“There is a tide in the affairs of men/ which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” We are now set sail on a great sea of transition, in these days leading up to January 20, and not merely as an inflection point in the United States.
True, we face annihilation, even through thermonuclear war, in the days and weeks between now and then, a danger greater than at any time in human history. True, the NATO war with Russia has escalated day by day, and not only with bombings on the battlefield: Last week, Russian representatives made it clear, according to American observers like Gilbert Doctorow, that British Intelligence is suspected in the recent Moscow assassination of Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops. True, the Palestinian people, and the world through them, suffer NATO and Netanyahu’s unabated crime of depopulation in Gaza, with the majority of children of Gaza either expecting to die, or even wishing for quicker deaths, so that the agony of their situation is not prolonged.
As terrible as these circumstances are, far more terrifying for today’s doomed ruling “elite” is the unavoidable truth that they stand, as do we, on the threshold of the annihilation of their system of oppression of mankind. Colonialism and imperialism are dead. Their international Ponzi scheme, the “post-Bretton Woods trans-Atlantic financial-monetary world order,” has run its course, and can no longer subsist without being fed by continuous planetary warfare—warfare which the people of the planet, including in Europe and the United States, don’t want. The War Party must be fought and defeated, not because they will otherwise prevail, but because we may all die with them, as their system inevitably dies, and that in the short term. That is a forecast that one need not be a prophet to make.
Often, the voice of the prophet is not one that proclaims the future, but the reality of the present.
Thankfully, if heeded, that voice can shift the tide in the affairs of men, which otherwise, might seem to pit humanity, and its chances for survival, against the inexorable current of history. “If one proposed to force existing governments to directly implement (a certain policy), the task must seem formally an impossibility. Yet, if the possibility for a rapid succession of intermediating developments is clearly understood, no such difficulty as initially appears to prevail stands in our way,” said economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche. If the present tide in the affairs of the world is taken as a whole—not nation by nation, power bloc by power bloc, or geo-political unit by geo-political unit—but as one humanity, seen from the vantage point of the astronauts whose voyages above our heads have often spoken to the best in our nature, then, the potential road ahead for the human race is clear.
“In former times, one civilization at one corner of the world could go under, and the rest of the world would only find out years later, due to the length of distances and the time needed for travel. Now, for the first time, because of nuclear weapons, pandemics, the internet, and other global effects, mankind is sitting in one boat. Therefore, a solution to the existential threat to humanity cannot be found with the help of secondary or partial arrangements, but the solution must be found on the level of that higher One, which is more powerful than the Many. It requires the thinking on the level of Coincidentia Oppositorum, the Coincidence of Opposites, of Nicholas of Cusa.” It is in our discovering and acting for “the benefit of the other” that we will find our own self-interest.
Principle Eight of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture” as well as the others, should be studied, even read aloud, as we enter the days of the Christmas season. That season of commemoration is devoted—or should once again be—to contemplation of the principle of the “higher One, which is more powerful than the Many,"—what is sometimes also called “the principle of least action.” It is by divining, discovering, inventing, and acting to secure the way forward for the human race, that the individual, in his/her lifetime, and even in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, becomes sovereign.
The struggle to triumph over oneself, and to produce a new vision for the benefit of all humanity, is not only the central subject of the December 25 holiday and mission described in the story of Christ’s birth, crucifixion and resurrection. The struggle to triumph, today, over the repetition of the stupidity that is war, war that is always “justified” by some goal that can only be achieved by the elimination of other, often innocent people, requires that we call on something is us that is beautiful, and therefore of a higher power than blinding, deadly rage. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said:
“Man can think a poem and write it…. He can think a symphony and compose it…. He can think of a great civilization and produce it. He can be a Handel moving into the highest heavens and transcribing the glad thunders and gentle sighings of the great Messiah. By his ability to reason, his power and memory, and his gift of imagination, man transcends time and space. As marvelous as are the stars, as great as is Handel’s Messiah … is the mind of the man that studies them.”
We deeply believe this to be true. This is the true meaning of self-government. And through this practice, a more perfect union, worldwide, must be the result.
