The Hump," as they used to say in those days. I'm quite
familiar with that area.
But if you have water connections, canal connections, and
rail connections from Kunming through Mishana — that area —
across Bangladesh into India, through Pakistan into Iran, up to
the area just above Tehran, south of the Caspian — you have
linked to the Middle East; you have linked to Central Asia; you
have linked to Turkey; you have linked to Europe.
Then you have a northern route, which is pretty much the
route of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which was built under
American influence and American advice, by Russia. You have a
middle route, which is being developed, in Central Asia, with
China and Iran.
India is working on a plan which involves only a few
hundreds of kilometers of rail to be added — there were a lot of
other improvements along the right-of-way — which would link the
area north of Tehran through Pakistan, through India, through
Bangladesh, through Myanmar, into Kunming, into Thailand, into
Vietnam, down through Malaysia and Singapore, across the Straits
by a great bridge, into Indonesia.
There's a plan, also, for the development of a rail link
through what was northern Siberia, across the Bering Strait into
Alaska, and down into the United States. There's a Middle East
link — several links — from Europe, as well as from China, but
from China a Middle East link into Egypt, into all of Africa.
So, what we have here, is a set of projects which are not
just transportation projects, like the trans-Continental
railroads in the United States, which was the precedent for this
idea, back in the late 1860s and 1870s. You have "development
corridors," where you develop, on an area of 50-70 km on either
side of your rail link, your pipeline, and so forth. You develop
this area with industry, with mining, with all these kinds of
things. Which is the way you {pay} for a transportation link.
Because of all the rich economic activity. Every few kilometers
of distance along this link, there's something going on, some
economic activity. People working, people building things, people
doing things.
To transform this planet, in great projects of
infrastructure-building, which will give you the great
industries, the new industries, the new agriculture, and the
other things we desperately need. {There is no need for anybody
on this planet, who is able to work, to be out of work.} That
simple. And that project is the means.
If the nations which agree with China — which now includes
Russia, Iran, India, other nations — if they engage in a
commitment to that project which they're building every day; if
the United States — that is, the President of the United States,
Clinton — continues to support that effort, as he's been doing,
at least politically, then what do you have? You have the United
States and China and a bunch of other countries ganged up
together, against the greatest power on this planet, which is the
British Empire, called the British Commonwealth. That's the
enemy!
If on one bright day, say a Sunday morning, after a weekend
meeting, the President of the United States, the President of
China, and a few other people say, "We have determined this
weekend, that based on our advisors and the facts, that the
international financial and monetary system is hopelessly
bankrupt, and we in our responsibility as heads of state, must
put these bankrupt institutions into bankruptcy reorganization,
in the public interest. And it is in our interest to cooperate as
nations in doing this, to avoid creating chaos on this planet."
The result, then, is that such an announcement, on a bright
Sunday morning, will certainly spin the "talking heads" on
Washington TV. [laughter] But otherwise it means that the entire
system, as of that moment, has been put through the guillotine,
and the head is rolling down the street. Alan Greenspan's head,
perhaps.
That means we have at that point the impetus for building,
immediately, a new financial and monetary system. Now, in putting
a corporation which is bankrupt, into viable form, what do you
do? You've got to find the business that it's going to do, which
is the basis for creating the new credit to get that firm going
again.
The Land-Bridge program, with its implications on a global
scale, is the great project which spins off directly and
indirectly enough business, so to speak, for every part of this
world, to get this world back on a sound basis again.
OGDEN: As you can see, this is a very prescient speech, and in
fact it was Lyndon LaRouche's active intervention, travelling to
Russia, his wife travelling to China in this period, the
publication of {EIR} Special Report about the Eurasian
Land-Bridge, which has shaped the current situation we find
ourselves in. One thing that's interesting to point out, is those
maps that you were seeing. At that time many of those rail routes
and other pipeline routes were merely proposals, but now many of
them are actually in the process of being built.
I think it's clear, 20 years on, this is the emergent
dominant system on the planet. At the same time, the
trans-Atlantic system is in completely blowout mode. You have an
oncoming implosion of trillions of dollars of non-performing debt
and derivatives exposures, which are being projected into every
major bank across the trans-Atlantic system.
In the meantime, in the build-up to the G-20 Summit and into
the United Nations General Assembly, you've got the role that
especially President Putin is playing, in consolidating a series
of alliances, mainly between Russia, China, and India; but also
this emerging alliance between Russia and Turkey; and, very
significantly, the very strengthened alliance between Russia and
Iran, where Russia is now using bases in Iran as a point of
departure for fighter jets to go in and fight against ISIS in
Syria.
Putin, who is being honored as the Number One guest at the
upcoming G-20 Summit in China, is certainly at the center of all
of this. His career and Mr. LaRouche's career, over the past
twenty years since that speech was delivered in Washington, have
very closely paralleled each other.
I think we can open up the discussion with that as a basis.
KESHA ROGERS: Did you want to start, Jason?
JASON ROSS: You can go ahead Kesha, or Michael.
ROGERS: Okay. I think Michael might be having some technical
difficulties, so I will go ahead and get started.
When we look at Mr. LaRouche has emphasized, first of all,
going back to this video that you just showed, it's extremely
important to look at this video as a characteristic of who Mr.
LaRouche is, and his 40- to 50-year track record in economic
development, and what he has been organizing around, from the
standpoint of the center of economics being based on the human
intervention, the human creative process. And what actually
distinguishes him from all of the other so-called "economists"
out there, because as you just said Matt, what we're dealing with
right now is a breakdown crisis in the society that Mr. LaRouche
has recognized going back to his first forecast of the late
1960s, 1970s. What were these forecasts based on? They were
based on the fact that if you went along with a mathematical idea
about how society should function, then you were completely
misunderstanding — or should I say wrong in your understanding
of what actually fosters progress in society. What fosters
progress in society is not money per se; and this has been Mr.
LaRouche's focus on the role of Alexander Hamilton. [That’s] why
right now as many people have seen, we've already put out one
edition of a new newsletter that you just showed Matt, called
{The Hamiltonian}. This is extremely important because now we're
putting out the second edition of {The Hamiltonian}, which is
having reverberating effects, particularly throughout Manhattan;
which is the center of the fight for the nation. That is the
fight where Alexander Hamilton led the fight for the development
of our US Constitution against the British criminals like Aaron
Burr, and against those who wanted to destroy what the United
States actually represented.
But it goes deeper than that; because I think what we've
discussed a lot around Mr. LaRouche's current fight in Manhattan
and what we're doing with this {Hamiltonian} is what has defined
the mission for bringing about the new Presidency. Michael wrote
an article last week on the question of the new Presidency
fostered by Mr. LaRouche's Four Laws and the bringing in of those
Four Laws. The article that's in this week's {Hamiltonian} is by
Michael around LaRouche's track record in economics and why Wall
Street has to be brought down now. It is followed by the article
that I wrote on the human creative process. I think we'll get
more into that, but when we bring up this question of a New
Paradigm for mankind and the identity of a renaissance, some of
it becomes in most people's minds because of the society and
culture we live in, a little superficial. It is based on this
idea that a renaissance has a different meaning to it. When we
speak of the idea of creating a New Paradigm for mankind, first
and foremost, it is the idea of creating something that has not
yet existed; something that the human creative mind has to bring
into existence. When you go back and you start to look at the
idea of what the conception of the Italian Renaissance was based
on historically, it was the idea of putting mankind and the human
creative process at the center of the Universe.
I think it's important that we'll get into this; that this
is what has shaped the identity of Mr. LaRouche around his
emphasis on the unique creative role of Albert Einstein and the
unique creative of others such as was mentioned earlier — Krafft
Ehricke. I think it's important for people to look at this,
because the question now is that with the collapse of the society
that we're seeing right now, the detrimental collapse of the
culture, what we're seeing in terms of what's taken over the
thinking of the population. The population is not capable of
actually making decisions as human beings; they're making
decisions based on what somebody tells them is possible or is not
possible. I think this is a problem we're running into. How can
you actually say that you have the ability to make decisions as a
free citizen when you're making your decisions based on what you
think is already possible and has been determined as precedents
set and possibilities that are already a determining factor of
what can and cannot happen.
So, I think that's important to look at as people are
thinking about this insane election process. Instead of thinking
about what is going to shape your future; is it going to be
something that happens to you? Or something that you actually
bring into existence? That's what Mr. LaRouche has been
completely focussed on. The population has to have a sense that
you're responsible for your future; you must bring that which
does not exist into existence, based on your understanding that
human beings are not animals. We don't have to go along with the
insanity of what we're told we have to accept.
So, I'll start with those remarks for now, and let you guys
go on with more.
OGDEN: Well, we just got Michael back, so maybe we should
hear him.
MICHAEL STEGER: Hi.
OGDEN: Great! Welcome back. We were just discussing some
of the implications of going back and looking back at that video
of Mr. LaRouche's speech in 1997. I think you actually had
something to point out about the timing of that speech and what
happened just immediately afterwards.
STEGER: Yeah, and part of the dynamic in organizing some of
the layers of China at that time was that it was not clear to
many in China at that time, or in Asia, that the western
trans-Atlantic system had major failings and weaknesses. It was
just two months after that speech was made that the Asian
financial crisis erupted; dominating Southeast Asia and Japan —
the so-called "Asian tigers". It really made it very clear that
the entire financial system could go. It was just a year later
that the whole LCTM crisis happened. So when Mr. LaRouche is
referencing the bankruptcy of the financial system, that was very
apparent in just months to come to almost everyone on the planet;
as apparent as it was in 2008 when the financial system blew
again. As we point out in the article in the new {Hamiltonian},
the level of insanity that now dominates 20 years later, creates
what is clearly the largest financial breakdown in modern
history. This is a kind of financial bankruptcy only comparable
to perhaps the blow-out in Italy in the 1300s; which brought a
Dark Age to Europe.
But what is remarkable is how much these nations like China
— it's just striking; and maybe this has already been stated —
but the context of China and India collaborating on major routes
is an ongoing diplomatic process today. Far more engaged, far
more serious than anyone can probably imagine; let alone the
integrations of countries like Iran, Turkey. Everything that Mr.
LaRouche laid out about 20 years ago, is now on a far greater
active collaborative effort among these nations. It is somewhat
a testament to the power of ideas and how that can shape history
at crisis moments; as we saw in '97 and what we see today.
OGDEN: I think one thing that is very clear from just looking at
Mr. LaRouche's role in the middle of this, is his emphasis on the
mission that has to bring nations together. In other words, this
is not just geopolitics in a cynical sense. This based around a
concept of what is the human species? What is real profit? How
do we create a future for a growing population; and how do we
establish the kind of optimism that mankind has a future towards
which the current generations can work? It's pointed out, I
think a lot of what we're seeing right now is not just a
projection of the past into the present. This is a reflection of
a future intention. You can look at what China is doing, for
example, in terms of their space program. The fact that two
years from now, you're going to have a Chinese probe going to
where no man has gone before; to the far side of the Moon, to
discover things that perhaps we don't even know are questions
yet, in terms of man's relationship to the Universe.
When we were discussing some of these questions with Mr.
LaRouche yesterday, he had one thing to say which I just would
like to quote verbatim from him which I think can provide the
basis for a furthering of this discussion. What Mr. LaRouche
said was the following: "Mankind is not based on the limitations
of individual human behavior; but, in fact, man as a species is
based on the individual powers of the human mind to go beyond
what mankind had conceived of prior. Giving mankind a power over
the Universe greater than anything achieved heretofore." We've
been putting a lot of emphasis on the personality of Albert
Einstein, but for what reason? For the very reason that Albert
Einstein is paradigmatic of exactly that sort of individual,
revolutionary characteristic of genius. That the genius takes
what was believed prior to that point and calls it into question,
and overturns major aspects of what mankind had believed and had
put into practice up to that point; and revolutionizes mankind's
understanding of the Universe and of himself. So, I think that's
sort of a window into why the emphasis on Albert Einstein right
now.
JASON ROSS: It's difficult to speak for LaRouche; and he's
got opportunities to speak for himself on this site, too, which
he'll continue doing. But the example of Einstein as a real
{mensch} you might say, a real human being, what it is to be a
person is essential for a couple of reasons. One, if you think
about the role of LaRouche in history and the economic
breakthroughs he made several decades ago now, you look at the
courage that he had to stick with what he knew was right despite
whatever opposition might come his way; despite what was
effectively a life sentence in prison, to not compromise in the
face of that. An economic forecasting record that's unparalleled
and proposals for polices that are now — as you heard in that
video, and as is taking place right now with China's One Belt,
One Road taking the world. So, in terms of how Einstein fits
into that, I want to take up something that Kesha had brought up
about popular opinion. Because where do you get a freedom in
your thoughts from? How are you able to be a free thinking
citizen; or how are you able to come to conclusions that are your
own, as opposed to having a basis in their popularity. Or
whether you think other people might think them, or whether you
think you ought to look like you think them to get ahead somehow.
Is there an actual standard for whether something is true or not?
Yes, there is; and unfortunately and deliberately, that's really
not part of our culture or our education right now.
So, LaRouche has emphasized that the general understanding
of Einstein is false; it's wrong. Most people's images of who
Einstein is as a person, his work to some degree, it's just not
true. And we've got to clean that up in order to make a case
about what his approach was to the Universe, to mankind, to life;
and how that was important, it made it possible for him to make
the scientific breakthroughs that he did. But he was a whole
person; he was an entire human being, including the role of his
violin — something that LaRouche has referred to a number of
times.
So today, I want to go through a few things — somewhat
briefly. We're going to have a "New Paradigm for Mankind"
Wednesday show this coming week on Wednesday after a hiatus of
some period. So, we'll be able to get into this in a bit more
detail then, but I want to take up three things. First is
briefly, some thoughts from Einstein; quotes from Einstein. How
did he think about things beyond his scientific work also.
Second, I want to talk about his most famous discovery —
relativity; and what that implies. And then third, talk about
quantum mechanics as an example of Einstein's courage against
popular opinion; which is something that he had from a very young
age. Then we'll see how that plays into these other concepts.
When he was 67, Einstein was asked to write down a sort of
an autobiography; which he felt was like writing an obituary
before he had passed. He was a nice guy, so he still did it.
I'm going to read some quotes from this; it's called his
"Autobiographical Notes". He starts off very early; he says,
"Even when I was a fairly precocious young man, the nothingness
of the hopes and strivings which chases most people restlessly
through life, came to my consciousness with considerable
vitality. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase;
which in those years was much more carefully covered up by
hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today." So, the
vain chase for success, this isn't a real identity. He says, "It
was possible to satisfy the stomach by such participation, but
not a human being insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being.
Thus, I came — despite the fact that I was the son of entirely
irreligious Jewish parents — to a deep religiosity; which,
however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the
reading of popular scientific books, I soon reached the
conviction that much of the stories in the Bible could not be
true. The consequence was a positively fanatical free thinking,
coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being
deceived by the state through lies. It was a crushing
impression. Suspicion of every kind of authority grew out of
this experience. A skeptical attitude towards the convictions
which were alive in any specific social environment; an attitude
which has never left me." It's not some popular opinion.
He wrote that, "The contemplation of the huge world, the
vast riddle of the Universe around us," this to him was the
proper goal of life. And that by considering it, you could be
really liberated from things that are merely personal or
insignificant. He wrote: "Similarly motivated thinkers of the
present and the past, as well as the insights which they had
achieved, were friends that could not be lost. The road to this
paradise of knowledge was not as comfortable and alluring as the
road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as
trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it."
In his thinking process, Einstein — who was a musician with
a deep love of Mozart in particular — didn't believe that
thinking required words. He wrote: "For me, it is not dubious
that our thinking goes on for the most part without the use of
signs or words. And beyond that, to a considerable degree, it
takes place unconsciously." He writes that "Through our
experiences as we understand conflicts between our thought of how
the world works and experiences which counter that, we develop a
sense of wonder," which he says is the key to the development of
new thoughts. So, how can that be developed? How can that be
fostered? Well, he complained about the school in his day; he
said there was too much testing and not enough freedom or actual
thought for the students. I can hardly imagine what he would say
about schools now. He wrote then that "It is, in fact, nothing
short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have
not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. For
this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly
in need of freedom. It is a very grave mistake to think that the
enjoyment of seeing and of searching can be promoted by means of
coercion and a sense of duty."
On the kinds of thoughts that make true discoveries, he said
that there are two requirements for such a theory. One, it can't
be contradicted by observations; and second, he said it has to
have an inner perfection. About that, he wrote — sounding very
much like Johannes Kepler, the first modern astronomer —
Einstein wrote: "We prize a value more highly if it is not the
result of an arbitrary choice among theories which — among
themselves — are of equal value and analogously constructed."
That is, to be right, an idea also has to be necessary; not just
in keeping with observations.
In his life, he was a courageous man; he stood up against
World War I; even when many great scientists like Max Planck had
written a letter supporting the war, supporting Germany's cause
in it. Einstein didn't; he wrote a letter opposing it, and even
got Max Planck got rescind his support for the war. He stood up
against racism in the US in many famous cases such as Marian
Anderson, who when she went to perform in Princeton, wasn't able
to actually spend the night anywhere; she was turned away by
hotels. So, she stayed at Albert Einstein's house, which is
where she'd stay whenever she visited that town. And his
opposition to the FBI and the thought policing it was doing.
When he was coming to the US, they had a list of questions for
him; they wanted to do an interview, find out what kind of
thoughts Einstein had. He said, I'm not going to answer these.
If this is the condition for coming to the US, I'm not going to
come; forget it. They gave in. So, I'll let those brief words
from Einstein stand for themselves.
Let's take a look at the second part, which is a few
thoughts about his famous discovery of relativity. As far as the
context for this, ever since the general hegemony of Newton's
outlook — which didn't have to happen, but it did — according
to Newton, when we make observations, when we do science, things
take place in a space that is indifferent to those things; it's
just there. It existed before anything was in the Universe.
According to Newton, space existed before God created everything;
it was just the primordial space. Newton also believed that
there was a time; a single time, a universal time that flowed on
of its own accord, had no particular characteristics and was not
dependent on or related to anything that actually took place over
time. So, according to Newton, there was an absolute space, an
absolute time; and objects in that space at various times. Now,
this had already been shown to be wrong by Gottfried Leibniz, who
in a debate with Newton, demonstrated that requiring an absolute
space and then saying that God created everything somewhere in
that space, as opposed to somewhere else; would be a decision
without any good reason. And that God couldn't do something like
that; everything in the Universe had a reason for it, and that
therefore there couldn't have been this space in the first place.
Newton used the same example to say that shows you how powerful
God is, because He could do whatever He felt like. So, He put
the Universe somewhere. Anyway, Leibniz had already shown that
this Newtonian idea was wrong; but Newton gained hegemony. So,
it has the result that people think of facts, of things taking
place in locations at certain times. But Einstein showed that
this actually isn't true; that there is no time that any event
takes place. That the time an event occurs, depends on who is
looking at it. Not in the way of uncertainties or anything like
that; but the time itself doesn't exist as one thing that's
independent of who's doing the looking, or of their location.
What he did was, he created a new concept that resolved the
contradiction between two concepts that were actually mutually
contradictory. So, these two concepts were, first off,
relativity; which existed before Einstein as a concept or
equivalence. Leibniz believed this, for example; which was that
no matter where you are, or how you're moving — any of those
kinds of particular conditions — mind is universal. Mind is
everywhere; mind is everywhere in the Universe; mind doesn't have
a speed or motion or anything like that. Concepts that govern
how the Universe unfolds — true physical principles — are
independent of how you look at any particular fact or observation
that's occurring. So, you can't change mind by moving something
physically — more on that in a minute.
The second concept was that the speed of light is the same
for any observer; and that's not something that was immediately
apparent. This was definitely debated. To contrast that,
imagine that you're driving on a road and there's a car next to
you that's moving at a similar speed. To you, it looks like the
car isn't really moving; to a pedestrian, the car is moving at
whatever speed you're driving. Light is different than a car
moving, where you can catch up with its speed and make it look
like it's still. For light, no matter how you're moving, light
beams to you all appear to move at the speed of light. So, you
can't put those two concepts together; you can't have relativity
and a constant speed of light if you have one time and one space.
Instead, what Einstein said was that the time between events or
the distance between locations can actually differ based on how
you're looking at them. So that simply being in motion — it's
not perceptible except at very high speeds — but simply being in
motion changes the lengths of everything around you, the time
between events that take place.
I'll just briefly outline one example of this — we can get
into it with some pictures and things on Wednesday. He shows a
lot of examples of thought experiments using trains moving
through train stations or embankments. He gives one example
which is, let's say that as a train is moving, someone on the
ground sees flashes of lightning hit both sides of the train at
the same time. For them to say "at the same time", what it means
is if you're standing in the middle, the light from both of those
flashes reaches you at the same time. You say, "I'm in the
middle between these two points, therefore they must have
happened at the same time and then it took the light a little bit
of time for me to see it." But you'd also recognize that if
someone on the train was to see those same two lightning bolts,
which to you occur simultaneously, as the train is moving this
way and you picture light moving at a constant speed from your
viewpoint, the light that was at the front of the train is going
to be observed first by somebody standing in the middle of the
train. Someone on that train would say that those lightning
flashes didn't occur at the same time; that one preceded the
other. What that means is that there's no simultaneity; there's
no ability to say anything took place at a certain time. Time
now depends on who's looking at it. If there's no simultaneity,
then there's nothing instant that can take place in the Universe;
because there's no instant for anything to occur instantly in.
So, for example, gravitational pull can't occur instantly; there
can't be an instant action at a distance. In fact, nothing, no
effect could go faster than light; including gravitational
changes. It meant a couple of things. One is that you can't
separate space and time; but the other thing is that it makes you
really have to reconsider what makes up reality. The idea that
objects at places in times are facts; that's not reality. The
thing that's most real is the principles that you're able to
discover that don't change based on how you look at them, or how
you're moving. Something like the way that light moves — that's
a physical principle; no matter how you look at it, it's the same
thing. It's a principle. A distance between two things? That's
not a principle; that's not invariant. That can change,
depending on how you look at it. So that the naïve sense that
we get of the world around us, of our very concept of space, is
just not right. Even though it seems totally intuitive and very
popular, you have to force a different kind of understanding.
Now, there's a lot more to relativity than that, that's just
a component of it. But it's undergone many, many tests over the
decades. Things like starlight being deflected as it passes
around the Sun; atomic clocks going in airplanes and rockets;
light made by stars being a different color by virtue of their
gravitation. Gravity waves, recently discovered somewhat
directly by the SLIGO experiment, but a paper written about them
in the '70s; having discovered indirect evidence for them from a
pulsar. So, his thoughts have definitely stood the test of time
on this. Nothing shows that he was wrong. So that says
something about how we think about the world.
Just to say something about Einstein's courage, on the third
topic is the quantum world. In 1900, Einstein later colleague,
Max Planck had made a discovery that he was able to explain the
kind of light that hot bodies emit. Something that's hot and
glowing like the filament in a light bulb; Planck was able to
explain that based on an hypothesis that the way light was
emitted from and absorbed by that hot body took place in pieces.
That the light energy had to interact with that body in
individually in quanta, the plural of quantum. A few years
later, in Einstein's so-called "miracle year" of 1905, he
generalized this and said that's just how light is; it comes in
pieces. Light is not purely a wave; light is also somewhat of a
particle. The field developed, and one of the things that came
out of it that Einstein had realized, was a phenomenon called
entanglement. To say it very briefly, it's the characteristic
where you're able to make two particles, say two photons that
have characteristics that are shared. In the case of photons,
they have opposite polarizations. Or maybe you can make two
electrons that have opposite spins. After you make them, here's
the thought experiment Einstein would say. Let's say you make
two of them; you don't look at them, and they go to very
different places. One's in Tokyo and one's in New York.
According to the theory, once you measure one in Tokyo and you
get some sort of number for whatever its spin is; the one in New
York automatically has the opposite spin. So Einstein said, does
this mean that measuring something in New York changed something
in Tokyo, or vice versa? Could it have an instant effect
somehow? How did it change the other particle that's so far away
from it? Nothing can occur instantly anyway, because there are
no instants. What's going on?
What it came to was a debate over decades, that was
unresolved. Einstein believed that the way work in this field
was going, was that people were giving up on reality; that they
were saying that all we really ever know is an observation. That
the world doesn't exist in a certain state independent of our
measuring it. Not just because our measurements affect things —
especially when they're very small; but that even God himself, so
to speak, doesn't really know the state of say an atom. It
simply doesn't have one; all that is really real is when you
observe it later. So, Einstein made a lot of polemics against
this, a lot of pedagogies about it, a lot of demonstrations; and
although there have been experiments since the decades after his
life that shed new light on it, I think the key thing to take
from that is that Einstein recognized that there was something a
bit unsettling about the way science was going. That people were
willing to give up on the idea that things occurred for a reason.
To Einstein, that was throwing away reality; bidding farewell to
the idea that there is a real world. Some of his thoughts on
that, you might have heard him say he'd like to think that the
Moon is still there even when he doesn't look at it. But I think
the thing to take from that is his courage; even when almost
everyone was against him, he stuck to his guns on that.
So, in terms of concluding on that, or drawing a reflection
from it, it's a constantly under-appreciated miracle that our
minds are able to understand the Universe in a way that gives us
power over it. That unlike a koala bear or a grasshopper, that
are unable to use their understanding of nature to change their
relationship to it to transform their species, we're able to do
that. There's something coherent between the way our minds piece
together and understand the world around us through our thoughts,
through our concepts. There is a harmony between those concepts
and the way the Universe actually operates that gives us access
to act on those principles to bring about new states of
existence; and is the basis of economics. So, I think that in
addition to a radical transformation and improvement in culture
that's needed, people like to think that they've got a lot of
scientific knowledge these days; because you own a smart phone
and you think you know something about science. Or you say that
everybody knows there's global warming and only anti-scientific
people disagree with that. That's not a basis of knowing
anything; and there's a lot of room for a dramatic improvement.
A real renaissance of taking Einstein's identity as an example
and really developing a fresh and powerful view of science to
solve many of the problems that we're confronted with right now,
that without a different approach, might never be solved.
So, that's a very inadequate beginning about Einstein; but
it's a job for all of us to do. To figure out who is this man;
what can we learn from his approach? I think we'll be hearing
more from LaRouche and his thoughts on how he views his
importance as an individual for us today.
ROGERS: I think that's very important. What I think is
important to go back to in terms of LaRouche's role and what he
said in the presentation that we showed earlier. And going to
the understanding of what is actually happening with the role
that Russia, under President Putin, and the role that President
Xi Jinping is playing in relationship to what Mr. and Mrs.
LaRouche had set into motion several decades ago with the
development of the Productive Triangle, of the Eurasian
Land-Bridge, the Silk Road Development Plan. This coming into
motion now, and at that very time, during that presentation that
we saw in the beginning of this program, made the point that
these nations would be brought together in collaboration and form
a coalition of nations representing nations such as Iran, China,
Russia, India, and so forth, to put an end — once and for all —
to the British Empire. And the intentions of the British Empire
to destroy this very conception of what is the truly human
identity; the identity of the creative human process. I think
it's very important to look at that from the standpoint of the
presentation you just gave, Jason. Because that's what missing.
What we're talking about is not a political fight from the
standpoint of how do you bring down one political candidate over
the other; but how do you destroy a system, particularly the
British Empire, in all of its facets and what it represents, that
denies this creative human process. Right now, what we're
looking at from the United States is that as the rest of these
nations are moving in the direction of creating a New Paradigm
for mankind, moving with the Silk Road economic development plan;
where is the United States right now? The United States is
continuing to go along with the evils and destructive policies of
the British Empire. This has been the case for decades now; this
has been the case under the murderous, insane agenda of President
Obama, who should have been removed a long time ago. Or the
policies of the Bush administration, and the lies and the
cover-up. Now, we have an opportunity. What we're discussing
here is not just some nice scientific ideas, and let's look at
Einstein and people think they have their different conceptions
and understanding and "Oh, I studied this in elementary school."
No; the idea is, what has been taken away from society? Why have
we allowed an Empire to dominate our existence and our nation and
culture for far too long?
So, I think it is the case that in 1997, when Mr. LaRouche
made the point that what we're dealing with is nations have to
come together to bring about that truly human identity to destroy
this empire once and for all; that's what we're going to use
Einstein to do. I'll just make that point.
STEGER: Just to add, because I think it's worth
considering; there are so many developments that we're on the
verge of. This coming six weeks have such a dramatic nature that
we've already seen a certain sense of in terms of a consolidated
effort to end this British Empire system; the very key emphasis
Lyn took up in 1997. That there is now an orientation to resolve
the question of the Balkans, the Caucuses, Kashmir, the South
China Sea; even North Korea are essentially on the agenda of
these major nations. To end the potential of world war, and to
really consolidate a new economic system. So, it is kind of
striking that Lyn's emphasis is, as Matt you raised, on Einstein.
Why the emphasis now? But it's clearly because in the minds of
this collaborative effort among these nations and among any
patriotic Americans, as we see in the performances we're
developing in New York around the 9/11 anniversary, the question
has to be the long-term development of mankind. Not one's
children, not one generation ahead, but the actual ongoing
development that now is possible to embark upon as a human
species on this planet. And I think Einstein craved and desired
no less. His discoveries and passion unleashed that kind of
potential, which he probably saw as a young man himself, and that
quality. It's not just simply a liberal emotion; it is of a
scientific endeavor which Einstein really captured. I think
Lyn's comments then and today also do as well.
OGDEN: Well, I think it's with a full amount of confidence
that we can move forward and understand that the epic
era-changing kinds of developments that are occurring around us
right now, are things that Mr. and Mrs. LaRouche have been in the
middle of for decades, literally. They've had their fingers on
the pulse of history right up to this point. Helga LaRouche
pointed out yesterday that the speech that she gave at the Rasina
Dialogue in India just a couple of months ago, seems like it's
exactly what is now being undertaken by the Indian government in
terms of their collaboration with China and Russia to project the
Silk Road into the Middle East to resolve this terrible crisis
that exists there. And Mr. LaRouche's continuing role in terms
of the intellectual sounding board around which the rest of
history is continuing to move. It's with confidence that we can
look back at that speech and everything else that is on the
record in terms of their role. It's an identity which we need to
maintain within ourselves and those who are collaborating with
us, that yes, your finger is on the pulse of history; the
imagination of what the future can become is what is continuing
to shape the actions in the present. And it's a moment of
decision; it's the {punctum saliens} moment in terms of which
direction does mankind go right now. We have a rich potential,
and I think it's extremely clear; but it's also extremely
dangerous.
I'd really like to thank Jason for giving a little bit of a
foretaste of what's going to be elaborated much more, I'm sure,
on the show next Wednesday. That's going to be broadcast, and we
would ask you to tune in to that. I also want to encourage
people to continue to participate in the process of inundating
Manhattan with this new publication, {The Hamiltonian}. This is
issue 2, and it continues to be the center of our intervention
into shaping the United States and answering the question that
Kesha asked: Why is the United States not yet a part of this
emerging dynamic on the planet? What must be done to cause that
to occur?
So, I'd like to thank all of you for tuning in; and
encourage you to stay tuned to larouchepac.com. And we'll see
you next week.
