Question: I study in the humanities department of the UNAM. I would like to know, Mr. LaRouche, if the youth do not become aware of the historical role we must play at this moment, and that guided by you, as the only candidate ready to do something for the situation or for the world crisis which we are facing, can we say that we are facing World War III?

I also want to know if you are ready to change the way in which the communications media has invaded the minds of the youth with subversive and dangerous subliminal messages, like sex, drug addiction, anti-family values, and morals that have produced, just as you say, youths' indifference to world problems and a search instead for personal gratification. Thank you.

LaRouche: Yes! Well, my job is to get this kind of movement in motion. There's no particular problem here. We just have to do it. We can reach out. We can inspire people to find their humanity in themselves. We get away from existentialism into this sort of thing, and that's the way it goes. The Youth Movement--it's almost sui generis--if we don't do this, if we don't make this kind of change in society, there is going to be a new dark age, of two to three or more generations. Because the present civilization is a very fragile, physical civilization. It would not take much collapse, for long, to set forth a chain-reaction collapse, which would bring us down into a population level well below a billion people on this planet, in a very short period of time, a generation or so.

Now that kind of calamity means the wiping out of culture: It means a new dark age. If we don't turn the corner away from the trends and policy of the past 40 years, that's exactly where we're going to go. So we're out to save civilization. And my view is, only a youth movement--for reasons I'd stated earlier--only a youth movement can do this. That is, a youth movement which can itself challenge the preceding generation, the so-called Now Generation, and challenge them to come back to humanity. To come back to morality, in the sense, that you pose the question of morality. And on that basis, we have a sufficient force to respond to an impossible crisis, with possible solutions.

We have to develop that kind of consciousness, that kind of leadership. That's why I emphasize this idea of the role of the University on Wheels. There are profound ideas, such as I raise in this question of this Gauss challenge on the errors of Euler and Lagrange. And the comparison of that, to the work of Archytas and Plato and so forth, on the issue of the early physical geometry, pre-Euclidean physical geometry, as brought into modern times by Gauss and Riemann and so forth. That this kind of educational process, this mastery of music, Classical music, the mastery of what is meant by great Classical painting, the work of Leonardo da Vinci, the work of Raphael Sanzio, the work of Rembrandt especially. I particularly love, I think is most inspiring, is the famous painting of the Bust of Homer looking at the stupid Aristotle, the blind Aristotle, of Rembrandt. Beautiful example. Other things of that sort.

So, a sense of this education, with no division between art and so-called physical science. Bridging it, in the way that Classical studies do, the way that Plato does, in a sense, in his dialogues, overall. The idea of spirituality, of theology, of the organization of nature, of the Classical composition of ideas, as being distinctively human: These things going together create a kind of happiness, a superior kind of happiness, in people. And the essential thing is, we have to be a movement for happiness, with a clear understanding of the danger to civilization if we lose; that is, we do not reverse the current trends in policy. That for me, is the essence of the matter.

The main thing, is to get across--let me just take one step back, and add, which may not--I've said it so many times, I sometimes forget to say it again, is that: The essential difference is the difference between man and an animal. That is, man is not limited, as an animal, to some fixed propensities. For example, if man were a higher ape, the population of human species on this planet, the past 2 million years, would never have exceeded several million individuals. We now have over 6 billion human individuals living on this planet. The possibility of this population flows from discoveries transmitted from generation to generation, improvements transmitted from generation to generation, which give man an increasing power in the universe.

But the problem has been, as the problem arises again today, that in society, prior to the Renaissance, in particular, in every case we know, society was based on an oligarchy of a few, with the help of some lackeys, either coming down and killing human beings who are treated as wild animals, or taking human beings who are treated as human cattle, and herding them, and culling the flocks. So the problems with society earlier, as Plato's time addressed this question, the question of slavery, the question of degradation of mankind, is that the degradation of humanity, or most of it, to a condition which resembles that of an animal, an unthinking animal, who does what he's supposed to do, and is culled when he becomes excessive in numbers.

So this consciousness of what humanity is: getting Classical music into the young child, say in Mexico, the young, poor child from a peasant family, participating in Classical music, is an affirmation of that child's humanity, and of the humanity of that child's parents. So all of these things go together, by affirming the humanity of the human individual, in saying that society must be constituted on the basis of promoting the humanity, and the development of the humanity, of the individual. If we start from that, all things fall in place. The rest of it is simply practical strategy.

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