Answers From LaRouche

Q: Why is it that only the Western artistic conception corresponds to the human conception of the universe?
                                 - from November 23, 2023 Ibero-American Cadre School

Question: I want to ask you why only the Western artistic conception corresponds to the human conception of the universe? And, how can we get the human character in the different Latin American nations, with traditions and philosophies which are also millenarian?

LaRouche: Millenarian philosophies and traditions are a disease, not a culture in the ordinary sense. They don't belong to human beings. The problem here is this: Remember, there's been a long struggle of humanity, to do what? To free man from forms of culture in which the majority of people were treated as human cattle, either as wild human cattle to be hunted down, or herded human cattle to be raised, used, and culled, as necessary. So therefore, prior to the emergence of the idea of the modern state in Greece, the prevalent culture of every part of the world we know, was an inhuman culture, in the sense that it treated the majority of the human species, not only of other nations and languages, but its own, as human cattle. That problem persists to the present day.

So the idea of the modern nation-state, as typified by the influence of Solon, and by the work of Socrates against the Sophists, and by Plato, gave birth to the idea of the republic. It's a nation which is accountable, and government which is accountable, to the general welfare of all of the people, and their posterity. In other words, a government which is committed to the service of the upward progress of humanity, and of the condition of the individual in human society. This progress depends on developing a notion of two facets. One, a notion of truth, a notion of absolute truth. Second, a specific notion of truth, of the truth that man and animal are completely different forms of existence. Man is not something that evolved from an animal, or from animal processes. Man has a quality which we call reason, that is, the power to discover universal physical principles, and to apply them, which no animal species has, which no living process per se has, as a living process. This is something which has intervened in the universe, into the existence of an animal form of life called humanity, which has something which is human, not just animal. And that is this power of reason, this power of discovery.

Therefore, the composition of society, and the notion of truth, are inseparable from this quality of reason which is typified, for example, by Carl Gauss's attack on Euler and Lagrange, in Gauss's 1799 paper on the question of the fundamental theorem of algebra, on the question of the complex domain.

So, therefore, there is only one conception of truth, and this is specific to the nature of man.

Now, most of the cultures of this planet are still cultures which are based predominantly on traditions of treating most people as cattle. For example: In Mexico, how are most of the people of Mexico treated today? As human cattle, not as citizens! The exploitation, the maquiladoras, the way the Mexican population is herded across the border. Oh sure, Mexicans do good work for the United States. We depend upon them! Somebody says they exploit the United States? We depend upon them! Who's going to do the work for us?

But the point is, the struggle is that Mexico must be sovereign. It lost its sovereignty in 1982. The swan song of Mexico's sovereignty was the great address by President Lopez Portillo, to the United Nations in October of 1982. After that, after the defeat of me, and of Lopez Portillo, Mexico lost its sovereignty. Now, there are still Mexicans who believe in sovereignty, and will fight for it. And I'm all with them. But the fact is, the problem exists.

The same problem exists in Venezuela, where certainly the people are not treated as sovereign. They have a couple of oligarchies squabbling over the spoils, like vultures over the dying, over the people of Venezuela. This Chavez thing is a monstrous thing. This terrible situation in Colombia; the fact that there is no option provided in Bolivia to help people get out of the grip of the cocaleros. Look what's happening to Argentina. This is immoral! What's happening in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa: It's immoral! It's done by the United States and Britain, in particular; and Israel. What is done in most of the world is immoral, still today. People are still treated as human cattle. And the principle--the difference between man and an animal--must be the law. It is natural law. And any action which is contrary to that law, should be nullified, is unlawful. Any cultural tradition which is contrary to that, which bases itself on human pleasure, sense-certainty, is immoral. It's rotten.

Now, look at the history of mankind from that standpoint. How old is Classical culture? It's very old. It's as old as the human race, undoubtedly. Always, the way the human race has survived, has been this impulse, of some, at least, to recognize human nature for what it is, and to try to order the processes of society accordingly. There's always been this struggle to find the true principles of the universe. But this struggle has been limited essentially to a few. Sometimes, the ruling stratum is dedicated to this idea, as you see in the case of the Classical culture in ancient Greece. There were people who were dedicated to this conception. But Greece didn't achieve it. But the idea of it existed in Greece.

You find, for example, in the United States, you have the case of the so-called Negro Spiritual. The Negro Spiritual was a product of several things. It was a product of an intersection, largely, of African cultures, cultures embodied in African people, intersecting the culture of the United States. When this was looked at, at the end of the 19th Century, by great musicians, it was recognized that there was, in the Negro Spiritual, as it evolved as a body of practice, from among slaves, originally, that this contained a Classical principle: an aspiration for the affirmation of the distinction of man from the beast. And a self-affirmation of one's role in that. And therefore, you saw in this, in the Negro Spiritual, often great beauty, which was refined and honed, to become an integral part of Classical culture by some of the great musicians of our time, particularly of the 20th Century. As opposed to the so-called pop-art, or pop-culture, which is drug-related degeneracy.

So, all through humanity, there is a Classical principle. What we have, fortunately, in European civilization, in the development of the Classical principle based on the heritage of ancient Greece and its influence, and based on the development since the Renaissance in particular, the highest level of development of Classical culture, has occurred within European civilization, because of our successes, our political successes, in particular, of the type which were impelled by the examples of ancient Classical Greece. So therefore, we're more advanced in terms of science and arts, than other parts, non-European parts of the world, but the Classical principle, is intrinsic to humanity. It just is more or less well developed, according to the circumstances, whether it finds itself as a seed on fertile or impoverished ground.

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