Yevgeny Vuchetich, sculptor of the 1959 gift to the UN from the Soviet Union of a bronze statue “promoting the slogan Let Us Beat Swords Into Plowshares”. (Wikipedia). A rare instance of that organization quoting the Bible. (Isaiah 2:4).
Environmental citizens have a lot to think about. Being an environmentalist means allowing what’s happening in the environment around you to become part of your internal world. As Katha Pollitt and others have said, all politics is personal. Each of us makes a personal decision about what we can focus on. The issues we don’t choose to think about often remain unresolved.
Amongst all the problems we have, the nuclear threat continues to loom unnecessarily large, destabilizing our sense of who we are and what we can be. It festers at the periphery of consciousness, poisoning our hopes for the future and making humanity’s aspirations seem ridiculous. Normally, we don’t have the time to focus on it. But the movie Oppenheimer provides an opportunity, as attention is drawn, to move our thinking to a more constructive place.
In 1962, Herman Kahn wrote Thinking About the Unthinkable, about his work as a pioneer in the field of nuclear military strategy. The concept of unthinkability was meant to refer to the horror of nuclear war. But it can also represent the idea that nuclear policy has been a matter reserved for certain experts, not the general public. It implies we ordinary members of the human race, though all affected personally by this matter, cannot be trusted to think about it correctly. To replace it we ask military specialists and game theorists to take over. This was not something the public ever chose, but something we find ourselves having inherited.
Amongst all the problems we have, the nuclear threat continues to loom unnecessarily large, destabilizing our sense of who we are and what we can be. It festers at the periphery of consciousness, poisoning our hopes for the future and making humanity’s aspirations seem ridiculous. Normally, we don’t have the time to focus on it. But the movie Oppenheimer provides an opportunity, as attention is drawn, to move our thinking to a more constructive place.
In 1962, Herman Kahn wrote Thinking About the Unthinkable, about his work as a pioneer in the field of nuclear military strategy. The concept of unthinkability was meant to refer to the horror of nuclear war. But it can also represent the idea that nuclear policy has been a matter reserved for certain experts, not the general public. It implies we ordinary members of the human race, though all affected personally by this matter, cannot be trusted to think about it correctly. To replace it we ask military specialists and game theorists to take over. This was not something the public ever chose, but something we find ourselves having inherited.