Four weeks from today, the Schiller Institute’s New York City Chorus will present, in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on New York City and the United States, a concert: “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—A Pathway Out of War.”
This is intended to employ the apparently “weak force” of ideas, with respect to reversing our apparently unstoppable plunging of the world into thermonuclear extinction, in an analogous way to how the “weak force” is essential to the process of thermonuclear fusion in the stars, such as our sun. Ideas, which have no weight, or apparent physical force, can move the world, and the physical forces within and beyond it.
The great astronomers, and the great statesmen-scientists, like Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, and Lyndon LaRouche, the author of the Strategic Defense Initiative, which would have rendered thermonuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete,” knew this.
The Schiller Institute NYC Chorus’ performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a contribution in pursuit of this higher diplomacy, a dialogue of civilizations presently unavailable from the “official channels” of Western governments with the rest of the world.
There is presently a level of well-earned distrust that must be overcome—but by whom? Who in the trans-Atlantic world can be trusted? That resolution must come from forces that are either outside of, or at least distinct from the West’s discredited Epstein Class.
Otherwise the very people now governed by that class, cannot reverse the direction of their governments, and we would be doomed. A different idea of the nature, purpose and direction of humanity must replace the exhausted British imperial “Darwinian” aspiration of conquest.
Yesterday, Helga Zepp-LaRouche was asked whether, given the crimes against humanity that are now afoot, she might be reconsidering her Ten Principles for A New Security and Development Architecture’s final principle. It states that, “The basic assumption for the new paradigm is, that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul, and being the most advanced geological force in the universe, which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion, and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.”
She responded, “Now, concerning the other question that the 10th principle should be revised, no, absolutely not. Because the nature of man is not due or cannot be characterized by the temporary behavior or moral decay of the present generation, but it is something which pertains to the very nature of human beings as being the only creative species on the planet. And the oligarchy in the recent period, at least in the West, has been very, very effective at dampening the creative impulse by making people banal. I mean, if you look at the entertainment of the majority of people, it is so absolutely banal, stupid, stupefying, perverse, pornographic, violent, but mainly stupid. I mean, have you traveled in a plane or in a train in the recent period, and you look at people, are they studying?”
Also, during his appearance on yesterday’s meeting of the International Peace Coalition #167, analyst Larry Johnson, a co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, described a shocking, horrifying but lawful situation regarding the unacknowledged effect of the present forever wars.
He said that “the (American) military across the board is in a mental health crisis. We’ve learned this week about at least six attempted suicides on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. I had a friend of mine, recently retired from the central command, an officer who is involved with Intelligence… he graduated from West Point… as the class president And he said, ‘Hey—this number on board the Lincoln? It’s not six. It’s probably 30, or 60; it’s way up there.’
“And he began recounting an epidemic of suicide, not just in the Navy (or) the Marine Corps. It’s in the Army, and it’s in the Air Force. And we’ve seen—we got the signs out there.” Johnson reported that in November of last year, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll sent out an order to all officers and noncommissioned officers, to check daily on all men entrusted to their care “to make sure that they were OK that they weren’t going to harm themselves.”
Similar reports have leaked regarding Israel’s IDF, which has reported hundreds of attempted suicides in that military since October 7, 2023. The American Department of Veterans Affairs, in its 2025 Annual Report on Veteran Suicide Prevention, stated that from 2001 through 2023, more than 140,000 veterans have died by suicide, and also said that every year for two decades there have been over 6,000 suicides.
“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer,” said Confucius. The “entertainment culture,” in which war itself has become a national pastime, has also become a “life-style.”
One of its main post-World War Two architects, Theodor Adorno, wrote in his book “Philosophy of Modern Music” in 1949, that, “Universal necrophilia is the last perversity of style.” While it is true that Adorno was referring to the musician Igor Stravinsky at the time that he made that statement, some of his students, like Palantir’s Alex Karp, have adapted some of his ideas for other purposes.
In an interview on Fox News in March of last Year, Karp said, “America’s ability to organize violence in a superior way is the single reason why the world improved over the last… 70-80 years.” Now, Palantir is being assured $244 million by Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg without any competitive bidding, even as it extends the universal surveillance and murder capabilities it used in Gaza to the streets of the United States.
The pathway forward is through the conception of humanity that Beethoven composed in the Ninth Symphony. Both Pope Leo XIV and Vladimir Putin have spoken about “a polyphony of nations.” The nation of China has emphasized the harmony of interests through their emphasis, in particular in recent decades, on Confucius.
The nations of Africa, Asia and Ibero America, when not addressed with racially-tinged disdain, but as creative human beings, are partners, not adversaries, for a more perfect union of humanity.
Poet Friedrich Schiller, the author of the poem “An Die Freude,” that inspired the Ninth Symphony, never wavered from the idea that the time for the most perfect work of art—the construction of true political freedom—though not always seemingly achievable in the moment, is always now. The Schiller Institute agrees. For humanity’s sake, and the sake of universal history, Now must come the Schiller-Time!!
