Question: Mr. LaRouche, thanks for speaking to us. I was wondering: You mentioned Kepler, and how he related the harmonic motion of the planets to musical scales. And you mentioned several other things about how the goal of Classical composition and physical science is the communication of ideas, and I was wondering, could the universe itself be one massive communication of a profound idea, by a sovereign intelligence. And if so, what are the implications of this for humanity?

LaRouche: Obviously, yes! [laughter] You won the $64,000 question, or something. But more significant is the implication of that as opposed to simply the fact--Okay, yeah sure. In other words, if the universe has three phases, where we can say, from an experimental standpoint, from a Vernadsky physical-chemistry experimental standpoint, we define three phases in the universe: one, the abiotic, defined experimentally, physical effects defined experimentally; second, living processes, types of effects which are defined, again, experimentally, and living; third, physical effects which are defined only as products of human cognition, i.e., discovery of universal physical principles, and so forth. And including the principles of communication.

Then, this comes into an additional question: How the most efficient of these, in the long term, is the human cognitive powers. The most efficient power in the universe! Because we see, for example, in the case of the biosphere, that the long-term effect is that the biosphere dominates the abiotic. The planet is having more and more of the mass of Earth being determined by living processes and their fossils, as opposed to abiotic processes. The Earth, physically, at the same time, is being changed more efficiently by human intervention of cognitive principle, than by the biosphere, otherwise.

Therefore, cognition is the most powerful long-term force in the universe. The act of cognition occurs how? It occurs as a sovereign act of discovery by an individual mind. You can not peek into another person's mind to see their cognition working. You can not wire it. You can not make it out of spare computer parts. It is something that occurs in the human mind, which is not penetrable by the senses of another person. You communicate this only by replicating the experience of discovery in a second mind. Which is the principle of education. You don't teach somebody to learn to repeat after you. That's monkey-talk. That belongs in the zoo, not in the university. Unfortunately, we have more zoos than universities these days. A guy goes to a university; he says, “I thought this was a university. It turns out to be a zoo. I'm being given monkey training,” eh? Learning to repeat after me, and how to pass a pre-determined set of multiple-choice questions, which are scored by computer. And do I get scored? Not really. It's the university that wants the scores, to get their rating system. If they get a high score for their students, they get more money! More prestige. And the student gets, what? As they say, “bubkes.”

So, the point is, that the act of the transmission of knowledge is the stimulation of the replication of the act of discovery, as a sovereign act of the individual mind in another person. I'm referring to the two things which are accessible to sense-perception: One, is the paradox which provokes the investigation, for which there is no simple solution, but only a cognitive one. This leads to the generation of a hypothesis. Now, the process of generating the hypothesis can not be visually seen by the senses of another person, but the hypothesis can be stated. Then, the third step is the testing of the hypothesis, experimentally. If the hypothesis experimental test works, and proves that the answer is universally true, then the hypothesis is true, then you have a solution. Then both person A, who make the discovery, and person B, who's being exposed to the process of the discovery, now can come to an agreement, that they have both generated an hypothesis, which is the same. And the fact that they've generated an hypothesis which is the same, enables them to know, in terms of the definition of the problem, the paradox, and the solution, the experimental proof, that they both know the same thing. That's the essential business of the communication.

Now, from what we know, this occurs in the universe only in that way. Only as the generation of an hypothesis, which is experimentally provable by an individual sovereign mind. Therefore, how is the universe composed? Whence do all principles flow? By an individual sovereign mind, which we, by facing the paradox involved, can generate an hypothesis, which we can verify is the intention of the Creator, by experimental proof. That's what we know about the universe. I mean, we don't know anything else! That's the only thing we know about the universe. That's what we mean by “universe.” This sovereign creature up there, which does this thing we do, called “hypothesizing,” generates, or, has generated, the principles of the universe. We can have access to this through the power of hypothesizing the hypothesis, which we can then verify that we know that we're talking about, by experimental demonstration, which qualifies as a universal proof.

So that's how the universe is organized. Isn't that wonderful? [applause]

Question: Actually Lyn, first I want to thank you for being the fearless leader of this youth movement, and the soon-to-be fearless leader of this great republic! [applause].

So, I have a question on fear. [laughter] I'm trying to understand this chameleon-like creature called “fear”--why there's so much of it. It takes all kinds of forms, and just when you think you've figured it out, it changes. Now, most of us who organize full-time for your campaign, go out every day, and we try to go down into the cave. Some of us fall asleep before we ever get in. Others hold onto rocks, resisting going down. Some of us decide we're going to go down, and then piss our pants because we're so afraid, making the ride real slippery and messy. Other times, we get down there, and it's so warm and dark, we think we can masturbate to the shadows and no one's gonna see us [whoops and laughter from the audience].

I want to know: Why is there so much fear? And what is the purpose? It just seems to be here to make our job a lot harder a lot harder than it has to be.

LaRouche: Well, well, well. You came into the spider's cave, huh? Well, it's very simple. It's a question of immortality. The fear of immortality. See, we can all die any day. Some more easily than others. Some quicker than others. So the question is, what does life mean if you can die any day? The question is, what do you do with it?

Now, if you see yourself as a member of a human species with a continuity and meaning in the universe, then you don't have any real fear. You may have a sense of physical fear, but no fear in the sense of a threat to your identity, because you know you're doing the right thing. And you know that your doing the right thing is necessary. And therefore, you don't have Hamlet's fear. You see, most people would rather die than face that kind of fear. Hamlet preferred to die rather than facing his fear of immortality. This is like flight-forward in battle; it's a common problem.

Imagine: You have all these Chickenhawks, including the fellow who actually did have military service, but who was, nonetheless, a Chickenhawk. He learned to fly for the Air Force, and he's still flying, without a plane. And he's not Superman. But these Chickenhawks are in flight-forward. The President is a Chickenhawk, in that sense: He's in flight-forward. He's a coward. Most of these guys ducked military service, during the 1960s, during the Vietnam War. Or, like the President himself, ducked overseas service, by going to a no-count National Guard unit in Texas, where he never got overseas. He was protected. he wouldn't be exposed to risk.

So the problem is, these guys, who have no conception of immortality, are all eager to fly everybody into Iraq, to fight a war, a clash of civilizations war. If you understand their minds, they're in flight-forward, which you have two types in combat--you have two types of people who are incapacitated by their fear: One sits in a foxhole and waits for the enemy to drop a hand-grenade in on them to end their misery. They're just huddling in the foxhole, hoping they're not seen, and somebody drops a hand-grenade in on them. That's the end of their career. The other one is like Audie Murphy, who won the Medal of Honor out of being scared. He just was so scared, he took his weapon and charged a machine-gun nest. And he got by with it. And often, many heroes, or so-called heroes, who win these awards, are people who did something quite similar. They were frightened, and they charged. And this is called “flight-forward.” The two kinds of cowardice: Flight-foward--”Let me get it over with. They're gonna kill me. I can't stand it. Let's get it over with. I'M GOING OUT THERE NOW!” Or, “I'm going to stay down here in this hole. I hope nobody--[whimpers].” So, you've got these two types.

And so, in life, whereas the soldier conquers that fear in military service, by saying, “Okay, my life's on the line. And I'm going to do the right thing, because I may lose my life, but I'm not going to waste it.” And the way you deal with fear, in a sense, starts at that level. We know we're all at risk. It's a world at risk--at risk from disease, at risk from the way people drive these days, especially women in their mid-30s around this area. Especially if they drive SUVs. You see a woman with a glint in her eye behind the wheel of an SUV, coming up behind you, tailgating you, you know you got one of 'em. Get outa there! She's crazy. She is really in flight-forward. She's got that baby in the back, and she wants to kill herself and that too--the only way she can stop the kid from screaming. Now, you've got this phenomenon, right?

So, my concern in dealing with these kinds of problems, which I know exist among all the people I'm dealing with, is exactly that: You have to have a clear sense of your personal identity in the human process. You're going to make a difference for all humanity, and it's the best thing you could do with your life. As the New Testament puts it: You have one “talent,” called mortal life. Spend it wisely. Don't spend it for the wrong thing. Risk it wisely--only for things that are worth risking it for. And that is for the meaning of your life in the skein of all humanity; that your life must mean something. Something good. Therefore, don't risk it for anything that isn't purposeful.

Sometimes, in the course of life, as in the soldier, in battle, as in World War II, the soldier does not have an overview of the total battle, the total war, but the soldier proceeds on the basis of confidence in the commander and the nation. Number one--which they don't have in the case of the Iraq war--that the war is just. That it's necessary and just. Therefore, their life is being risked for a cause that is necessary and just. Therefore, if they go down in war, their family and the people they leave behind, will have been well served. They say, “If I'm going to spend that life of mine, I'm going to spend it wisely. If they're gonna take me down, they're gonna have to take me down. But I'm gonna do it the right way.”

So, that's the case of the soldier: confidence in leaders, confidence in institutions--which most people in the United States do not have today, in the existing institutions and the existing leaders. Which most of the world does not have in the leadership of the United States today, as demonstrated by over 100 million people, known to be demonstrating in the past weekend on the question of the Iraq war, including 1 million, approximately, in Berlin; probably 3 million in Rome, and so forth and so on. The people in the United States do not want this war. On top of it, they have no confidence in the President of the United States, no confidence in the leadership of the United States today. No confidence in the Democratic Party leadership. And justly so. One reason for not going to war, is that we in the United States have no legitimate confidence in our leaders. And therefore, for that reason alone, we can't trust them. Because the average citizen can risk his life willingly only if he can trust the institutions which he's serving. Otherwise, without that trust, there's no justification for the war.

For those of us who are in leading positions, or doing as you are doing: as assuming, in a sense, leading positions among the people with whom you're working, you have to have a higher standard of a sense of security in your mission. It's not enough to have confidence in what we're doing, as such, as a soldier in battle would have. You must have some understanding of the strategic implications of the why, and so forth, of the war that you're fighting.

The source of strength to deal with these fears is in part that, but also, it's--the strength comes from a sense of joy in the process of development you're undergoing during this process. You feel good about yourself, because what you're doing, in terms of your own development and the development of people around you, is, in itself, intrinsically worthwhile. Therefore, that gives you the added strength: “Well, what I'm doing is worthwhile. I know, and I have confidence that what we're doing as a mission, is worthwhile. But I also, from day to day, from just the work I'm doing day to day. When I get discouraged in the course of the day, meeting one idiot after another, I meet two guys from yesterday, who say, ‘Hey, you were right. What do you want us to do?'|” And that makes it all worth while.

So, the only way to deal with fear is to be fully conscious of it. And to think about what the implications are. To think what flight-forward, what foxhole mentality is, eh? To think of the soldier, who goes out to a war that the soldier thinks is justified, a war led by a president, a nation, in which the soldier has confidence. Has confidence that the nation will take care of his or her family, in case something happens to them. And he says, “Okay. It's a justified war. I believe in it. I trust my leaders. I risk my life. I don't go crazy. I sit here knowing this is the case. I take no unnecessary risks, but I do my job.”

Otherwise, for us, we're taking leading positions, in the sense of telling other people what they should do, requires a higher standard of a sense of responsibility. We are now assuming responsibility for their lives, simply by telling them what they should be doing. Therefore, we have to develop ourselves to be certain that we're doing the right thing. We have to have the kind of organization, and discussion among ourselves, which assures us that we have adequately reflected upon what we're doing, and we know we're doing the right thing. Getting knowledge, spreading knowledge. And that's the way we're going to deal with it. [applause]

Question: Okay, Lyn. So you said something--you've said it before a couple of times, which is paradoxical to me, a big surprise. So given that you've had, in the past, many revolutionaries have been artists, musicians, poets and whatnot, and they saw that as the efficient way to uplift and bring about change in society, in what they saw as the problem--so the paradox is that, you have talked before, about how, when you were younger, you had a passion yourself for being a poet. And you were, I guess, developing and writing poetry, but you said that no audience existed for you to be a poet. So I was wondering, could you elaborate on that? Were there audiences for others who had become poets and whatnot, or what was the problem you were facing?

LaRouche: Well, there was no one that was writing any poetry that was worthwhile. There was no audience for any worthwhile kinds of poetry. And in terms of what was taught, in terms of Classical poetry, those who were teaching it didn't know what what they were talking about. I had this Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity as a reference point, that I dealt with in late '46, early '47, and I didn't agree with Empson entirely, but he posed the problem in an interesting way, and a very competent way. He was one of the leading figures in England at that time in this area of the English language and its implications.

No, the policy was, in that period, you had a real lockstep, fascist march for existentialism in poetry. I did poetry but, no, this was banned--this was Classical poetry. There's no room for it. Nobody wanted it. People say it's great poetry, but it's Classical, and that doesn't go today. And you should see what was coming out, the so-called existentialist poetry, sort of Hip-Hop I, hmm? That kind of stuff. So, there was no market for it.

That didn't mean I gave up poetry. I had to stop writing so much of it, in 1953, I just stopped. In a sense, it was my last time I really seriously took that up. But my purpose was never poetry, as such. My purpose was a sense of life, which impelled me to go into many directions, which I thought were directions I should master. I had no idea of a single profession. During the period I was taking on things like Kant, which I was taking on from the 1930s when I was a teenager, trying to get this guy out of the way. And I was just doing it for myself: I had to be sure that I had the answer to what was wrong with Kant, and everything he represented. I did it.

So, I did a lot of other things. I just found myself doing things. My ordinary life was just being myself. I had no real sense of a mission, in a sense. I had work, I had things I would do, but no, I had no sense of my political leadership mission at that point. The first time I got it was I was in military service, and some of the soldiers began to come around me. Here I was, an acting non-com, training, overseas in various functions, and people began to ask me my opinion about the world, and how should I think about the world. And I found myself in leading positions. I found myself in '46 in Calcutta in a leading position, among GIs and otherwise. I made certain commitments at the time, because they were moral commitments.

At first, I tried to get Eisenhower to run for President, and he wrote me a nice letter saying why he wouldn't--at that time, back when he was thinking of running as a Democrat. I wanted to get rid of Truman, eh? And he said, nicely, no. Then things began to get really rough. And the only people who were left, were people who were leftists. Those few who would fight this crazy Trumanism, this crazy McCarthyism. So I got into a leading position in that. Eisenhower ended that career of mine. He ended my left-wing career for the time being, because we'd won the fight. Eisenhower had suppressed McCarthy, and had beaten Truman. And so, there was no fight, and the whole left was not worth dealing with. They were only useful for one thing: as cannon-fodder to try to stop Trumanism and McCarthyism. The rest of it--not worth anything. They were intellectually bankrupt. The whole left in the United States was always intellectually bankrupt. And the European left was not much better.

And then I went on to a management consulting career, which was natural to me: I was already in and out of it. But I was basically being myself, making a living at things which were agreeable to me, for me to do, which I enjoyed doing.  I always enjoyed doing work. But then,  in 1963, when I realized what was happening, I realized where we were going, where the economy was going. I saw the Kennedy assassination after the Missile Crisis of 1962. I saw this whole bunch of young people going crazy, plunging into the counterculture, becoming psychotics, among the Baby Boomer generation. I knew I had to do something. So I'd flounder around trying to find something to do to intervene politically in the situation.

In 1966, I had the opportunity to start teaching in various campus locations, and I did. Since they were all interested in Marxism, I taught a course on Marxist economics. I wasn't preaching Marx, I was preaching me! But they were all interested in Marxism, so I was explaining what is valid in Marx, and what is not valid in Marx. As a result of this, and my forecasting and so forth, I became a celebrity in '71, and then the government decided to kill me. [laughter] They said, “Well, we'll get rid of him; in '73, they said, if we get rid of him, the whole movement around him will collapse, and it'll be finished. He's the only danger. Let's kill him.” So they got the Communist Party, organized by them, to kill me--or, actually, the Communist Party, which was run by the FBI, to do it. The way things work.

And so, it just went on like that. And we've been targetted, I've been targetted with operations, always by these agencies, for the past years. Since 1985, I've been targetted by Marc Rich's operation. Our associates have been targetted by Marc Rich's operation. It's a multi-billion dollar operation; it's the biggest organized criminal operation in the world today. This is the thing that owns John McCain, the thing that owns Joe Lieberman, Al Gore, and so forth and so on.

So, I've just been on my mission. My mission is, I'm a citizen. I'm concerned about something. I respond to something, in terms of what I think I should do in response to a situation, because I'm concerned about society.

So I find roles have been handed to me. Once I got into this role, especially since '71 on, I've been there ever since. And I keep doing it, because that's what I should be doing. So I didn't set out to make a career in anything. I just reacted as an individual to my circumstances, and used what I knew at each phase to try to carry out the mission that was thrown at me, as I do now. I have no ambition to be President. I just know I have to be, because there's nobody else who's qualified for the job, under the present circumstances. It's that simple. And, it's needed, not just for the United States; it's needed for the world, because I know what the problems of the world are. It's that simple. I just react as an individual to what the world tells me I should be doing at this time. [applause]

Question: Hi. Yesterday, you were talking about connecting pain and pleasure to paradox and hypothesis. And that made me think of St. Augustine's Confessions where he said most people sort of get a glimpse of the higher joy, and it scares the Hell out of them, and they settle for lesser things. And I thought, at that point, he meant, just, popular opinion is what scared you, because that naturally brings you up against it. But now, since you've been talking about fear of immortality so much, I'm thinking maybe that's closer to what he meant. Are you trying to, in a sense, lift us out of this usual pleasure/pain thing we're in?

LaRouche: Augustine is merely one of us, hmm? He's only one of us. He's not some separate movement. He became a movement because of the circumstances under which he worked. Augustinus was, essentially, a Platonic Christian. He had the influence of, in Rome, the Greek Classic, which had not died out entirely at that time. Christianity was essentially Platonic, into that century. And he was part of that movement which was based in Italy, because the Roman Emperor in the East was evil. He was of the Pontifex Maximus system, and his argument, Augustinus's argument is essentially that of a Platonic Christian. And he obviously was dealing with the same kinds of matters that I deal with from a Platonic standpoint: the question of immortality; the question of simultaneity of eternity; the question of the fact that you have an immortal place in the universe, even though you are a mortal-existing individual. And you deal with that. You do nothing shameful from the standpoint of immortality. You do nothing shameful, either by negligence, or by commission. And you go on living.

And the fear is exactly that: The fear is, the littleness--if you want to be little, if you want to cuddle up, and snuggle up, and be like a child, and be cared for: "Mommy, don't let them hurt me," eh?--then, that fear will make a Hamlet of you all. But once you have a sense that you have a mission in life, not one that you choose, like an application for a job, but a mission in life that is handed to you by the combination of circumstances and who you are at that place at that time. Then you say, okay, I live that life. This is my talent. I'm going to spend it wisely for something I think is worthwhile spending it for, that I need not be ashamed, before all humanity, and all future humanity, for what I'm doing. I need not be ashamed in the eyes of my ancestors, or those who come after me. So therefore, I'm going to do this good thing. Period. At whatever risk, like Jeanne d'Arc, who was only a farm girl, but inspired, who changed history, simply in that way. Something was handed to her, the idea of a mission. She went out to carry out the mission. Stuck to it, and changed the course of history for the better. It's the best you get in this life. And of course, the frying part, the being cooked alive, is not exactly a good part. But nonetheless, in the sum total of things, you'd rather be cooked alive, than be Henry Kissinger! [laughter]

So, it is; you're right. That's exactly what the point is.

Question: Okay, Lyn, I was very happy with what you said earlier, starting off on this question of the Pythagorean comma. From the cadre school in Lancaster [Pa.], you said, that's what you've got to know. That was a good start, for me.

My question that that and other things have sparked, in my mind--also Helga addressed this question of Classical art versus Romanticism--I've been studying and thinking about the mind of Bach, and the question of his mind and his compositions, and how we actually create the preconditions for a new school of Classical music--what you've already begun saying on this Florentine bel canto. But I'm also thinking in terms of what Bach did, which--it is singing, as we know--it's what Kepler did. Also this idea that you said before, somewhere in the next 50 years, we need to actually have somebody who is at least on the verge of being able to compose. Hopefully, 50 years. Maybe it might be longer than 50 years. All the debates that I always get into now, everything--I mean, we're talking Iraq--get back to music and culture, and I think others would agree that that's the biggest axiom to smash with people, in terms of their identity.

So, I've been studying the riddles that Bach has in his--with his Royal Theme, and solved a couple of those, and in terms of not looking at the back of the book at the answers, and actually going through the process of solving those, I'm getting a sense of, more than I ever thought, of the brilliance of Bach. Now, the question I have though, is, what is the figured bass? Because this is throughout the Musical Offering, and I know Mozart has written a book on this, and my assumption, in discussions with Fred Haight on music, there must be something, something about this bass voice, has some other element, besides what we think of as the melody and the harmony, from the violin, or the soprano voice, that also adds to a lawful spontaneity. And I'm wondering if this has some addition--I'm thinking from the standpoint of how to compose; how you actually create a way to think about how somebody composes, a Bach, in particular.

LaRouche: Well, I think that figured bass, the way it's sometimes taught, is made into a kind of fetish. To me, I would say, there's something very obvious about it.

The other thing you have to look at, is, you have to look at the mind of Bach. Now Bach was a very religious figure, and you take things like the various stages of composition of updating of the St. John Passion, and the St. Matthew Passion, which are sort of the second-half of his composing career, and look at what is the mission-orientation of Bach, in major compositions, as distinct from those kinds of compositions which are essentially exercises like the Preludes and Fugues, which are very much polished works, very concentrated works, but these do not, in and of themselves, tell you exactly what's going on in himself, to drive him to what he does.

If you look at the St. John Passion, especially the St. Matthew Passion, and you think about what these works are, as typical of Bach. And you see that also in a lot of the Motets, and so forth. But you see what this tells you about Bach, about Bach's mind. Bach is essentially a religious figure. His function is to take a theme, like the subject-matter of the St. Matthew Passion, which is the central theme of all Christianity, and produce in it, a type of work, which you encounter again, in a somewhat higher form, in the late String Quartets of Beethoven, the Opus 31, the Opus 131, 132, in particular, hmm? Or in other works of that period. This is a new form of composition, relative to what the quartet had been up to that point. It's a revolution in music, not entirely coming as a surprise--or the Missa Solemnis also contains the same elements. I have not heard a performance of the Missa Solemnis by any conductor, which satisfies me as being consistent with Beethoven's intent. And the reasons for that difficulty lies essentially in what you see also in the Late Quartets of Beethoven. These are a new type of composition, but they hark back, in many ways, to what you see the the St. Matthew Passion and similar works by Bach.

And so, the general idea, the purpose of music, is never lost, in this sense. What's the purpose?

The question is the question of immortality. In Christianity, the question of immortality centers on the figure of Christ. It centers on the Passion and Crucifixion, essentially--not the Resurrection as much, but the Passion and Crucifixion, because not many people have been resurrected lately. So therefore, this is not a common, sensuous experience. But the Passion and the Crucifixion, themselves, are within the scope of the sensuous capability of the average human being.

Now you have a setting: You have a church; you're coming into the Easter service time; you have a congregation, a singing congregation, in this church. You have a chorus, a voice chorus; you have singers who are part of a choral group, and soloists. You have an orchestra, and you have a congregation. They're all participating in a great artistic work which is being performed for each, in the imagination. It is not heard sound. It is a performance in the imagination. In this performance, what is seen and what is felt, is the process from the Passion through the Crucifixion, and beyond the Crucifixion. The audience relives that experience. That experience, not Biblical text, is the identity of Christianity, in the minds of that audience.

The mission of Bach, is to be able to do that. To take an audience, a congregation, and musicians, and to put them through an experience of reenacting and reliving the experience of the Passion, the betrayal, and the Crucifixion of Christ, as a living event, in the domain of the imagination of an audience, which is participating in the act of the imagination. That is what Bach does. How does Bach integrate the musicians, the congregation, the boys' chorus, the adult chorus, the soloists -- integrate them into one unifying experience, without flaw, so nothing disturbs the effect which is aimed at? The secret of Bach's music, is he does that. And the method of well-tempered counterpoint, which he develops to this end, is precisely that. Bach teaches the organ to sing. Bach teaches the violin to sing, with a human voice, bel canto. He teaches all kinds of ensembles of instruments to sing, in a way which is consistent with the achievements intended by the St. John Passion, and by the St. Matthew Passion, performed in that way. That is what the driver is. It is not trying to find a technique, a musical technique. It is trying to perform a mission and developing the technique which that mission requires.

Like building a bridge: You don't build a bridge to perfect the art of engineering. You develop the art of engineering to be able to build the bridge. And that's what Bach is.

So the ground [figured] bass comes in as a perfectly natural part of this whole process from the history of music, in the terms of the changes which are directed. And you get the inverted pedal-point, which is a nice little experience that Bach uses occasionally, that gets you into understanding what it's all about. So actually, beyond Bach, what was the ground bass, or the figured bass, actually evolves, and takes on new forms in later forms of composition. So it's there, the principle is there, but look at it only as a part of this process of the imagination. And look at it from the standpoint, always of this neighboring key relationship in the process of composition and counterpoint. Bach carries it beyond that--but don't make a fetish of it. It's there, it's a part of the history of the development of the methods of composition and performance of music.

It involves a principle which is never really abandoned in the Classical composition, but it sort of vanishes into a new form, a higher form of evolution, as in, for example, look at this relationship: Take the progress from Bach's work, and Bach's conception, which is never betrayed by any of his followers, of Classical composition; then look at things like the late works of Beethoven, look at the Late Quartets, and look at the Missa Solemnis, and look at these things from that standpoint. Look at Beethoven's earlier Mass, which he writes a letter, and says, "I am Beethoven. I've written this thing. My reason, my motives are my own." Beethoven is a very religious figure; very deep religious believer. The Missa Solemnis expresses that. The Late Quartets express that. And to understand the Late Quartets, it's very easy to understand them, in a sense--in one sense, difficult--but very easy, from another standpoint, as an audience. Think of Bach. Think of Bach's major religious works. Think of the Late Quartets as a new emergence of something from Bach which Beethoven has carried forward and brought forth in a new form. Look at the Missa Solemnis in this context. Look at the failures of conductors and orchestras and choruses to perform the Missa Solemnis. Not because it's so musically challenging--it is--but, because it is theologically challenging. And the theology of the conductor stinks, and that's why he can't do a good job with the music.

Question: Hi, Lyn. I don't really know how to say this question--I'm still thinking about it in my head. I was reading in The Science of Christian Economy on how you were saying the oligarchy--people like Russell, or the environmental movement--how they organize people by pushing emotional buttons, like "Well, don't you like clean water," and things like this. And sometimes, in the field, when you do a good job, and you're like, okay, well, how can I replicate this? Because you were saying the Socratic methods was scientific. Then sometimes, it's just like, well, did I just push a lot of emotional buttons, and tell people that the kids are starving in Africa, or--. How do you actually replicate having a good organizing day, and know that you've used the scientific methods, and not the same method as the oligarchy?

LaRouche: Well, the first thing you do, usually, when you start any performance, musical composition, or otherwise, your attack on the first tone is crucial. It does not determine where you go, because if somebody attacks the first effort at conversation, and they may succeed in getting attention, but they lose it afterward, where do you go from there?

So, as in any good composition, the first thing you do, is you get attention, get the person's attention by the attack. Now, do you lead them into the domain of the imagination, or don't you? The domain of the imagination is: You're coming up along the street on this guy, you know, or someplace else, and you say these magic words to the guy. And the guy turns around: "Nya, nya, nya. Waddaya want?" Now, if you give him a simple, straightforward answer, you may succeed, or you may not. But generally, if you tell him something which does not surprise him, it may end right there. He may take a piece of literature, read it, be interested, and talk to you about it in a later encounter. But it didn't work, otherwise. You didn't get an immediate response. Well, sometimes you're not going to get an immediate response, in any case. It doesn't make any difference. You're doing your job. You're impacting the population as a whole, which is what you intend to do. But also, you have to impact some individuals in an individual way, as a percentile of all your impacts.

So, the question is: Are you getting them into the domain of the imagination?

What's the domain of the imagination? They think you're going to say something. They've anticipated a whole list of things they think--. "I know what you're gonna say. What you're gonna say is this. Or you're gonna say this."

"I wasn't going to say any of those things to you. What I was going to say was--."

That's how it works isn't it? Because what you do, is you show insight into the population, and into the person who's coming up. And you've got to--you get an indication of someone who's approaching, you get a smell of what's going on there. You get a sense of a reaction, a body-language reaction, or something of that sort. Or you see the newspaper he's got under his arm, or something of that sort. So you've got an idea of what's on his mind, from what's happened in the world that day, from other things, from conditions. Therefore, you say, well, what he's thinking about is this. What he's not thinking about--which is more important to him than what he's thinking about--is the following. And now you've got music!

"You were worried about the economy? You think it's gonna recover? Do you know that leading bankers don't believe it's ever gonna recover? Do you know what the solution is?" For example, just an example.

But the way you're effective is: When you're thinking about not thinking at the person you're addressing, but thinking about the state of mind of the population, the members of the population, and reading the signs of the person you're encountering. Or, if you're really smart, and you've got a team of four or five people out there deployed along a sidewalk, and you've got a chance to qualify and size these guys up as they go through the barricades you've set up there, so to speak. And so, maybe the second or third person in the line will catch on to the psychology of the guy you're encountering, and will be smart enough to know what to say to get the guy involved in a serious mental exchange.

"What'd you say? What'd you say? Well, maybe you're right. I dunno."

And that's the way it works, isn't it?

So the point is, is being alert. You have to be conscious of the mind of the person you're dealing with, you have to read the signs of the population that day, figure out what's on their minds; don't use a trite, obvious answer, say something which is not simply a trite thing they expect; because if you're saying what they already expect, what use are you to them? You're no use to them. If you present them, however, an idea that they didn't have, which is relevant to what's bothering them, then you have performed a useful act, for them. Now they're interested in what other kinds of useful acts or ideas you might also be a repository of. So the trick here is to be alert, to be artistic.

Be like Furtwaengler: Always catch the performers by surprise, and then, you'll catch the audience by surprise, and then the performance will be successful. [applause]

Question: [starts mid-sentence] ...mathematics was a way of communicating ideas. I mean it's a language, and the first of the three questions is: How do you actually see the mathematics, the way Gauss used it, in a poetic way, in a way of communicating ideas, as opposed to getting caught up in the particulars, which is generally in terms of the approach, what a lot of us are having trouble with?

Similar to that, on the question of music, because it's also very difficult, when you're talking about music, to define an approach to discover the ideas, as Furtwaengler did, as opposed to just becoming familiar with the notes, and relationships among notes, and all the particulars.

And then, my final, concluding question: Obviously, in our society, most of the things that people experience when growing up, has generally a tendency to either completely blunt the emotional development of the individual, or to develop the superficial type of emotions. And often, it takes what could be a very difficult crisis for any kind of real, deep emotions to be able to come forth, in the sense that a crisis, where -- it's like a storm that came, seems to just shake your foundation. My question is, the irony is that, when someone goes through that kind of a crisis; similarly, when someone is engaging in things that they find profound and exciting, very often, that same kind of emotion, can be called forth. Right? That is, where before it may have been defined by fear, anxiety, in this case, when working through something, it becomes a type of elation, but something that has an overwhelming quality to it.

And my question is, why is that the case, that what first was experienced by something in the terrible, would later, all of a sudden, appear once again, also in a very powerful form, and something you find beautiful and profound? And, can you actually sustain that and use that as a form of motivation, or impulse in the political and intellectual work, as a driving force?

LaRouche: That's the same question in three parts. It's the same question. Now, in the case of the first, the answer is obvious. The problem comes when you try to think algebraically, or arithmetically, about the Gauss problem. That's a mistake. Think about it. That's why I insisted upon using the Archytas. Think about it in terms of construction. The solution does not lie algebraically; it lies in construction. And there are a lot of problems involved in that, including the question of the tendency to think in terms of simple Euclidian plane geometry. That's another problem, eh?

All right, now: the same thing in music. The minute you find yourself trying to identify a composition in terms of the succession of notes, you're in trouble. Stop, and go back. Never try to memorize the notes. Find a--define the concept; define, first of all, a set of thematic concepts, and forget the notes for a moment. Think of the interval, think of the modalities that you're dealing with. What modality are you in? And what modalities are you going through? So now, you think of the composition as a process of development of modalities, in a simple way, then you go to your contrapuntal conception--the same thing. So the way you think--if you try to simplify, and say, I'm going to solve this problem arithmetically, and you're trying to understand a musical composition in terms of a succession of notes, you're missing the essential thing. You're missing the reality of the problem, because the solution is in construction.

See, the point is: What did Gauss do in the 1799 paper? What Gauss did, essentially, was to, number one, was simply to replicate the Classical solution, starting with the line and the doubling of the square--the Classical solution to the Delian problem--by construction! Not algebraically. By construction. Now, he then turned around and converted that, what that meant, algebraically, and said, wait a minute, this act of construction, which solves the problem, is an action outside the Cartesian manifold, or the Euclidian manifold. But you can define it in terms of spherical action, which is what the method of Pythagoras and Archytas was.

Now, if you define it in terms of spherical action, it comes out as rotation. Rotation where? Rotation of the action! Not rotation of the line; rotation of the action, as a power. So now the whole thing is comprehensible. The complex domain has no mystery for you at that point. Whereas, if you're trying to figure out the arithmetic solution, you get tied up with the kind of thing of being trapped into what many people are trapped into: is the Lagrange or Cauchy conception of this problem, eh?

And the music, the same thing: In music, you have to think of action. In music, everything is action. Now, what is the complex domain of musical composition? It involves modalities; it involves a change in modality. Without change, there's nothing. Without change, there's Rameau, eh? Rameau is the baby who was never changed; that's why his music stinks! [laughter] Rameau is the composer of curry sausage; you just slice it off, whenever you want to end it. There's no development! Really. And so the essence of music is a developmental process, and the developmental process can only be interpreted as a coherent process, in terms of counterpoint.

So therefore, you have to think about the contrapuntal development; you've got to find a unit of contrapuntal development--as the idea. That's why the Bach Preludes and Fugues are so significant for people, particularly, from the First Book, the C-minor, the C-minor fugue, contains in germ, many of the problems which you deal with, in many of Bach's works--that first C-minor fugue, in the First Book of the Preludes and Fugues. It contains a very simple problem. You get that problem, understand that, then you can work though the thing and see how Bach deals with the whole development of that composition.

And so, therefore, you're thinking in terms of that idea, not a succession of notes. People try to think of a succession of notes that produces an effect. Then they try to interpret the notes, and produce an effect based on the interpretation of the notes. It's crazy. What's the idea?

Now, look at the basic idea: What's he start with? How does it develop? You've got the germ. Now, what is the development process to which he subjects that treatment, and how does he come to a conclusion? That is what you want as the idea. Now, if you forgot every note in the works, but just knew where you were starting from--you could reconstruct from memory what Bach did. That's musical memory. Not memory of note-by-note memory; not eidetic memory, but getting the concept; having an idea what the development is, and what end it's leading to. Once you know that, now you can replicate it. You can recompose it in your own mind, because you have the germ elements and you understand Bach's method, and you come up with this stuff. And then you go with some other exercises, and get them the same way.

So, whenever you find yourself in a trap, of trying to fall back into an arithmetic, note-by-note understanding of a composition, say "No! I refuse to do that." What's the idea; what is the basic idea? What is the germ idea that Bach introduces. All important music has that thing, from the beginning: Boom! Your attention is caught. What's the development? What is the development?

For example, take the case of the Brahms 4th Symphony. Where does it come from? It comes from the Adagio Sostenuto of the Opus 106 Sonata of Beethoven, a development passage in that, which becomes the basis which Brahms adopts as the idea from which he generates the 4th Symphony, the entirety of it. And if you follow it through, and look at Beethoven's 7th Symphony, and look at what Brahms does, compared with his knowledge of what Beethoven did with the 7th Symphony, then you've got a very interesting thing, and the whole thing becomes comprehensible. It falls into place. So that's the point.

Now, on the question of emotion: The most powerful emotion, the most convincing one, is the sense of truth. Now it doesn't mean a sense of truth about the universe, entirely. But it means a very powerful sense of truth about something. And when you get an idea of truth per se, and this is the most powerful kind of experience you can have in the ordinary course of thinking. A sense of an insight into a principle of truth per se. It may not be original to anybody but you, I mean, other people may have discovered it beforehand, but you have rediscovered it; you have experienced the act of, suddenly: "AH!" You were taken by surprise by recognizing something. An idea. It's an idea which has generic characteristics to it, not just an idea: It's not just one--but, it has generic aspects. It changes the way you're thinking about a lot of things: "Ah! Same thing."

Your question, you see: The three parts are all the same. The first, the question of the Gauss, one thing: the question of principle. How do you think about the problem? Not what do you think about the problem. How do you think about it? Second, music: How do you think about the problem? Third: How do you think about problems, in general? What is the most important kinds of reactions you get to your own thinking about problems, where you think you've discovered something, or a solution has discovered you! That's what the interesting thing is, in what you're describing. The case in which you didn't discover the solution, but the way you experienced it, you feel the solution discovered you. [applause]

Question: Hi, Lyn. I've hated popular opinion my whole life, and I've always known it stunk. And it was from looking at the behavior of my parents, my parents' friends, looking at the effects of my teachers' dishonesty on young minds. And I think the reason I always knew popular opinion stunk, was because I knew truth through a method of observing social relations, and then, based on studying the geometry of social relations, hypothesizing about what's going on in certain individuals' minds. Or, in the mind of society in general. Or, by reflecting back on the geometry of certain social situations, and then, altering the geometry of that social situation in my mind, and then from that, hypothesizing about what's going on in certain of these individuals' minds, or the human mind generally.

And, I'm working on how Gauss determined the orbit of Ceres, and Guass's fundamental theorem, and I'm kind of having trouble with really getting at the meaning of this. For me, in constructing these geometries, the idea in my mind is like, "so what?" And I'm having some problems with it, because, I mean, I guess the way I look at this is: Isn't the purpose of us studying the Gauss, and working through these geometries, is to be able to apply this scientific method to society as a whole, to change the curvature of social relations between human beings. So, if you could talk about the relationship between--I have no background in math or science, either, so, if you could talk about the relationship between the math and science, the Gauss work that you've set forth as the curriculum for the Youth Movement, and then, how this applies to, specifically, to the method of looking at social relations.

LaRouche: Let's take it the other way around; let's reverse the question. And the answer becomes, again, reversed, which is where it lies. The problem is, how do you communicate a discovery of principle to other people, as a principle in physical science? How do you communicate that? What you have to try to do, is communicate your act of discovering the solution to another person, eh? Now, let's reverse it: How do they communicate that to you? And what is the problem--?

See, you may have a problem with this Ceres business, and so forth, and the fundamental theorem, in the fact that you have not defined a context with sufficient rigor, in order to pose to yourself the questions you should pose to yourself. The way to approach it--and I've been wrestling with this, from a pedagogical standpoint--I've been talking to Bruce and others about this problem of pedagogy, of making clear the construction, the principle of construction involved in the solution of the Delian problem. Because that's the crux of it. And to get the idea of the geometrical action.

Now, what your problem will probably be, as for most people, which is what I've been worried about in these attempts on pedagogy, is that the geometry: to see how the mind of Archytas actually had an insight into the two means. Because once you see that, the solution then becomes obvious. And therefore, that is the problem there. In the question of the Ceres orbit, Jonathan and Bruce went through this, I think, very well. And Jonathan had a very clear view of what the problem was of the mathematician--those who had not solved the problem, as contrasted to the way Gauss solved it. It's the same kind of thing. How did Gauss recognize, from these three sets of observations that he chose, what the orbit was?

Now there's a little element, which is not always emphasized in this connection--is to assume that Gauss found the solution de novo. He did not find the solution de novo. He found the solution by recognizing that this was a reflection of something Kepler had already discovered. See, Kepler had already defined the orbital characteristics of the missing planet between Mars and Jupiter. Gauss was aware of this work of Kepler. This was something his teacher, Kaestner, was very much involved in. Therefore, Gauss was able to have an insight, which is what's left out of the report by Jonathan and Bruce: Gauss already had an insight into the solution to this problem. Therefore, he was, by this insight, and by his knowledge of this problem from the standpoint of the treatment of the question of the complex domain, Gauss was able to recognize that what Kepler had said, as in this setting of this evidence, corresponded to a problem respecting the complex domain. And therefore, this involved the problem of elliptical functions, the way Kepler had relegated the question of elliptical functions to future generations, or future mathematicians. And Gauss was one of the future mathematicians, who responded to that problem of the elliptic functions.

Remember: A lot of Gauss's work, as a mathematician during that whole period, was on elliptic functions. And Gauss was the one who did a lot of work, together with a few others, on this question of elliptic functions, which is a very important phase in mathematics.

So, I think the problem you will have in this, is to look at this from that standpoint, and say: Have you, and have those with whom you discuss this, actually adequately defined the conceptual problem, into which Gauss had an insight. And my question is, which is always a question with this report that Bruce and Jonathan produced, that without taking into account Gauss's knowledge of what Kepler had done, in posing the orbit of the missing planet: Would Gauss have recognized, as quickly as he did (though, there was a tremendous amount of work in that; it was not that quickly, actually), but would he have recognized it immediately, in the sense that he did, what the solution was? I say, if you take the question of the elliptic functions, the work of Kepler, Gauss's knowledge of this work, Gauss's own work in defining the issue of Euler and Lagrange and so forth, this comes together, and suggests, implies, the way in which to approach the problem of the asteroid question, on Ceres.

So, I think, without that, perhaps, it's more difficult to find a--. If you're a mathematician; if you work it through as Jonathan did, you can come more quickly to a recognition. But you have to think about the person, or the student, who is not as versed in mathematics on this thing; does not have implicitly that knowledge lurking in the back of their mind, that perhaps that precondition for solving the problem, has to be brought into consideration beforehand.

On the other hand, as I said earlier on the other question, the question is clarity of insight into what Archytas' actual solution was, in terms of the geometric construction. And I just simply suggested to Jonathan to try to get animations which would help people to see more clearly the successive stages that Archytas went through in divining this solution. So the question here often is an adequate statement of the problem being lacking, i.e., a student who does not have the necessary background may not recognize the way in which to find the solution. And I've suggested in the first case, that a more adequate identification of the construction by Archytas is crucial; and in the second case, I think that one has to look at this thing from the standpoint of what Kepler had already written about the orbit of the missing planet, as something in the mind of Gauss, and also, the question of elliptic functions--the question that Gauss had already left, together with the idea of the differential calculus, had left to future generations.

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