Historic Aims of the Schiller Institute's April 7, 2016 Manhattan Conference At a moment in history when the world is shaken by rising military tensions in many corners of the Earth; a new looming financial crisis, worse than that of 2008; an extremely upsetting refugee crisis in Europe, as the result of a series of wars in Southwest Asia based on lies; an apparently endless number of scandals pertaining to criminal aspects of the international system, such as the Panama Papers or the classified 28 pages of the 9/11 Congressional report, -it is clear that we are dealing with a civilizational crisis. It should also be evident to any thinking person, that a continuation of the present practices in all likelihood will lead to a human catastrophe, of which the two World Wars of the Twentieth Century gave a foretaste of potential things to come. In the age of thermonuclear weapons, this would very probably mean the annihilation of the human civilization. However, mankind is the only creative species known so far, and therefore has the potential to find solutions to all challenges by discovering new principles, deeper understandings of the lawfulness of our universe, and answers on a higher level of reason than the level on which the conflict arose. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz insisted in the Seventeenth Century, that man has the unique power to answer a great evil with an even greater good. If we are going to escape the present dangers, we have to reject almost all of the axioms of today's methods of thinking and popular culture. We have to replace them with a completely new paradigm, defined by the future of humanity as one, and the common aims of mankind, rather than geopolitical confrontations. We need to base this new paradigm on the optimistic image of man as limitless and perfectible, both intellectually and morally. If we think thousands and thousands of years into the future, the true identity of man will be that of genius. The Schiller Institute is conducting a series of international conferences with the aim of bringing together forces from all over the world to establish joint partnerships for development, such as are already progressing with the New Silk Road initiated by China. In collaboration with EIR, the Schiller Institute is promoting the idea that The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, as a very concrete program to overcome poverty on all continents, starting with the necessary infrastructure development as the precondition for the development of industry and agriculture. But it is also evident that this new paradigm of an economic development perspective for the whole world can only succeed if it is combined with a renaissance of Classical culture, which can inspire the necessary creativity and aesthetic transformation of the people. An absolutely essential feature of these conferences is therefore a dialogue of the high phases of the different cultures, to make people more conscious of the enormous richness of universal history and the profound beauty of our world and our universe.