Lyndon LaRouche speech at Rome Tribunal, January 20, 1989

It's good to see you; it's good to be here.

   The art of warfare sometimes consists--as soon as you
are engaged in one battle, or, to be more precise, as soon
as you have engaged the adversary in one battle, start
another on another flank! What I wish to do today, briefly
in connection with the subject of economics, and
particularly the question of <morality> and economics, is
to continue a battle already begun with the aid of our
dear professor Bartoli from Florence, is to make clear the
moral importance for all humanity of the cupola of the
dome of Florence.

   This object, the dome of Florence, this cupola, is
the object <most hated> in all the world by Moscow. The
reason that Moscow hates this object, as do all Satanists,
whether Communist or not, is that the cupola of the dome
of Florence is coincident with the Council of Florence, on
which all modern Western civilization is premised,
immediately, and also because it expresses, in its
construction, in the personalities who were responsible
for the design and the accomplishment of its construction,
it expresses the same principle which pervades the Council
of Florence.

   Thus, this object embodies as a work of art, more
than any other work of art, the entire Renaissance of
Western civilization, after the terrible Dark Age of the
14th century.

   Now, Moscow is Satanic, and like all Satanic bodies,
it believes in symbolic philosophy, which is another name
for satanism, a polite, freemasonic term for satanism.
Everything is symbols, because nothing is real. Moscow
believes that the destruction of the Vatican and the
destruction of the cupola symbolically assures the eternal
imperial world rule of Moscow over this planet.

   There is something else about this cupola which is
not accidentally to be found there. There is a quality in
the way in which the construction, the most remarkable
construction, of this cupola was effected, which is a
quality of science not understood by over 95% of the
leading professional physicists today. Not by the
architects--most of the architects are idiots, like the
Galileo Galilei, who could not understand the principle of
construction of the cupola when he was asked to comment on
it.

   Moreover, most physicists today would be incapable of
understanding in principle what was clearly understood by
Fillipo Brunelleschi, and also understood by Leonardo da
Vinci and others later. This principle of physics takes us
to the very frontier of the possibility of physical
scientific discovery today. This was something that was
understood in part in the last century by the great
Beltrami, who called our attention to this aspect of the
importance of the work of Brunelleschi and others on
negative curvature.

   With that in view, I would like to present to you, in
the context of the morality of economicss, a proposal that
we all rally together with Professor Bartoli and <save,
defend> the cupola of the dome of Florence, with these
thoughts in view.

   First I shall summarize a few things which indicate
what I mean by morality and economics. Most people who
study economics today, at best learn some accounting; they
learn nothing about economics. They learn about money.
They learn nothing about economy--not as economy was
understood in Italy, France, and Germany during the 17th
and 18th centuries as <cameralism>, as physical economy,
as the art of statecraft to promote the welfare and
increase of the productive powers of labor. That is no
longer studied, and therefore if one has an economic
problem, the first thing one does in a prudent government
is to lock the economists out until the problem has been
solved, and bring in the physical scientists to deal with
the problem first. Those of us who have had to deal with
problems of management of industry and government, are
well acquainted with the dangers of allowing an economist
near economics.

   We can demonstrate very simply what the fundamental
principle of economics is, the fundamental question.
First, before you develop an answer, you should know what
question is being asked, what question is being posed to
us by nature that we have to answer, that we should call
economics.

   Now, there are some people who are idiots who call
themselves anthropolosgists. If you are not an idiot you
would not call yourself an anthropologist. This is an
outgrowth of the influence of people like August du
Comte--the founder of positivism--in France in the Dark
Ages of France of the 19th century. These fellows
conjecture that 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, somewhere
deep in the wilderness of what is called the Canezoid
(sp?) period there was the earliest stage of man, still
predominant on this globe. That stage was called simple
hunting and gathering society--before bows and arrows,
before the discovery of sticks, almost before the
discovery of mud, people lived simply by gathering their
food, animal or vegetable, from nature about them. Now, we
have made some calculations as to, assuming this kind of
society existed, what are the possibilities of human
existence in this society.

   First of all, it would take about an average of 10
square kilometers of the wilderness land area of this
planet to sustain an average individual in very miserable
existence. This would mean the total planet population
could never exceed 10 million human beings--these would be
very miserable human beings. They would be living on a
subsistence level of between 1,200 and 2,500 calories a
day, average. They would have a life expectancy which is
much below 20 years of age. It would be a society largely
of babbling, stupid children and a few women acting as
mothers and surrogate mothers for them. This is the only
possibility.

   Then we come ahead to the present. We have reported
recently that we have 5 <billion> people on this planet,
not 10 million. Now that's three decimal orders of
magnitude, approximately, greater than the anthropologists
attribute to primitive man, and three decimal orders of
magnitude greater than would be possible if the ecologists
run the policies of the governments. Under the ecologists,
we will not be satisfied till we go back to a state of
perfect harmony with nature, which is 10 million people on
the surface of this planet, at most.

   We have the possibility, in terms of technologies
which existed by 1970, technologies which are partly in
use, including nuclear energy, to be able to sustain, by
now, somewhere between 15 and 25 billion people on the
surface of this planet, with that technology, and that
technology alone. We could have attained, with that
technology, and that population density, a standard of
living for the average person on this planet, comparable
to that in industrialized nations of Western Europe and
North America in 1970. We could have attained that
standard of living, without question. With enough energy,
with enough water management, with enough land management,
with enough investment in capital- intensive loans and
technology, that is perfectly feasible.

   We have before us today, the possibilies, first, of
fusion energy, and then of the controlled
matter-anti-matter reaction which will come down, over the
course of the next century. We could increase that
potential of mankind to a total planetary population in
excess of 100 to 200 billion people, living much less
crowded than they do in Belgium today, and at a much
higher standard of living than anyone dreams of today.

   The important thing about ensuring human survival,
physically, is to increase the human potential population
density which raises the standard of living, increases the
level of culture which can be materially supported for the
average individual, and assures human survival.

   From the standpoint of physical economy, the capacity
of mankind, through scientific and technical progress, to
increase the potential population density of our species,
and higher standards of living, is the characteristic of
human behavior, which from the standpoint of the
economist--the real economist, not the accounting
variety--is the fundamental, empirical distinction between
man and beast. It is this quality, this performance, which
distinguishes and sets man apart from and above all
beasts--unless man becomes an ecologist, in which case he
aspires to descend to the state of a beast, morally and
otherwise.

   What is the difference? Man has the capacity to
generate and efficiently assimilate what we call
fundamental scientific discoveries. This is true not only
in terms of physical discoveries in science, this is true
in great works of classical art, where the same principle
of creativity is used. This is also true in a more
fundamental way, as I shall indicate.

   Even parents, in giving birth to and raising a child,
are expressing in that devotion to the development of the
child, are expressing the same human principle, unlike
that possible for any beast, which is the same principle
expressed by the great scientist who makes a fundamental
discovery in physical science and contributes to all
mankind.

   Now, in the recent two centuries in particular, since
the rise of the Enlightenment, Descartes, and Kant in
particular, we human beings have lost something which our
educated and literate forebears had command of. For
example, when you speak of the word "metaphysics" today,
people shudder, whereas our literate ancestors, several
centuries ago, had no such problem. They understood that
metaphysics was a branch of scientific knowledge, an area
of certainty. How did it come about that this is no longer
the case, bears directly upon this question and bears
directly upon <practical> morality as expressed in
economic policy, as I shall demonstrate.

   Kant, and Descartes, but take the case of Kant as an
example, admitted that creative scientific discovery
exists; that creative scientific discoveries have
occurred. But he said, like Descartes, that it is
impossible for the human mind to describe or represent the
process by which these discoveries are made. The active
creativity of the human being is to be treated as a
mystery; that we have no way of accounting for it, no
criteria to apply to determine what is creativity, what
will foster it and what will not. Similarly, these fellows
denied that the creativity in the universe at large could
be understood, rendered intelligible. The very existence
of the universe is unintelligible, and by implication, it
is also the case, that from their line of argument, we
cannot define an intelligible definition of the difference
between living and dead matter.

   The problem is a very simple one. If we attempt to
represent the world as Francis Bacon, as Galileo, as
Decartes, as Newton, as Kant and others did, it is
impossible to represent human creativity; it is impossible
to represent a represent a process of universal creation;
it is impossible to render an intelligible distinction
between living and dead processes. You can only assert
that it is living, in the case of living processes.

   I have devoted most of my life to that question,
first in refuting Kant, who said that creativity is
unknowable, and who also said that morality, esthetic and
other morality, cannot be determined in an intelligible
way. Out of Kant, and neo- Kantianism, and followers like
Savigny, came the immorality and rise of Satanism in the
19th and 20th centuries; came the rise of modern
liberalism, which is actually the portal, the gateway to
Hell.

   Not only can we represent this process of creativity;
not only can be understand this fundamental difference
between living and non-living processes; but we can draw
certain general conclusions of policy from them.

   On the one side, it is easily apparent, or used to be
apparent, before 20 years ago, that scientific and
technological progress, solves human problems, enables
more human beings to live, increases productivity, and
makes possible increases in the standard of living of the
average individual. This permits human beings to survive,
as by medical progress and so forth, in ways they could
not survive before. From the material standpoint, the
material advantage, and the material support of life and
the conditions of life, by scientific and technological
progress, were obvious to us at least 20 and more years
ago. But in the more profound, or what some would say
today the more <metaphysical> aspect of this proposition,
is not so easily grasped though it is more fundamental and
far more important.

   When I as an individual, for example, make a
contribution to fundamental scientific knowledge, I am not
acting as a beast, I am acting as something much higher
than a beast--I am committing the universal act. If I
contribute, as an individual, to scientific knowledge, to
man's understanding of the lawful ordering of the
universe, I am increasing the power, potentially, of every
living human being. I am increasing the power of future
human generations, who will supersede anything I discover,
but they will supersede it by standing upon the brick of
contribution which I have laid, for all generations to
come.

   I have also reached into the past, because to
discover something today, means to honor the possiblities
put into our hands by those who have come before us, and
to fulfill, to help to complete that which previous
generations have given us.

   As a child, or a grandchild, or a great grandchild,
fulfills the possibilities provided by the ancestor, so we
who in the present contribute to the future of mankind in
this way, also honor and contribute to the fulfilment of
the lives from the past. What does a parent lay down his
or her life for, for a child or a grandchild, except the
certainty that they create the possibilities for the
development of the society, the nation, and humanity,
through their children, their grandchildren and their
great grandchildren. How can a person die with a smile on
their face, a smile of contentment in the goodness of
their own life, unless they know that life, in principle,
has contributed something which will bear fruit in
generations to come.

   Therefore, what is the function and technological
progress, in particular? What is the function of creative
art, in particular? Through these means, and related
means, such as the creation and development of children,
in all their potentialities of intellectual character
possible to us, we rise above the animal, the beast. We
become truly human. We rise to universal acts, we solve
the Parmenedes paradox, in the way in which Nicholas of
Cusa described in <De Docta Ignorantia>, we conquer the
paradox of distinction between the individual and the
unversal. We become <at one> with the universe, an
instrument of the universe, we become a servant of
universality. We contribute to the development of this
capacity in ourselves and those about us.

   We exist to improve the power of self-development of
mankind, the power of lessening the imperfections of
mankind. That is what it is to be human. All the tangible,
material things we contribute, however necessary as well
as useful, they pass. The foundations we lay, crumble as
future generations lay their foundations upon our
crumbling contributions. What remains permanent, what is
durable, what is timeless, is only that which we do, which
fulfills the possibilities supplied to us by our forbears,
and which lays the foundations for the future.

   These kinds of questions show more clearly what is
immoral about the society of our time. Every individual
human being who is born, even those who are brain damanged
from birth, who can sometimes show us human qualities in
even their smiles in certain circumstances, each of us has
a potentiality for good, for participating in universal
acts, in the furtherance of universal acts. Each newborn
human being is <precious>, has a precious potential. When
we say, that there are too many of them, that is a lie.
There are not too many human beings, there could not
possibly be too many human beings; we could not make too
many human beings.

   Moreover, each human being is potentially a source of
contribution to all humanity. We have moral
responsibility, or we become as nothing, to make possible
the development, to the fullest possiblity, of the moral
and intellecutal potential of every newborn human being.
That is our existence; that should be our sense of
identity, that we find in each of us, our own choice of
profession by which we devote ourselves to fulfill that
responsibility. We are going to make a contribution to
help the development of every human being who has been
born, so that human being has the possbility of making a
more significant commitment to a universal act.

   If we undertand that, then we have bridged this false
dichotomy between the material and the spiritual. There is
no dichotomy. The one is the means to the other's ends.
The material means enable us to support life, to devote
energy to the development character and intellectu of the
individual. The material means enable us to develop what
we call classical art.

   Let me take just one more aspect of classical art
before coming back to the question of the cupola.
Classical art we can be very precise about. Kant in
particular postulated the thesis that there are no
intelligible criteria of esthetic values in fine arts.
Kant's thesis was used in the guise of neo-Kantianism, to
rationalize the destruction of art in Germany in
particular, through the influence of Karl Savigny, who was
probably about as close to Satan as anyone came in the
19th century, if it wasn't John Ruskin in England, who
tried hard. Savigny taught, that between natural
philosophy, and what he called <geisteswissenschaft> there
is an absolute, hermetic separation, so that the two have
no common ground. He used this to justify immorality in
statecraft, to say there is no rational basis for judging
the consequences of public policy, that it is merely a
matter of opinion. We have today, under the influence of
the Romantics and the more radical romantics, who were
called modernists, it has become popular to say that art
is a matter of opinion, of the <Zeitgeist>, that it is a
matter of particular moods of particular people and
customs of the times. In point of fact, that standards of
esthetics for art are as precise as those of science, and
sometimes more precise, as Leonardo da Vinci understood.

   Since the classical Greeks from Athens, mankind has
understood that that which we call beauty of form, in art,
is that which is comparable with the harmonic ordering of
living processes, and human processes in particular. With
Leonardo's work, and the work of others, we understand
that this distinction between the harmonic orderings
congruent with the Golden Section, and those not congruent
with the Golden Section, is the difference between living
and dead processes. To us, beauty is in first
approximation, in form a matter of the forms of healthy
living processes. Life is beautiful; death is ugly.
Classical fine art, properly appreciated, is beauty. Rock
is death. Modernism is death.

   This coincidence with science on this question, is
the key to understand both the human mind and understand
the importance of the cupola of the cathedral of Florence.
I will just identify this without going into detail. I
shall be working on this to the limit of my abilities, as
I already am, for as long as possible, until we solve it.
Beginning with the work of Cusa, but already implicit in
work of Toscanelli and Brunelleschi, the development and
understanding of the problem posed by Plato, in a number
of his writings, including the <Timaeus>, that what we see
with our senses, particularly our visual senses, is as but
the shadows on the wall of a darkened cave, cast by
firelight in that cave. In physics, what Plato has said
translates as invariants of conformal sterographic
projection. It is a very simple principle of 19th century
physics, known before. This aspect of Plato's work on
science, was taken up by the Golden Renaissance, to such
effect that the genius of the construction of the cupola
of the dome of Florence is based on recognizing the
implications of that point of Plato's. Brunelleschi among
others, says that certain anomalies in the field of
vision, are the keys to understanding the laws of physics.
On that basis, Brunelleschi, like Leonardo after him,
dealt with the problem which we call negative curvature.
The way that Brunelleschi solved the problem of
constructing the cupola, was based on the use of the
<catenary> which is a form of negative curvature, which
happens to be also what is called an isochronic form. I
will just skip over these points; you will hear much about
them from friends of mine and I in the coming period, but
I merely want to identify the importance of this.

   In the context of this, Cusa and others came with two
approaches to understand the laws of physics. What is the
universe, the real universe, is a little different from
what we think we see with our senses, naively. How can we
understand that universe, and how can we adjust to it,
work in it? The Golden Renaissance developed a concept
called the principle of least action, which became
established by people like Fermal (sp?) later, and
Leibnitz in particular. All modern physics is based on
that work--the work of Kepler is based on that, the work
of Gauss, the work of Riemann and so forth. The work of
Beltrami, who is our takeoff point, for this particular
project, was based in particular on that.

   Least action means that in the universe, primary
action occurs upon that is called the least pathway, and
occurs in the least time. The combination of least pathway
and least time, a kind of geometric combination,
represents a pathway of physical least action, and all
action in the universe is based on physical least action
defined as the conjugation of least pathway and least
time. What Beltrami called attention to, was that in the
work of Riemann, who was one of his teachers and
collaborators, along with Betti (sp?) that the question of
least pathway was very well understood, particularly in a
Riemann surface function, is understood by all modern
hydrodynamic specialists who worked in that school. What
has not been resolved systemically, is the relationship
between the least pathway and least time, which involves
isochronic curvature, of which the catenary is one form.
This is the work I am devoting my life at present, in
terms of scientific work: the work of Brunelleschi in
designing the construction of the cupola of the dome of
Florence, is an application of the solution of this
problem, in principle, and therefore, as we step forward
through mastery of this connection, this problem of
intelligible representation of least action, as we march
forward into that, into the mastery of the matter-anti-
matter reaction, which us three orders of magnitude
greater energy than we have ever had for mankind before,
we will actually be marching forward from a principle
which is implicitly already embedded in the design of the
cupola of the dome of Florence.

   Therefore as affirming the principle of beauty, the
equivalence of truth, beauty, love of God, and love of
mankind, as the single principle of classical fine art, so
the complement to that is to affirm the same principle in
physical science, the same state of mind, the same
attitude, and that work of art, that object, that symbol
so hated by the Soviet government, the cupola of the dome
of Florence, is the second flank.

   Let us win the battle for the principle of the
eqivalence of truth, beauty, love of God and love of
mankind, in art. Affirm the intelligibilty of that
principle, to bring beauty and its contribution to the
development of the character of the individual, back to
mankind, and to children above all. Let us at the same
time, take the idea of science out of mysticism, bring it
back to intelligibility, focus that question of
intelligibility on the next breakthrough to be made in
general in science for the benefit of mankind. Then let us
take the two things together, the affirmation of the
principle of esthetics, and the affirmation of the
principle of scientific progress, and let us use that, to
teach mankind the principle of humanity, that it is not
what we do as thing which is important, it is what we
contribute to all mankind. It is what we enable one
another to do into contributing not simply a useful act,
but to living a life which, from whatever its beginning to
whatever its end, is a life equivalent to a universal act,
a life in which the individual, mortal, fragile
individual, becomes an efficient servant of the universal,
and therefore can walk through life, and to death, with
joy knowing that life is good--that is the fundamental
principle.
