Report on Berlin Schiller Institute Conference Panel 4, July 13

July 18—If humanity is to establish continuity, then it is crucial that its future be put up for serious consideration and deliberation. This has been the central theme to Lyndon and Helga LaRouche’s life work. Former CIA Russia analyst and founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) Ray McGovern also put the continuity of Humanity into a term: We must build an Ark. The Ark is what mankind must build and take refuge in to survive the challenges, particularly of the thermonuclear war hazard, which is much greater than that during the height of the Cold War, during which U.S. and Soviet Leadership at least had cordial levels of dialogue with each other, which has been sorely missing between the U.S. and Russian Federation today.

This is why Schiller Institute chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche started off the fourth panel the Berlin Schiller Insititute conference July 13 with the importance of the return to Classical European Culture. To be sure, we are calling for the return to Classical European Culture, she said, and the role of the youth in rediscovering classical culture and developing the necessary milieu, a seed crystal of a dedicated youth cadre to execute such a feat, which is admittedly very difficult in the present situation in the West. Zepp-LaRouche posed this as a challenge and a necessity to escape the current crisis.

The floor was then given to Schiller spokesperson Harley Schlanger, who presented the strategic picture. As Schlanger suggested, we are dealing with a British oligarchy that harbors a disdain toward humanity. In doing so, the British promoted geopolitics and divided man into warring nations and parties. The oligarchy also pushes pessimism onto populations to make them believe in the alleged futility of taking on their masters, despite the emergence of a global rebellion against them. Humans, he said, are created with a unique quality of creativity, by being the image of their Creator.

However, because of the gross cultural decadence, and the cycles of Dark Ages (and it could be argued that we are in one right now), many of us lost that knowledge of the innate creativity and the universality of humanity. However, it is up to us, and the daunting task for the youth and the LaRouche Youth Movement to restore “our better angels” in a downtrodden or brainwashed Global Western population and Eastern populations who are, for the most part, on the right track, but still have much to gain, especially if they were to reject popular green axioms, and a Southern population that have been oppressed and exploited for centuries. Now it is the time to completely put aside and discard any laws or axioms that were arbitrarily formed from some outside authority. Instead, the State obeys provable universal laws that can be applied to humanity as a whole. Unless it follows that criterion, and serves the general welfare of the people, the state is illegitimate. However, this idea cannot be fully realized in a state where people are living as human cattle, which most people in the United States have been relegated to. A liberation struggle has been called, a Third American Revolution, to liberate the American people from their status as herded cattle, who are being slowly walking into butchery by the oligarchy, who will either cut them into steak through bad economic policies, or grind the young into hamburger meat and char the rest beyond well done, through nuclear war.

Schlanger has posed the challenge for those assembled for the conference, the harbingers of a new Renaissance, and perhaps a necessary Third American Revolution, to revive humanity and move us away from mass slaughter. A video of Lyndon LaRouche was played discussing how he created the Youth Movements of the 1970s and then again in the 2000s, with a caution on how cultures are destroyed by Dark Ages, and the necessity of creating a new Youth Movement. Schlanger then finished by stating it was critical for people to fully understand and accept the fundamental goodness of humanity.

Helena Chang from Sinopress was then called up to speak. In the era of the New Silk Road, (which the Schiller Institute supports, which the West should join and integrate with) brought up a critical point of the Old Silk Road. The most important aspect of the Old Silk Road was not the fact that it facilitated trade of goods between civilizations, but its importance for the transfer of ideas and technologies during that time. Would we have had knowledge of gunpowder or the navigation compass if it hadn’t been for the Silk Road? If the Old Silk Road proved to be a vector of ideas and technology from East to West, what would a New Silk Road with paved roads for motorized vehicles, rail lines, seaports, new airports be like, in that regard at the current level of technology we enjoy today? She called to break from the impasses caused by modern conflicts, and to break from the current lattice of endless wars and geopolitics and move to a new and less familiar system where harmony between the civilizations can easily be fostered.

A dialogue took place between Helena Chang and Helga Zepp-LaRouche on the subject of education, and how the educational reforms shifted away from classical education, to an OECD-sired monstrosity.

The problem of persisting bias against the non-Western parts of the World was brought up by Chang. “The West does not know about the Eastern World, but there is a passion to criticize the East,” was expressed as a problem that exists among most Westerners. It was also said that the natural inclination between human civilizations is to interact, rather than to clash. The insistence towards “The Clash of Civilizations” is artificial, and predicated on a top-down intellectual canonization of geopolitics.

Maurizio Abbate spoke next. At that point, the English translation did not function, but what Abbate was bringing to light, in passionate terms, was the problem with the ubiquity of war on our planet, as well as the systemic economic and financial crisis that, to this day, has remained unresolved, only patched over with piecemeal solutions from within the monetarist system that has not been effective, but, rather, has made matters worse. Governments have cut funding to hospitals, schools and programs that are supposed to help people, and instead have decided to commit more resources to war. The institutions established for the purpose of mediation, such as the United Nations, are now dead according to Abbate, and we must move beyond them. He also called to re-expand our organization into Italy, drawing inspiration from the Berlin Schiller Institute Conference.

Jens Jorgen Nielsen, from the Organization of Russian-Danish Dialogue, who spoke on the importance of dialogue with Russia, explained that matters have gotten worse since the end of the Cold War with lines of dialogue between heads of state of the two nations as well as an overview of the religions of Russia, focusing on Orthodox Christianity and a view that is more critical of the Renaissance.

Then came presentations from younger people.

Martin Kaptein showed how the piano in particular plays a key role in uplifting the mind. He gave an interesting presentation on the melody and the harmony from the piano, stating that a competent piano piece is like a well-designed architecture, and not merely a collection of notes. The piano is key in helping a free people find their balance and organize their thoughts.

Anastasia Battle spoke on the education of a moral citizenry, which she began with a quotation from Lyndon LaRouche’s article “The Death-Agony of Olympus,” then explained why an understanding of classical tragedy is key to the transformation of the population from a more rough existence to being shaped into citizens that can contribute to republican society. Beethoven’s opera Fidelio was used as an example. At the end of Fidelio, Florestan, despite his hardships, found his strength and continued to resist and persist.

Carla Dominguez went into great detail on the organizing in Mexico. She stressed the important point that students, even if they are in sociology, environmental studies, or even economics students, are accepted into the LaRouche Youth Movement on university campuses. She presented proposals they have made at BRICS events, and ended her segment with the statement “If we are part of something really big, DO THE WORK, become a magnet.”  Dominguez gave a very good insight into an evolved, new generation of potential youth organizing, and from the perspective of an organization that is directly from the Global South.

Kynan Thistlethwaite’s presentation dealt with the question “Why do people get suckered into believing the lies that lead nations into catastrophes, such as wars based on lies?” To that, he accentuated the importance of imagination and for the citizenry to improve their capacity of imagination as opposed to acting upon sense perception. Thistlethwaite used the example of the “Muse of Fire” prologue from the Life of King Henry the Fifth, as well as excerpts from the Merchant of Venice to outline the problem of Venetian society in that play, and how Portia demonstrated the principle by negating sense-perception through the lead casket, was able to bring to light the quality of mercy in the play to Shylock in the court scene.

Ashley Tran started her presentation by discussing the problems facing Germany, the lacklustre or even absence of recognition of Germany’s classical cultural heritage, particularly of Friedrich Schiller. She noted that Schiller contributed to the Second American Revolution by enticing the Germans to enlist in the Union Army against the Confederacy.

Chérine Sultan then had an enticing segment titled “Schiller, a non-academic teacher,” where she tore into the obligation academia places on people, in her case of experience in French schools, to read Balzac, Molière, and Madame de Lafayette, which stymied free inquiry into books or authors that may be more interesting to a young mind. "… But with a little curiosity and patience, one can also find non-academic teachers."

Then Sultan mentioned an example from Friedrich Schiller’s life. After all, what would a Schiller Institute Conference be if Schiller himself weren’t highlighted? The example of Schiller conducting a lecture on Universal History experienced a swelling of students, who had initially packed the study hall he chose to give his lecture, an hour before it was supposed to begin, and the crowd just kept getting larger, more and more hungry for the sweet fruit that Schiller offered in his inaugural lecture at Jena. At that point Schiller had to move his lecture to a larger auditorium, just to have a medium with the capacity to accommodate the numbers that came to hear him.

But Schiller did not allow himself to be shackled by “facts” and the opinions of academia of his style. Rather, what is termed “slowly matured” preparation was employed. With that in mind, a call was issued by Sultan to the youth to build the next 50 years was announced. Do you care so much what the academics and experts may think? They are bread-fed, have ingested too much carbs, and have become fat and do fart too much. It is a wonder that they have not deflated into shrunken forms from over-flatuation.

Daniel Burke gave the final speech where he identified Vox Populi, or “The Voice of the People,” or more accurately, manipulation of public opinion through mass psychology to control the population to achieve the oligarchs’ aims and desires. Burke then posed the question: “Will we transform and uplift the world, or abandon our powers of discovery, thereby becoming a shrunken people, so easily devoured by the seemingly giant and mighty green oligarchs? Or as human cattle being led to genocidal slaughter through the designs the oligarchs have for us?”

This will be an effort for all of humanity. Helga Zepp-LaRouche ended the conference with this statement. Germany alone will not solve the crisis, and I do not believe the U.S. alone will either. But they are centers of the crisis, and it will take an effort for all of humanity to avert it and turn the crisis into opportunity.