tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21056322393570905942024-03-01T18:47:40.238-08:00Winslow Myers Op-EdsWinslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-70196157213450188702024-03-01T10:56:00.000-08:002024-03-01T18:47:05.690-08:00A Great Shift<span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">Navalny’s
funeral service in Moscow was unfolding as I wrote this. Putin apparently
didn’t allow enough of a tiny crack of compassion in the shell of his peanut-sized
heart to permit Navalny’s widow Yulia and their two children to attend. What
many of us hoped for—a mass sustained pouring into the streets of Russian
citizens all over the country—doesn’t look as if it will happen either, though
many thousands did risk possible jail to gather outside the service. Yesterday Putin
gave his annual State of the Nation address and threatened to use his nuclear
arsenal if foreign troops are deployed to Ukraine.</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">In the
United States, we don’t need dictators telling us what’s what (though we
certainly have plenty of aspirants). We have our own self-imposed blinkers on
truth—what Noam Chomsky calls “manufactured consent.” We happily go along with
the presumption that our way of life will dissolve unless we keep the
military-industrial-political-journalistic-full-spectrum-dominance juggernaut
moving “forward.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">Though at
the moment the U.S. appears to be experiencing some isolationist confusion. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m</i> confused about the Ukraine war—did
NATO’s eastward expansion help cause it? What can the international community do
preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty without blowing up the world? What can be done,
even perhaps in the poor old United Nations, to prevent the next Ukraine? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are we not complicit when we send weapons to
Israel to continue the appalling Gazan slaughter and equally complicit in the
opposite way when Speaker Johnson, kissing Trump’s behind, refuses to send
weapons to Ukraine to resist the equally appalling Russian slaughter of
Ukrainian civilians?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">The
condition of international affairs as a whole remains bizarre. On the one hand,
as the decades pass since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fact that nuclear weapons
have not been used upon people since 1945 seems to reinforce establishment
thinking that deterrence works. The truth is, as Robert McNamara said, we’ve
just been astonishingly lucky. When one recalls the Cuban crisis in which he
participated, and concedes the growing complexity of present computer systems,
warheads and delivery systems interacting with thousands of fallible humans,
one’s heart sinks.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">Every
day we get past without nuclear catastrophe seems a miracle further overlaying
the miracle of existence itself. We have been waiting to be blown up for so
long that it has to be having an unconscious effect upon our animal optimism,
our appreciation of the miracle of our momentary existence in this universe of ordinary
wonders like sunlight, sight, snow, flowers, stars, grandchildren, Brandenburg
Concertos . . .</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">But a
further miracle is not only possible but is even now unfolding. We humans do
have the option to begin to look beyond war and political hatred and the
endless sowing of fear and mistrust of the “other.” We can begin to embrace the
potential of our other biggest challenge, environmental sustainability. This
recognition will jump-start us beyond the illusion of “us versus them” that animates
war and the manufacture of weapons of mass (which means self-) destruction.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">We live
on a planet where authoritarian forces are again on the march. But an infinitely
more powerful force, the degradation of the environment, opposes the clinging
to power of frightened leaders. In an odd but genuine sense this opposing force
is<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>equal-opportunity, bottom-up, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">democratic</i>. The breathability of the air
makes zero hierarchical distinctions between dictators and ordinary citizens.
Ultimately the ability of Putin or Xi or Trump to govern will not depend on the
size of nuclear arsenals. It will hinge upon the ability of all of us to work
together to clear the air, sustain nutrients in the soil sufficient to grow
healthy food, manage the leakage of methane from the Siberian tundra, keep plastics
out of the ocean, bend downward the ominous upward slant of global average
temperature—and stand down the weapons which are themselves a major threat to
environmental sustainability. Alongside these challenges that demand a
different degree of international cooperation, the hate, fear and greed that motivate
too many of us start to look absurdly irrelevant.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;">Will we
wake up to this involuntary change of paradigm that has silently become the
most important condition of our existence? Everything I do or don’t do affects
you, and everything you do or don’t do affects me—authoritarians and would-be
authoritarians included. That’s a wrenchingly positive enlargement of our
conception of true self-interest. As a Peace Corps volunteer once said, and it
cannot be repeated too often: “The earth is a sphere, and a sphere has only one
side. We are all on the same side.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-2424312599117543962024-02-19T04:52:00.000-08:002024-02-19T04:52:22.251-08:00Navalny’s Value<p> <span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">What
is the exact length of an inch, or the weight of an ounce? In this world of
relativity, how do we gauge absolute standards? Nations employ whole bureaus
with sophisticated methods of calibrating the measurement of a meter, or the
weight of some discrete quantity of atomic particles, as we raid the relative in
our attempts to define and quantify the absolute. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">In
the realm of the moral, we continue to toss on a sea of relativity. We cringe
at Hamas’s violence of October 7, at what the Israeli government has done to
Gazan civilians in reaction, and at the reality that some fraction of the taxes
we pay supports Netanyahu’s unhinged campaign of vengeance. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">Aleksei
Navalny, to all effects murdered by Putin, represented by contrast about as
absolute a standard of what might constitute a morally honest life as humanly
possible. He was not perfect; nobody is. In his early political life he dallied
with racist forms of nationalism, which he outgrew. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">Navalny
didn’t have to make the final trip back to Russia in 2021 that led three years
later to his death in an Arctic prison, but any other course seemed to him like
ducking the issue. His laughter, right up to the end, in the face of grossly
unjust treatment gives an intimation of what the immense charisma of someone
like Jesus must have been like. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">Evil
may or may not be banal, but Navalny took the measure of the petty,
mean-spirited banality of Putin, and decided he didn’t need to let it loom over
the narrowed scope of his possibilities. He not only stood up to a murderous
autocrat but reveled in his own wit and strength while doing it. How many can
say they were still smiling and still in good spirits at the very hour of their
death? Such an example cannot be so easily dissolved out of history. Navalny
will haunt the hapless Putin to his own grave. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">The
critic R.P. Blackmur said that great poetry “adds to the stock of available
reality.” Likewise the arc of Navalny’s life and death adds to the stock of
moral reality. It leaks the air out of Putin’s callous hubris—and Trump’s for
that matter. Our own moral courage is put in the dock, and almost all of us, by
the Navalny standard, are whited sepulchers, including so many spineless
officials in Russia and the U.S. and elsewhere who demonstrate what passes for service
and justice in today’s transactional political culture.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">Different
contexts bring forth different varieties of moral courage. For John Kennedy it
was relying on diplomacy and resisting the warmongers during the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Martin Luther King Jr. called out American materialism, militarism and
racism. Daniel Ellsberg exposed intolerable government lies about the Vietnam
war and the terrifying immorality of nuclear weapons. Mandela magnanimously
forgave his captors for the sake of building a new country. Navalny tirelessly critiqued
corruption in high places in the Russian government.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">Navalny
never had the opportunity to become immersed in the inevitable compromises of actual
governing, and so his life may more easily lend itself to facile myth-making.
But his courage and wit are clearly recorded, including in the documentary
about him, which no one should miss.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">If
there is helplessness, demoralization and despair in the Russian opposition at
the moment, they can take heart from the words of historian Howard Zinn: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">“
. . . the most striking fact about these superpowers [the U.S. and the
U.S.S.R.] was that, despite their size, their wealth, their overwhelming
accumulation of nuclear weapons, they were unable to control events, even in
those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence
. . . Apparent power has again and again proved vulnerable to those human
qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination,
organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience . . . Political
power, however formidable, is more fragile than we think (Note how nervous are
those who hold it.)”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">We
are herding animals, so outliers like Navalny will always remain rare. But we
all have that awareness of a gold standard in us, often deeply buried but still
there, something that tells us where we may be falling short. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">Even
should Putin “win” the war with Ukraine, day by day his emasculation of his
people has taken them ever further from Navalny’s expansive vision of a
democratic Russia. But his martyrdom has already planted the seeds of the
inevitable counter-revolution. His example will energize that creative response
in followers old and new. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">As
Secretary of War Stanton said right after Abraham Lincoln succumbed to an
assassin’s bullet, “Now he belongs to the ages.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-8078443856372211102024-02-15T10:36:00.000-08:002024-02-16T08:13:02.288-08:00Beyond Delusion<p><i>In memory of Aleksei Navalny</i> <span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Putin
demonstrated in his “interview” with Tucker Carlson the delusional version of
Russian history that rationalizes his brutality. Hamas and Netanyahu continue
to demonstrate Auden’s classic line: “Those to whom evil is done, do evil in
return.” It often seems as if vast swaths of the Middle East operate under the
collective delusion that the various parties, state or non-state, can kill
their way out of insecurity and injustice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Then
along comes Trump with his loose talk about allied obligations to NATO, provoking
outrage across Western capitals. He leaves us feeling as if Biden, elderly or
not, is one of the few adults in the room, and U.S. power remains the ultimate
backstop for the maintenance of democratic ideals against waves of
authoritarianism in Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Hungary and elsewhere.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Ukraine’s
agony, with its echoes of Hitlerian aggression, calls into question the deepest
convictions of those of us who are convinced there must a more robust way to
constrain, or at least disincentivize, the Putins of this world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Still,
the context of unfolding time casts a shadow over even the most
well-intentioned attempts at a viable international security system built upon
superiority of arms. The arms race, further extending into space as we have recently
seen with the alarm in the U.S. Congress over a Russian satellite killer
weapons, moves ever more in one direction: toward greater complexity,
computerization, and speed of decision. Now A.I. is ominously entering the mix.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Meanwhile
more and more citizens from chaotic parts of the world, under pressure from
both dysfunctional governance and the droughts and floods of climate
instability, are forced into the desperate flight to nowhere of the refugee.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">The
foreign policy establishment in the Western nations is in its own way just as
deluded as Putin or Trump or Netanyahu in their over-reliance on the unworkable
paradigm of deterrence by force of arms, especially weapons of mass-murder. 70
nations have acknowledged the reality that the arms race is a cure worse than
the disease by ratifying the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">To
once again indulge Thomas Kuhn’s over-used characterization of fundamental
shifts in world-view, what is required is a paradigm shift. Only a less delusional
motivation, a larger conception of self-interest, can move the world in a less
delusional direction. The shift is from seeing security as a function of
competition to seeing it as a function of interdependence. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Endangered
planetary ecosystems become the ultimate reason nations need to not only cease
to fight each other but cooperate on a new level. To indulge in an unnecessary
war of choice, as Putin has and as most agree the U.S. did in the Second Gulf
War, is to plunge the whole world into taking sides where obsolete “us and
them” thinking is reinforced. More Russian citizens know this than we think. An
antiwar candidate named </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/putin-ukraine-war-opposition-karamurza/"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Boris Nadezhdin</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> has been kicked
off the ballot in their presidential “election” because Russian officials noted
with alarm that he was polling in the double digits.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Planetary
interdependence, with its inevitable implication that what I do affects
everybody else and vice versa, is an idea that shakes the foundations of the
status quo in a positive way, including shaking the establishment delusion
that, by tragic necessity, war will always be with us, when in fact war will sooner
or later do us in.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">Where
there is no vision, as the prophet said, the people perish. As average citizens
realize that wars and arms races are a con and nothing good will come of them,
but environmental cooperation is very much in everyone’s mutual interest, the
paradigm will begin to change. When this shift seeps into political discourse
and ultimately even into the well-fortified sanctuaries of the dictators, a new
world might emerge. It will give renewed life to already significant
initiatives like Rotary International and the moribund United Nations itself. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">One
feels as if elements of the diplomatic world already are trying to operate out
of this new paradigm—we see it in Anthony Blinken’s tireless efforts, with the
help of his counterparts in places like Qatar, to bring about a cease-fire in
Gaza and begin to lay the conditions at last for a Palestinian state. At the
same time there are regressive forces, such as U.S. Senators who shout loudly
about “avenging” the deaths of our soldiers at the hands of Iranian-built drones.
Vengeance, leading nowhere, does not a foreign policy make.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">There
are scientific resources available to reinforce the hard new truths of our
interdependence, but it feels as if military thinking and ecological thinking
are siloed from each other just when these distinct realms need to be in
conversation. What are the biggest threats facing this planet? Militarism
itself, with its vast sucking away of resources and equally vast environmental
footprint. Degradation of air, water and soil. Food insufficiency. Refugees by
the millions. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;">When
ordinary people see beyond the delusions of the war paradigm, they will begin
to think and act together in their own true self interest. While there are
mighty forces arrayed in favor of the status quo, we have to ask ourselves, if we
don’t begin to push such a change of thinking into our politics, how else will it
happen?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p><p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-66059668783014671922024-01-20T11:54:00.000-08:002024-01-23T06:23:56.561-08:00Absurd!<span style="color: #222222;"></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/absurd&source=gmail&ust=1706105983857000&usg=AOvVaw3uf0z4NrKlBjf0a4anlyQn" href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/absurd" style="color: purple;" target="_blank"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Absurd</span></a><span style="line-height: 22px;"><span> </span>—</span><span> </span><span style="line-height: 22px;">ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous (Merriam-Webster)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;"> The
condition of absurdity has been examined in depth by such heavy-duty
philosophers as Kierkegaard and Camus, let alone by countless
undergraduates in common-room bull sessions.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Without
doubt there is a random element to life where bad things happen to good
people and vice versa. Absurdity is built into reality. The ultimate
absurdity of death awaits us all. But Camus opposed the absurd by
arguing that we can create meaning through a noble defiance of our
condition, by responding constructively, rather than reacting
reflexively, to inevitable limits, bad luck, and chaos.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Much
ink has been spilled about the violence and cruelty of the Russian
aggression into Ukraine, and now the Israeli scorched earth response to
Hamas’s sadistic incursion. Less has been written about the<span> </span><i>absurdity</i><span> </span>of war, its unworkability and total waste, accelerated by leaders who misuse war to consolidate their own power.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Netanyahu’s
“strategy” of bouncing the rubble in Gaza and catering to his right
flank’s refusal of a Palestinian state seems to be a major part of his
desperate effort to remain in power and unscathed by charges of
corruption. Netanyahu is an absurdist cousin of Trump, who with
pugilistic glee turns even his court appearances into campaign rallies.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;"> <span> </span>A
theologian once suggested that Satan is an abstraction personified in a
human being aggressively pursuing a self-centered agenda. By
undertaking an incongruously absurd war, Putin has put himself in a cage
for the rest of his life. He can never for a moment be free of the
suspicion that one of his own retinue, or a vengeful Ukrainian, or
another loose cannon like Prigozhin, could manage to get past all his
layers of protection and do him in.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">One
absurdity of the cult of Trump (Putin too for that matter) is that his
admirers assume his authentic manliness. In the case of Trump, this
manliness is paradoxically rooted in a bottomless, insecure need to be
approved and fawned over that apparently originated in a childhood lack
of paternal love. Tragically, this need will<span> </span><i>never</i><span> </span>be
satisfied. Win or lose, leaders like Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu will
try to paper over their pseudo-confidence with empty bravado.
Authoritarians devoid of an understanding of servant leadership stand a
good chance of coming to the end of their lives bitter and unfulfilled.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;"> <span> </span>Nothing
says absurdity like the Iowa voter, apparently speaking for all too
many others, who said of Trump: “They’re doing to him what they did to
Jesus.” That is the language of someone immersed in a cult.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Ordinarily
sensible people are vulnerable to be sucked into the vortex. Recently
New Hampshire Governor Sununu demonstrated the strain of naked absurdism
running through our domestic politics when, in an interview with PBS
journalist Judy Woodruff, he catalogued all the reasons why Trump must
at all costs be denied the Republican nomination—and then finished by
saying he would still support Trump were he to be nominated!<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Netanyahu
assumes that if the Israeli Defense Forces can wipe out Hamas entirely
(itself an almost impossible task), they can also wipe out the rage that
energizes all Palestinians without negotiating Palestinian statehood
(absurdly beyond the possible). Putin’s mind-set toward Ukraine is
similar. So far Trump may not have begun a shooting war, but his
approach to the diversity of people and ideas is identical to Putin’s
and Netanyahu’s: ruthless intolerance of any force opposing his
domination.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">All
three profoundly insecure leaders (at least if Trump gets re-elected),
along with others of their type like Kim Jung Un, have the power to use
nuclear weapons and hold the fate of the earth in their hands.
Tragically—absurdly—the pseudo-confidence of these leaders is matched by
the pseudo-security of the deterrence system upon which we all have
come to rely for our “security.” Nuclear weapons of course contain
enough destructive power to rebound upon anyone who might be foolish
enough to think of them as a solution to conflict. Imagine Israel
obliterating Tehran, or North Korea destroying South Korea, only to have
a fatal cloud of radioactive dust blow back upon Jerusalem or Pyongyang
or, worse, cause a worldwide thickening of cloud cover that does us all
in by way of nuclear winter and subsequent agricultural catastrophe.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Even
as we risk drifting into wider war in the Middle East, the nine nuclear
powers, including the United States, still insist that possession of
the weapons confers advantages too great to forego, in spite of the fact
that the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
has rendered nuclear weapons illegal under international law.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">War
became obsolete with the invention of weapons of mass destruction. In
2023, parties to complex international conflicts have still not
recognized this reality.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Instead,
vast sums, aggregating over time into the trillions of dollars,
continue to be spent on the expansion and renewal of apocalyptic
weapons. One misinterpretation or belligerent overstep by an insecure
leader could end the human experiment altogether.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Meanwhile
the community of nations cannot seem to address with equivalent
urgency, funds, and cooperation the most likely cause of future chaos
and war: the global climate emergency.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">That is truly absurd . . .</span></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-66294875403820444502023-12-31T07:54:00.000-08:002023-12-31T07:54:13.674-08:00Crisis and Opportunity on Campus<p><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> <br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
war in Gaza has generated far more heat than light on American college campuses.
Students shout past each other as they bear helpless witness to the injustice and
absurdity of the latest spasm of violence in the Middle East. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
protests provided an opening for politicians to examine challenging questions
about bias, free speech, and student safety. Instead there was superficial posturing
and playing “gotcha” with college presidents who are doing a difficult job. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Larger
questions around the ultimate purpose and value of a college education remain
insufficiently examined. The ivory tower cannot presume isolation from the
world crisis of values of which the Hamas-Israeli conflict and the wars in Ukraine
or the Sudan or elsewhere are a festering symptom—students sense this more than
anyone. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">For
both Hamas and the present Israeli government, the deaths of so many innocents
have been a means to exercise raw power rather than move toward genuine resolution
of a fiendishly difficult conflict. In Israel’s case, the immediate goal seems
to be to re-establish deterrence, and in Hamas’s, to disrupt the gradual
accommodation of surrounding Arab nations to the legitimacy of Israel’s
existence. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Violent
and cynical means on both sides are themselves at war with the ends of authentic
resolution. The indiscriminate nature of Hamas’s attack and the equally
indiscriminate Israeli response has only set back long-term security in the
region.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Unfolding
events provide an opportunity for dialogue on college campuses, including
between Jewish and Palestinian students. To ask Palestinians and Israelis sheltering
in-country from bombs and rockets to sit down together in small groups and
share food and stories in order to build mutual understanding would be a bridge
too far in the present chaos—yet it </span><a href="http://traubman.igc.org/global.htm#group"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">has been done</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> effectively
here in the U.S. And colleges could, </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/25/us-students-colleges-universities-israel-hamas-gaza"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">and sometimes do</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">, provide
occasions for something similar to happen on campus.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
education of the complete person, the enlargement of what was once called
character, by a combination of formal curriculum and the informal experience of
campus culture will always remain challenging. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">For
decades there has been talk about a crisis of the humanities. As students flee
the liberal arts, classes in the business and computer fields expand. College is
expensive, and students want to be able to monetize their learning, or at least
have a fighting chance to pay down burdensome loans. It is hard for college
administrators to resist trends that, left unaddressed, could shut down their
institutions altogether. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Still
one can’t examine too often what ought to be some of education’s bedrock goals,
including how to mold active citizens, people who are informed, responsive, authentic,
present, inclusive, and responsible. Education in that larger sense is a good
in itself, a means toward a good life, beyond just making a good living. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">This
is a challenge not just for the humanities, but for education as a whole, including
STEM, as indicated among other things by apathetic and misinformed voters, shallow
politicians unequipped to cope with huge challenges like AI, leaders who choose
authoritarianism and war over the difficulties of building peaceful democratic
structures, and a materialist culture which knows the price of everything and
the value of nothing. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Pure
scientific research for its own sake, like threatened humanist disciplines, faces
its own need to demonstrate its utility. But there are projects which speak to
such a depth in us that no justification is needed. The Webb observatory, which
simultaneously looks outward into deep space and backward in time, because of
the time it takes for the light of stars and galaxies to reach it, was designed
by engineers from fourteen countries. The Webb shows what we can do when we
cooperate toward larger ends rather than warring with each other. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
Webb brings into even greater focus the magnificent unfolding of the universe
through a series of emergent stages, from pure energy, to matter, to life, to
conscious life reflecting upon itself. The universe story confirms the reality that
all of us, including Arabs and Jews, come from a single origin. The story also
magnificently confirms the resilience of life on earth, which has persisted
through billions of years of challenges.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Albert
Einstein said that we cannot solve a problem on the same level of consciousness
that created the problem. The connective tissue across all time and space
revealed by the Webb points toward this new level of consciousness, a world where
“us” against “them” is subsumed by the truth of interdependence. It will become
the task of education to help students explore this larger context and apply
its implications practically to all our problems. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Students
face a future of environmental, demographic and disarmament crises laid on them
(sorry) by previous generations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
quality of their collective response will depend upon their seeing that all the
wars on the planet, including the present horror in Gaza, are an absurd distraction
from listening, sharing, working things out with each other and stewarding the
natural systems that sustain us. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-24182001122881102852023-12-06T12:44:00.000-08:002023-12-06T16:11:45.738-08:00 Watching, with Despair and Hope<p><br /></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">It’s
a queasy feeling to experience up close on the nightly news the further
turn of a 70-year-old futile cycle of violence. We sit in our
comfortable armchairs in front of the television, voyeurs of the living
hell that Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have brought down
upon innocent citizens in Israel and Gaza.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Intrusive
cameras take us right to the heart of the agony, the rubble of blasted
concrete, the blood of children smeared across hospital floors, the
shrieks of matriarchs on both sides mourning the death or kidnapping of
whole families. The world is so interconnected that we news junkies
cannot help feeling—complicit. My tax dollars help to pay for the
avalanche of undiscriminating vengeance unleashed by the Israeli Defense
Forces.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">When
spokespeople for the IDF present their rationalizations for the
bombing, there’s something a little strange in their eyes. They don’t
seem altogether in their right mind, as maybe we Americans weren’t
either in the weeks following 9/11. The trauma of October 7, followed by
the conundrum of trying to defeat an enemy that holds so many Israelis
hostage, along with the embarrassing failure to heed the signs of what
was coming—these seem to have narrowed the Israeli military vision of
strategic self-interest to a ruthless, helpless lashing out, even as
Netanyahu urges his allies to “stand with civilization.”<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">American
officials also seem slightly off and over-scripted when they do their
best to rationalize a form of “civilization” that has become supremely
uncivilized.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Our well-intentioned officials and<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/opinion/israel-gaza-ceasefire.html?searchResultPosition%3D2&source=gmail&ust=1701993632500000&usg=AOvVaw3WmnlC2DevUq6kv9gtGgGJ" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/opinion/israel-gaza-ceasefire.html?searchResultPosition=2" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">well-informed pundits</a><span> </span>caution
restraint and creative thinking, only to be ignored almost completely
by the Israeli government. It is wrenching to watch descendants of those
who lived through or died in the Holocaust begin to travel down a
similar near-genocidal road for the sake of re-establishing the vaunted
Israeli reputation for ironclad deterrence. <span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Meanwhile Israel writhes in its apparent straitjacket of alternatives. Why would one<span> </span><i>not</i><span> </span>expect
to see a certain nervous paranoia in the eyes of their generals after
what Hamas did? As the late not-so-great Henry Kissinger said, even
paranoiacs have real enemies.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Whether as participants or spectators, we have all known since we were schoolchildren exactly what a<span> </span><i>cycle</i><span> </span>of
violence is, why it happens, and how it perpetuates and never resolves
underlying conflict. Inevitably woven into the cycle is a failure to see
the “other” as just as human as ourselves.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Extremists
on both sides contesting the same land carry dehumanization to the end
point, the intent to utterly annihilate the other. Simplistic bumper
stickers like “from the river to the sea” become the same battle-cry for
both settlers and those who deny Israel the right to exist. The
extremes end up resembling each other all too closely.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">But
the familiarity of such cycles shows that a way out, however difficult,
must be possible: it begins with a realization that what both sides are
doing, however different their motivations and self-justifying
rationales, is not working and will never work. Hamas cannot destroy
Israel; Israel cannot wipe out Hamas.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Hamas
represents an abhorrent idea—the end of Israel altogether. But the idea
itself cannot be killed; it can only be transcended by some less
nihilist idea—such as a two-state solution or some creative new
arrangement yet unarticulated.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Talk
of humans as “animals” is not helpful. Listening for the common
humanity in the stories of the “other” is the only way through—people
who initiate connections across boundaries that marginalize the
extremes, people who resist becoming identical in fruitless violence.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">For
many years an indefatigable California activist, Libby Traubman, has
been inviting American Jews and Palestinians to break bread together and
share stories.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Millions of Israeli citizens—and Jews elsewhere like Libby—try to maintain this good will in spite of their legitimate fears.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Palestinians
too—like Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, who lost three daughters and a niece
at once to a shell fired by an Israeli tank in 2009, but who goes on
working tirelessly for peace. His book is entitled<span> </span><i>I Shall Not Hate.<span> </span></i>As
a doctor, he says he doesn’t distinguish between the Muslim, Jewish and
Christian babies he delivers. The world is starved for that larger
identification with all humanity.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Those
who watch the horror from a distance at least have a responsibility to
forego taking sides and to do what we can to make both Jews and
Palestinians feel safe from hate, wherever they are on this small planet
we share.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">In a wise and funny anecdote in one of his<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Insight-Responsibility-Norton-Paperback-Erikson/dp/0393312143/ref%3Dsr_1_1?crid%3D34NR3IP6SMMEE%26keywords%3Dinsight%2Band%2Bresponsibility%26qid%3D1701887783%26s%3Dbooks%26sprefix%3DInsight%2Band%2BResponsibil%252Cstripbooks%252C179%26sr%3D1-1&source=gmail&ust=1701993632501000&usg=AOvVaw19ZbUeDM3y0mgnVr_E3PJm" href="https://www.amazon.com/Insight-Responsibility-Norton-Paperback-Erikson/dp/0393312143/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34NR3IP6SMMEE&keywords=insight+and+responsibility&qid=1701887783&s=books&sprefix=Insight+and+Responsibil%2Cstripbooks%2C179&sr=1-1" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">books</a><span> </span>Erik Erikson writes:<span> </span></span></p>“Rabbi
Hillel once was asked by an unbeliever to tell the whole of the Torah
while he stood on one foot. I do not know whether he meant to answer the
request or to remark on its condition when he said: ‘What is hateful to
yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah
and the rest is but commentary.’”<span></span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18pt;"> </span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18pt;">In
a wise and funny anecdote in one of his </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Insight-Responsibility-Norton-Paperback-Erikson/dp/0393312143/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34NR3IP6SMMEE&keywords=insight+and+responsibility&qid=1701887783&s=books&sprefix=Insight+and+Responsibil%2Cstripbooks%2C179&sr=1-1"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18pt;">books</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18pt;"> Erik Erikson
writes: “Rabbi Hillel once was asked by an unbeliever to tell the whole of the
Torah while he stood on one foot. I do not know whether he meant to answer the
request or to remark on its condition when he said: ‘What is hateful to
yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the
rest is but commentary.’” </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-14555998804763251772023-11-23T17:56:00.000-08:002023-11-23T17:56:40.574-08:00Old and New Thinking<p> </p>
<p class="css-at9mc1"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">“These machines
will eventually need to have the power to take lethal action on their own,
while remaining under human oversight in how they are deployed. Individual
decisions versus not doing individual decisions is the difference between
winning and losing — and you’re not going to lose</span></i><em><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. </span></em><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">I don’t think
people we would be up against would do that, and it would give them a huge
advantage if we put that limitation on ourselves</span></i><em><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">.” —U.S. Secretary of the Air Force</span></em><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">This
fascinating quotation about the military potential of A.I. is deeply revealing
of how an obsolete way of thinking works. The Secretary of the Air Force is not
an evil person, only someone trapped inside his limited perspective. There are too
many like him in Russia, in China—and in Israel and Gaza. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">The
quotation allows a direct stare into the heart of evil, not the evil of malign
intent, but of the blind futility of violence accelerated by technological
“progress.” It foretells a perverse refusal of possibilities other than
dehumanizing our adversaries so completely that we are willing to kill them
with machines that are already frighteningly lethal even without the capacity
to make their own decisions. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I don’t think people we would be up against would
do that.”</i> Of course the Secretary means that our adversaries would be
unable to refuse any possible military advantage available through A.I. Isn’t
this projecting our own proven capacity for depravity (think Vietnam, Iraq
etc.) onto our adversaries? And isn’t it also an admission that we have no
other option but to continue the we-build-they build cycle, already nuclear, on
the A.I. level, a path that leads at best to some variation of war as depicted
in the Terminator films?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">Also
implicit in the Secretary’s old thinking is that sacred cow of establishment
thinking, deterrence. As long as we have more of the latest, fastest, most
intelligent and most destructive weapons, we will not need to use them, because
that will be sufficient to make our enemy think twice before taking us on. But contemporary
asymmetric warfare (think 9-1l-2001, 10-7-2023), let alone the likelihood of
either human or A.I. error, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>effectively
undermines deterrence theory.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">The
truth of the obsolescence of war has been demonstrated for all to see by the
events unfolding from the October 7<sup>th</sup> pogrom. Hamas, seeking to slow
or stop any larger peace process, has only ensured that a further cycle of
violence will eat its own young along with those of Israel. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">Conventional
war doesn’t resolve the underlying conflict that initiated it. Nuclear war even
less so (think nuclear winter). Variations on nuclear or chemical or biological
war with the added dimension of A.I. will become doubly, triply world-destructive—in
other words, obsolete.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">Because
everyone’s security and survival is a shared problem, the need is to re-humanize
our adversaries—to perceive the me-semblance of the “other” even if they seem
hateful to us and toward us. We need our military people on all sides to gather
and peer together down the time-stream at a future which holds only two
possibilities: either adversaries spend infinite treasure and resources to
arrive at stalemate on a new, even more hair-trigger level—or we destroy
ourselves. When we agree that these will be the outcomes unless we change, we
can work together to apply A.I to common challenges, including the prevention
of wars no one can win.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">Because
there is no doubt Artificial Intelligence can do remarkable things for us. It could
point the way toward pragmatic climate solutions where everyone wins. It is
already revolutionizing medical diagnoses and treatments. But ordinary
unenhanced intelligence provides an indispensable perspective still in short
supply, such as that articulated by almost every astronaut who has had the
privilege of seeing the Earth from space—Russell Schweikart for example:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">“And you look
down there, and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross,
again and again and again. And you don’t even see them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>. . . there you are—hundreds of people
killing each other over some imaginary line that you’re not even aware of, that
you can’t see. And from where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it’s so
beautiful. And you wish you could take one in each hand and say, “Look!” You
know? One from each side. “Look at it from this perspective! Look at that!
What’s important?”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></i></p><br /><p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-81804245589496310842023-10-31T05:59:00.005-07:002023-10-31T05:59:41.472-07:00Gaza and Maine<p><br /></p><p><span style="line-height: 22px;"></span><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 22px;"></span><span style="line-height: 22px;"> I
live a couple of counties away from where the mentally ill Robert Card,
apparently hearing voices inside his head that sounded as if people
were putting him down, shot up a bar and a bowling alley and forever
changed the lives of too many of the good citizens of Maine.<span> <br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">The
horror in what has been statistically the safest state in the nation
competed for headlines with the exponentially larger agony of the brutal
Hamas attack and Israel’s decimation of Gaza.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">The
tragedies in Maine and Israel are cousins, however different in scale
they appear. But are they in fact so different in scale?<span> </span><i>48,000</i><span> </span>Americans suffered gun-related deaths in 2021, the last year for which reliable statistics were available.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Our
newly minted Speaker of the House offered the usual contemptible dodge
of thoughts and prayers, confirming the outrageous inability of our
political system to address the gun violence epidemic. After the
massacre, by contrast, one member of Congress, Lewiston-born Jared
Golden, had the courage to change his mind toward favoring an assault
rifle ban.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Ironically,
there are very strict gun laws for civilians in the state of Israel.
They must demonstrate good reason for gun ownership and obtain a permit,
and people who are caught with an unlicensed gun receive strict
sanctions, often a year in prison. The result has been far less<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/insights-blog/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier&source=gmail&ust=1698843507648000&usg=AOvVaw1OAk2i0qifBCmWO5t28tCS" href="https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/insights-blog/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">gun deaths per capita</a><span> </span>there than<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/&source=gmail&ust=1698843507648000&usg=AOvVaw2pvfad413_SKqDF0A8gf9A" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">here</a>—at least until October 7.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">To
get and to stay elected in the U.S., politicians have had to augment
their campaign funds with the blood money of the NRA, tenaciously
ignoring the clear wishes of the American people for sensible reforms
like universal background checks.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">The
U.S. Congress along with a majority on the Supreme Court stubbornly
adheres to obsolete interpretations of an amendment that was written
hundreds of years before the AR-15 perversely became “America’s gun.”
Nick Kristof, in an excellent article the New York Times keeps
republishing after each new mass shooting, makes a case for the “whys”
of our appalling statistics (for one, the crystal-clear correlation
between numbers of guns and gun deaths). Kristof also lays out the<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/opinion/gun-death-health.html&source=gmail&ust=1698843507648000&usg=AOvVaw2lhyD9y_kBbHUe9EeJTstw" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/opinion/gun-death-health.html" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">common-sense changes</a><span> </span>we could make that would save a whole bunch of lives.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">Liberals
blame the conservative obsession with the Second Amendment while
conservatives advocate beefing up mental health initiatives. But real
solutions will not emerge from blaming and either/or polarities.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">A
similar political refusal to address root causes has come back to haunt
Israeli politicians—and massacre the innocent by the thousands in both
Israel and Gaza. Netanyahu maintains his power with a coalition that
ignored the longing of great numbers of Israeli citizens for a peace
that can only come by looking into the mirror of equivalent Palestinian
longings.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">While
a subtle anti-Semitism often holds Israel to a higher standard than
other nations, its reputation will take a tremendous hit from its
military’s vain attempt to stamp out an idea, or an attitude, by
collective punishment. The catastrophic destructiveness of Israel’s
reaction, far from eliminating the cynical and nihilistic Hamas, will
ensure a further generation of young men who see no alternative to
murder and martyrdom. Hamas is playing Mr. Netanyahu like a violin.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">There
are plenty of wise citizens of Israel who, in spite of their tears and
rage, have not been swept away by the siren voices of violent revenge.
New Yorker editor David Remnick’s recent on-site<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/06/israel-gaza-war-hamas?utm_source%3Dnl%26utm_brand%3Dtny%26utm_mailing%3DTNY_Daily_102823%26utm_campaign%3Daud-dev%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_term%3Dtny_daily_digest%26bxid%3D5bea16353f92a404697189a9%26cndid%3D30849488%26hasha%3Dc5696f6f6b95b528502f53ff038e1399%26hashb%3D0fed67e904db9983abb027356efd80ce6677f6cf%26hashc%3D0f2aa37164d07d2ff4ffd77b48397fb29c492e1bca89daee3c2e408af07c113b%26esrc%3DAUTO_OTHER&source=gmail&ust=1698843507648000&usg=AOvVaw2JoEirSeTvMOLrTub458Jh" href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/06/israel-gaza-war-hamas?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_102823&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=5bea16353f92a404697189a9&cndid=30849488&hasha=c5696f6f6b95b528502f53ff038e1399&hashb=0fed67e904db9983abb027356efd80ce6677f6cf&hashc=0f2aa37164d07d2ff4ffd77b48397fb29c492e1bca89daee3c2e408af07c113b&esrc=AUTO_OTHER" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">report</a><span> </span>cites a retired army general named Yair Golan, who told Remnick:<span> </span></span></p><p style="color: #404040; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 10pt 0.6in 8pt;">“When
you have a crisis, like Pearl Harbor or September 11th, it is a
multidimensional crisis, a multidimensional failure. [Netanyahu] wanted
quiet. So, while Hamas was relatively quiet, Netanyahu saw no need to
have a vision for the larger Palestinian question. And since he needed
the support of the settlers and the ultra-Orthodox, he appeased them. He
created a situation in which, so long as the Palestinian Authority was
weak, he could create the over-all perception that the best thing to do
was to annex the West Bank. We weakened the very institution that we
could have worked with, and strengthened Hamas.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">The
cycle of violence is clearly systemic and cyclical, with mistakes,
missed chances, and the inability of some to take “yes” for an answer.
The righteous assertions of blame churned out by all sides becomes so
much static, irrelevant to the copious flow of innocent blood.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">In like fashion, the U.S. head-in-the-sand fetish of gun rights guarantees an equivalent flow of blood will continue here.<span> </span></span><span style="line-height: 22px;">Robert
Card lost the capacity to see his victims as fully human. Mr. Netanyahu
heeds a voice within that tells him that only more violence can save
his nation. He has been unable to see Palestinians as fully human, just
as Hamas refuses to see Jews as fully human.<span> </span></span><span style="line-height: 22px;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">The
paralysis that continues this cycle of mutual dehumanization engulfing
thousands of families and children in the Middle East may be different
from the paralysis in the U.S. that failed to prevent yet another
troubled man with a gun from mass murder and suicide. But the two
tragedies are not only indistinguishable in their heartrending pain and
loss.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">In
Maine and in Gaza, violence became the last best way to subdue the
“other.” Robert Card didn’t get adequate help for his illness, and
acquired a gun far too easily. It could have gone another way. Hamas and
Netanyahu each chose mindless revenge. It could have gone another way.</span></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-45951278181577902222023-10-25T11:23:00.000-07:002023-10-25T11:23:06.816-07:00One Earth, One Humanity, One Spirit<p> <span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">The immensity
of the carnage in Ukraine, Sudan, and now Israel and Gaza, makes it seem as if
the community preached by religious prophets old and new feels beyond the
capacity of our species. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">For<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> “</span></span></span><a href="https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">those to whom evil is done,”</span></a><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> war becomes the pragmatic,
necessary, and reflexive counter-response to an “initial” act of violence—or a
response to some previous move in an extended cycle of retaliation, heartless vengeance,
and brute strength vainly designed to intimidate. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Hamas’s cynical
cruelty, in response to the Netanyahu government’s years of playing off the
Palestinian Authority against Hamas while expanding the settlements in the West
Bank, may have condemned both Israel and Palestine to decades more chaos and
civilian death. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">For
Palestinians, the U.S.-Israeli alliance taints our fitness to be an honest
broker, further intensifying helpless despair and rage. President Biden is a decent
fellow. Behind our government’s rote statements of unqualified support for
Israel he is surely urging the Israeli military to learn from the U.S.
overreaction to 9/11. He’s also pushing Netanyahu to move beyond an unworkable
status quo toward revival of the presently comatose dream of a two-state
solution. Clearly Biden wants to deter wider conflict in the region, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which could all too easily draw the
superpowers into WW3.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">To
simplify, humanity the world over could be divided roughly into three groups,
two smaller and a third comprising the vast majority of us. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">One minority
are those who believe that killing is the only way to redress injustice. Given
the barbarity of the Hamas attack, it is understandable that the Israeli army
is possessed for the moment by the delusion that the very idea of Hamas can be
flattened into extinction by enough air strikes. But this will only create a
new generation of young men who believe their only option is violence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">A second
smaller group are those who heroically put non-violence into action. An example
would be the village of </span><a href="https://wasns.org/"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Wahat al Salam/Neva Shalom</span></a><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> (“Oasis of Peace”) in Israel. Since
1970 Christians, Jews and Muslims have lived together and run a school where
their children learn each other’s beliefs and customs while adults work through
their occasionally difficult conflicts peacefully. There is a wait list for people
to live there. However rare, the model proves that desirable alternatives to
violent conflict are possible and in fact the only long term way out of a morass
of paranoia and violence. </span><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/peace-makers-israel-palestin"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Many other such initiatives</span></a><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> have flourished in spite of the
intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Poignantly, peace activists
were among those kidnapped by Hamas.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Is it so
far-fetched to imagine at least parts of the Israeli settlement project imbued
with a spirit of inclusiveness similar to Neva Shalom? Could activists plan
settlements that welcomed Palestinians of similar good will, living together in
the truth that Arab and Jewish blood is equally red? Clearly not now, but perhaps
eventually.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">A third
grouping besides the fanatics and the peacebuilders could be called the great
middle, the vast majority of the world’s populations who want only a secure
existence and a fulfilling life for themselves and their children. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Though
scant comfort to those innocents upon whom bombs are falling like rain, most of
us most of the time do manage to get along. Sweden and Norway do not fight, nor
do Massachusetts and Connecticut. As of the commencement of the European Union
in 1993, former combatants like Germany and France no longer need to resolve their
differences by what became global war. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">The mass
of the world’s citizens, though many adhere to one or another of the great
religions, may not feel the unconditional love and compassion for one another urged
by Jesus and Buddha and Muhammed, but they get the practicality of the Golden
Rule: treat others in the same way you would wish to be treated. Put yourself
in the other person’s shoes. You may not love them or even like them, but they
are as human as you are. Getting along is the glue that makes every day civilized
life possible. For most people most of the time, this is part of our ordinary cultural
DNA, which is what makes what has unfolded on both sides of the border between
Gaza and Southern Israel so horrifying.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Definitions
of extremism may be changing in a good way, isolating and marginalizing those
who put all their eggs in the basket of violence. For example, there is the
growing global recognition, expressed in the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Weapons"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">number of nations</span></a><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> which have ratified the United
Nations Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons, that such weapons are in fact useless
instruments of terror and mass dehumanization.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">We are moving,
too slowly, toward a world where threatening to use these weapons, or
possessing them as the basis of a shaky, unstable deterrence, is itself a
demonic, delusionary form of extremism, even though at the moment deterrence
remains at the core of “establishment” values for both democratic and
totalitarian governments. As long as this potential doom hangs over us, we are
all Israelis and Palestinians under the gun, having to learn the apparently
impossible task of getting along. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">This
begins when we acknowledge that while we claim identities as Jews, or Arabs, or
citizens of the U.S. or the Congo or Shri Lanka or China, the core reality of
our identity is as a citizen of one small planet, each of us equally unique and
precious. Whenever my partner is asked on some bureaucratic form for her race, in
a tiny protest against arbitrary categories, she always writes “human.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">This
larger context of our quarrels can get lost in the bloody headlines. While
Putin pursues his absurd visions of Russian grandeur at heinous cost to his own
country and to Ukraine, the tundra in Siberia is melting and releasing methane
that accelerates global warming. Everything everyone does or neglects to do
affects everyone else. In the context of biosystems that are stressed or even
dying, all the wars across this small planet are a double distraction, a double
delusion, a double death. The need to sustain the life systems that in turn
sustain us may be the ultimate self-interested motive for us to put up our
swords and learn to live and work together—including Israelis and Palestinians.</span></p><br /><p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-22764840917142556182023-10-04T08:16:00.008-07:002023-10-10T07:47:09.698-07:00Two in One<br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to
hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to
function.”</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>—F.
Scott Fitzgerald.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A few examples:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Historical: The atomic bomb brought
the war with Japan to a close more quickly AND the atomic bomb may have had
much less effect upon Japan’s surrender than the Soviet declaration of war
against Japan at about the same time (historians still have not resolved this
difference of interpretation).</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Psychological: Human nature is
fundamentally flawed, often violent, and subject to dark unconscious impulses
AND Anne Frank was not wrong to believe that people are often really good at
heart.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Strategic: No less an authority than
George Kennan asserted that pushing NATO eastward was the greatest foreign
policy mistake of our time, causing Russia to feel once again mortally
threatened AND Putin is a brutal dictator with delusions of imperial grandeur
that have led to enormous unnecessary suffering in Ukraine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Political: America is a bulwark for
democracy and against tyranny globally AND America often embroils itself in
conflicts that end up creating far more chaos and death than if the US. had exercised
more restraint and humility.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Economic:
The free market system has lifted millions out of poverty AND the same system continues
to be a major factor as planetary ecosystems fray.</p>
<p class="Style1CxSpLast" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"> </p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A variation on 5.: The capitalist
system has been a major factor in the fraying of planetary ecosystems AND the
technologies provided by that same system (solar, wind, batteries—fusion? ) will
be crucial to sustaining both people and the living systems of the planet.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Strategic: Nuclear deterrence may
have prevented a third world war for 75 years AND the system of nuclear
deterrence could dissolve at any moment by accident or miscommunication into a
planetary catastrophe.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Philosophical/Strategic (a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">three</i>-in-one): War is a tragic and
inescapable condition that has gone one for thousands of years AND we now have
the knowledge of conflict resolution tools and international law to prevent war
AND nuclear weapons have rendered “victory” in all-out war meaningless—to
survive we must wage a preventive war against war.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-language-override: normal; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cultural/Political: Osama bin Laden
perpetrated one of the cruelest terrorist acts in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">modern history AND
articulated a set of demands that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">from
his perspective</i> as a committed Islamist were reasonable: these demands
included that the U.S. should cease to support Israel against Palestine and that
it </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">withdraw its troops from Islamic territories. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large;">Did these demands justify the
murder of 3000 innocent Americans? Not on your life. But surely such demands are
worth examining in terms of learning about a certain Islamic mind set, if only
to prevent the next 9-11.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-large;"> <br /></span></p><p class="Style1" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">10.Moral/Aesthetic: Picasso
was a self-centered moral monster AND his genius has made invaluable
contributions to our culture. T.S. Eliot was reflexively anti-Semitic until he
regretted it, but still wrote Nobel prize-winning poetry.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: x-large; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpFirst" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">11.Political: The
appeal of the 45<sup>th</sup> President is a mystery, but not to the MAGA
millions who see him a charismatic leader. AND for millions of others he represents
uncontrolled chaos and a mortal threat to our democratic system.</span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">12.Political/Cultural:
China has a uniquely controlling and cruel top-down system that oppresses
minorities like the Uighurs AND China has done a remarkable job of pulling millions
of their citizens out of poverty.</span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">13. Philosophical:
Each human is unique AND each human is like every other human. </span></p><p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">14. We are alive for only this tiny discrete moment in all of tie AND we emerged from and are completely connected to the story of a 29 billion-year-old Universe. </span></p><p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">15. A living
example of the ability to hold opposed ideas in mind at the same time: Neva
Shalom Wahat-al-Salaam is a village in Israel where Jewish, Christian and
Muslim families have co-existed for decades, not always easily, but there is a
wait list to get in. It’s a remarkable cultural environment for the children of
the village, who all attend the same school and celebrate each other’s beliefs,
customs and rituals.</span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Too many of us
are uncomfortable with ambiguity. We want things cut-and-dried: who are the
good guys and who are not. We silo ourselves tribally into “us” and “them,” with
“us” being always right, or justified in any questionable behavior by rationalizing
our “higher” goals in the name of a personal or national self-interest all too
narrowly defined—“my country right or wrong.”</span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">To wrestle with
opposing points of view helps us walk in another’s shoes, preventing the dehumanizing
of folks with whom we might be in conflict. This is going to be more and more
important when, say, my use of energy affects the air quality in China, and their
use of energy affects my own breathing.</span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">All such twos-in-one
take place in a context that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i>
two—it is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one</i> that transcends deeply
entrenched habits of narrow self-interest. We live on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one</i> earth and we are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one</i>
species, dependent for life upon <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one</i>
interconnected biosystem. The planet is beginning to undergo a mental shift in
this direction—not a deep change in "human nature," but at least a
growing awareness of our dependence upon each other and the biosystem profound
enough to affect global politics, economics, religion, education, and even the thinking
of armed forces everywhere. Like it or not, our nuclear and ecological reality,
that we’re all in this together, has become the foundational truth of our moment. </span></p><p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and
rightdoing,<br />
There is a field. I'll meet you there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>—Rumi</span></p>
<p class="Style1CxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"> </p>
<p class="Style1CxSpLast" style="mso-list: none; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></p>
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{margin-bottom:0in;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-3666410463816338852023-09-11T08:06:00.005-07:002023-09-11T08:06:24.007-07:00The Security Dilemma<p>
</p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">You
probably couldn’t have asked for a more thoughtful Chair of the Joint Chiefs
than Mark Milley, whose term ends on September 30. He was one of the good guys
who repeatedly restrained President Trump from veering into dubious schemes—such
as a war of choice with Iran. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">But
there is also no mistaking that Milley is a general, a military person through
and through. From a recent </span><a href="https://paw.princeton.edu/article/mark-milley-chairman-joing-chiefs-retiring"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">interview</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> in the
Princeton Alumni Weekly (Milley graduated from Princeton in 1980):</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">“Milley
and others believe that new technologies such as precision-guided munitions,
global positioning systems, artificial intelligence, quantum computing,
robotics, and hypersonic weapons are already transforming how militaries are
trained, supported, and operate, and that the pace will only accelerate.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">‘All
these technologies are coming at us very, very quickly,’ Milley argues. ‘And
we, the United States, need to be on the front side of that curve. We don’t
have to be perfect, but we have to be better than our enemy.’”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">In a world of
hypersonic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads, what exactly does it mean to
be “better than our enemy”? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">As Stephen
Kinzer argues in an </span><a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/09/05/opinion/us-china-russia-security-dilemma/?s_campaign=8315"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">op-ed</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> in the Boston
Globe: “</span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the coming years, China and its partners will work intensely to strengthen
their military power—only to counter American threats, of course. So will the
United States and its partners—only to counter Chinese threats. Each side
insists that it seeks only to defend itself. Neither believes the other, so
both prepare for war. That makes war more likely.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Because this spiral
of mistrust is so common, it has a name: the security dilemma. It tells us that
steps one country takes to increase its security often provoke rivals to take
countersteps. That leads to competition that makes all parties less secure.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The security dilemma
puts generals, no matter how cautious and intelligent, in an ever more
impossible position. Is there any other way out except for military officials
in opposing camps to openly acknowledge the issue and begin to talk with one
another about how to resolve their nations’ conflicts in ways other than mutual
suicide?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ultimately, the only
way to be “better than our enemy” is to think in a new way: to accept that
security is interdependent: mine depends on yours and yours depends on mine. And
to accept that the way to rethink global security cannot be through technological
competition, which will never end except in a general conflagration. And
finally to turn to the cooperative realization of shared goals: survival and the
transformation of energy sources in order to mitigate global climate change.
This new way is also an old way: the way of the Golden Rule, an ethic shared by
all the world’s major religions.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of the hundreds of
scientists who worked under Oppenheimer to develop the first atomic bomb, only
one ceased his research and left Los Alamos on moral grounds once it became
clear that Hitler had been unable to make a weapon. His name was Joseph
Rotblat. He is not mentioned in the popular film about Oppenheimer. He went on
to be instrumental in developing the </span><a href="https://pugwash.org/"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pugwash Conference</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, where scientists
meet yearly to engage in a frank exchange of ideas—exactly as the militaries of
the world’s superpowers ought to be doing. Rotblat was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1995, a half-century after the first nuclear bombs were dropped on
Japan.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are
technologies necessary to confirm that arms control agreements have not been
violated. And it remains crucial to further develop technologies that can help
stop the illegal transfer of radioactive materials. But ultimately it is not
technological advance, it is only people, like Rotblat or Mikhail Gorbachev, who
will enable us to move beyond the security dilemma. I wonder if Mark Milley, ideally
along with equivalent military leaders in China or elsewhere, as they lie awake
pondering the paradoxes of military force in the nuclear age, will see the
flashing “No Exit” sign before it is too late. There is still time, brother.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-8092495434266877812023-09-02T12:09:00.002-07:002023-09-02T12:09:16.111-07:00Oppenheimer’s Truth<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Oppenheimer
saw immediately that any nation with adequate resources would be eventually
able to build a weapon, and that something as gargantuan as an H-bomb had no
possible military function. It could only be a mechanism for genocide. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">As he tried to use his immense stature to
positively influence nuclear policy, he was quickly steamrolled by McCarthyism
and national overconfidence. The Christopher Nolan film dramatizes Truman’s
smug certainty that the U.S. had a monopoly on the bomb, including the soon to
be built H-bomb. Almost immediately spies spirited the technical knowledge for
both fission and thermonuclear weapons to the Soviets. The U.S. monopoly
dissolved, and the arms race Oppenheimer feared had begun.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">In 1959 my Princeton roommate and I were pressed
into service in an odd effort to provide sufficient bodies for a birthday party
for one of the Oppenheimer children.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Becoming aware of our interest in art,
Oppenheimer invited us into a small windowless room to show off a radiant Van
Gogh, one of the late paintings of the fields outside the asylum of St. Remy. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Was it possible that this soft-spoken reed of a
man with melancholy eyes was the legendary force that had corralled a vast and
fractious team of scientific egos into building (in one of the all-time great
euphemisms) a world-ending “gadget”? </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">The birthday ended sadly. Oppenheimer’s wife
Kitty, alcoholically blurry and drink in hand, descended from upstairs into the
entryway as we were departing. “What the hell are you staring at?” she said to
me, only she didn’t say “hell.” Hell was what the Washington establishment had
visited upon her husband by removing his security clearance as the price for
his misgivings about what he had wrought, including his refusal to fully assent
to the H-bomb project. Kitty had been ravaged alongside him.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">The </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=american+prometheus+paperback&i=stripbooks&crid=ZGG9YK40KN4&sprefix=American%2Cstripbooks%2C278&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_2_8" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">biography</span></a><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> on which the film is based quotes a section of an essay Oppenheimer
published in the New York Times on June 9, 1946 laying out his ideas for the
control of nuclear weapons:</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">“[Our plan] proposes that <i>in the field of
atomic energy</i> there be set up a world government. That <i>in this field</i>
there be a renunciation of sovereignty. That in this field there be no legal
veto power. That in this field there be international law.”</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Idealistic? Perhaps. But if anyone then could
have peered down the time stream, they might have given it a shot, to avoid
what Oppenheimer knew loomed ahead. What do we see ahead of <i>us</i>? An
accelerating drift toward a twin nuclear/ecological waterfall, the avoidance of
which requires a spirit of cooperation equaling that of Oppenheimer’s team at
Los Alamos.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Were he alive today, he would be appalled
by just how many nuclear weapons had been built by the early 1980s. But
he would be happy that arms control treaties had reduced their numbers. He
would be relieved that so far they have not been used on people again. He would
rejoice in the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. And
surely he would be over the moon about the success of the Webb telescope, a
multinational scientific feat as positive as the bomb was negative.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Insufficiently acknowledged by sovereign powers,
both authoritarian and democratic, nuclear and non-nuclear, is the fact that
sovereignty has already eroded far more than it ever would have been through
any international agreement to renounce nuclear weapons. Sovereignty is an
administrative necessity that protects national identity, sometimes
existentially (Ukraine does not belong to Putin), but is now increasingly
transcended by the reality that we live on one small planet facing challenges
that can only be solved transnationally.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Specific to weapons and war, sovereignty is
growing more and more shaky in the context of inadvertent computer and human
error. Our security depends upon the professionalism of the Russian military,
and vice versa. So too with all the nuclear powers, even as they spend vast
sums to renew their nuclear weapons. No expert or general, however tactically
brilliant, would be in full control of a slide into the kind of catastrophe
that nearly occurred during the Cuban crisis of 1962, and could happen again in
a conflict with China over Taiwan. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Even on the level of conventional war, Mr. Putin
is discovering he will have to destroy Ukraine in order to “save” it. Let’s
pray that he understands that escalating to nukes won't help him. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">Our distracted political culture in the U.S. does
not encourage dialogue around such difficult issues. The popularity of Nolan’s
film is an opportunity for citizens to ask probing questions of the
presidential candidates that spur fresh thinking on nuclear policy. For
example, would standing down our entire aging fleet of land-based ICBMs be
destabilizing “appeasement” of Russia and China, or a unilateral initiative
that could elicit further positive responses? </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">The anguish of Robert Oppenheimer, who unleashed
destruction beyond measure and then tried his best to stop its further spread,
reminds us that America bears special responsibility for creating the kind of
world he hoped for, where the nuclear curse is finally lifted.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-42896238447718313992023-08-16T09:01:00.012-07:002023-08-17T07:59:56.266-07:00Lahaina and Global Reality<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><span style="color: #222222; line-height: 22px;"></span><span style="line-height: 22px;"></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Rotarian
Al Jubitz, founder of the War Prevention Initiative, has pointed out an
ill-starred coincidence: the town of Lahaina was burning on the
anniversary day, even at the very hour (11:02 a.m. in Japan is 4:02 p.m.
in Maui) that the United States dropped its second nuclear weapon on
the people of Nagasaki back in 1945. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><span class="im"><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">We
have no need to rehash the controversy over whether Japan was ready to
surrender even before President Truman decided to use those two
city-extinguishing “gadgets” (as Oppenheimer and his team called them in
an initial euphemism, one followed by many others, including
“peacekeeper”) to quicken the end of a brutal war. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">What
is infinitely more significant for us is what events like the Lahaina
holocaust portend for the looming history of our future on Planet Earth.
If Lahaina carries an echo of Pearl Harbor, the fire-bombing of Tokyo,
Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, it also ties together the two largest
challenges our species faces together, nuclear war and climate
catastrophe. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
two crises are unavoidably and intimately linked. The nine nuclear
powers are plunging headlong into the renewal of their nuclear arsenals
at just the moment they need to be finding novel ways to cooperate to
mitigate global warming. The money and scientific brainpower desperately
needed for the conversion to sustainable energy continue to be drained
into an international deterrence system which, as we have seen in
Ukraine, does nothing to deter the scourge of war. And should deterrence
break down completely, no victory is possible for anyone. <span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In
the case of both challenges, there is no impediment to workable
solutions other than the lack of sufficient political will and the
resistance of powerful special interests—though these are more than
enough to accelerate our drift toward a twin apocalypse. This drift is
perpetuated by a media environment where the indictment of a clownish
conman for a dangerous but ultimately banal conspiracy to steal an
election takes up a quantum more space in the press than more hopeful
stories appearing at the same time, such as the<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2023/08/16/montana-kids-win-historic-climate-lawsuit-heres-why-it-could-set-a-powerful-precedent/%23:~:text%3DAugust%252016%252C%25202023%25204%253A55%2520am%26text%3DThe%2520case%252C%2520Held%2520v.%2520State,Montana%2520Constitution%2520since%2520the%25201970s.&source=gmail&ust=1692370399567000&usg=AOvVaw0iz4ZWAEr3S0CaHaW8VCVv" href="https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2023/08/16/montana-kids-win-historic-climate-lawsuit-heres-why-it-could-set-a-powerful-precedent/#:~:text=August%2016%2C%202023%204%3A55%20am&text=The%20case%2C%20Held%20v.%20State,Montana%20Constitution%20since%20the%201970s." style="color: purple;" target="_blank">children</a>,
exercising political will at its finest, demanding that the state of
Montana live up to its constitutionally guaranteed environmental
protections.<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><span class="im"><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Even
as we drift, a new idea has been pressing into our collective mind for
almost a century: the fates of everyone on the planet are intertwined.
This was always true, but now we know it both through the science of
ecology, and through the poetry of seeing the curve of Earth from space.
We’re all in this together. We have only one small home, in the shape
of a sphere, and a sphere has only one side. We are all on the same
side.<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">What
I do to conserve energy, or waste it, in my local situation affects
everyone else globally, and vice versa. My security is only as strong as
the reliability of the circuits and wires in all the nuclear bombs out
there, only as strong the training and restraint of the people who
maintain them at the ready, only as sure as the communication systems
that may be vulnerable to error or misinterpretation, only as healthy as
Montana’s willingness to phase out coal. The Golden Rule that appears
in all the major world religions turns out to have deep practical,
logical, and scientific implications that call for a profound change in
the way we think and act.<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Our
radical interdependence has been reinforced by our explorations of deep
space by the Hubbell and Webb telescopes. Everything on earth, human,
plant, rock, or the miracle of water, derives from atoms forged in the
furnaces of stars. Everything is part of the same emergent story that is<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://phys.org/news/2023-07-age-universe-billion-years-previously.html&source=gmail&ust=1692370399567000&usg=AOvVaw3yRnS4eMRyPDTYRhMXg0Uh" href="https://phys.org/news/2023-07-age-universe-billion-years-previously.html" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">26.7 billion</a><span> </span>years old. We all come from the same place and face the same fate together.<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><span class="im"><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">But
our thinking has not caught up to such fundamental principles. We
remain religiously sectarian and politically factional, blind to a more
planetary vision of our self-interest. The hollowness of our avoidance
has become a cavern in which we all sit passively, waiting for experts
to find us a way out.<span> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">And
there are experts. We know a lot about how to resolve our conflicts
nonviolently. We know more than we ever did about how to communicate
clearly, how to share our separate assumptions across languages and
cultures to ensure understanding. We can model possible futures with our
computers. With their help we can see how the potential of nuclear
winter renders the whole enterprise of the nuclear arms race irrelevant
at best, malevolent in fact.<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p><span class="im"><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">But
even the most knowledgeable and experienced establishment experts (as
one of the most revered, Henry Kissinger, admits) have no idea what will
unfold once the chaos of conventional war, say, between the United
States and China over Taiwan, escalates to the nuclear level. There
isn’t a single general or statesman on Earth who can predict what will
happen, let alone control it to any one party’s advantage. This reality
in itself points to the only solution: survival requires us to go to war
against war itself.<span style="font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px;"></span></p></span>In
the same way the global climate emergency also invites us to go to war
against real enemies like rising levels of greenhouse gases and ocean
temperatures, and to mobilize on the level of urgency that the allied
powers did during World War II, when our leaders knew that citizens were
waiting to be called to sacrifice for a larger cause. The decimation of
Lahaina has brought out that spirit of cooperative good will—can we
summon a similar spirit to prevent global conflagration and build a
world where children can flourish?Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-30730763325963258422023-07-23T10:21:00.004-07:002023-07-23T10:21:44.639-07:00Mobilize and Live<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“We’ll
go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it
wasn’t cost-effective.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">—Kurt
Vonnegut</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">One summer when I was
in college I boarded a so-called “student ship” for Europe. This slightly
down-at-the-heels craft was called the “Groot Beer” (big bear), run by the
Holland-America line, and it took eight days to cross the Atlantic. The “Groot
Beer” had been built as a so-called “Liberty Ship” during World War II, one of
2700 such vessels designed to keep arms, men and goods crossing to Europe in
spite of the deadly depredations of German U-Boats. The average time to
construct these 450-foot steel ships was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thirty
days</i>, and the fastest time was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">four
and a half days</i>! Imagine the urgency, the round-the-clock teamwork of the
designers, welders and riveters, tying together the modular sections, slapping
on paint, and letting another steel giant slip down the runway into desperately
needed service. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This is only one example
of the extraordinary mobilization of resources, talent and will that defeated
the Axis powers. Is there something about us humans 85 years later that
prevents a similar mobilization against our real enemies? We possess vastly
faster and more efficient productive capabilities than those that were
available to Franklin Roosevelt. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But the reality of our personal
and global interdependence has not yet penetrated our minds deeply enough for us
to undergo a similar, now worldwide, mobilization. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Fly over any major city
at night, and you will see lights burning in hundreds of skyscrapers as if
global warming did not exist. Examine the military budgets of the nuclear
powers and you will see trillions of dollars pouring into the renewal of
nuclear arsenals—weapons for a war no one can win. Establishment foreign policy
journals are full of articles about the Ukraine war and its implications for possible
hot conflict with China—themselves also wars no one can win, except maybe the
arms dealers. In the board rooms of the giant fossil-fuel companies and in the
halls of Congress, executives and lobbyists rationalize slowing the inevitable
transition to renewables on the basis of their obligation to maximize benefits
to shareholders. Our chaotic political-media complex masks the dysfunctional
juggernaut of economic and military competition with their own competition for
ratings. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Body CS\)";">We
humans are an odd species. In spite of all our accomplishments, there seems to
be a near-fatal lag between the conditions that threaten us and the actions
required for survival. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The future always belongs to the species that can
adapt successfully to the conditions that surround them. These conditions now
include world-ending weapons and world-stressing heat, floods and storms. Such
transnational challenges dictate the nature of the changes we must make. No
exceptions for any life form on earth, very much including people, rich or
poor. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">President Biden showed his understanding
that we were in a new world when he said in Vilnius a few weeks ago: <span style="color: #404040;">“When others do better, we do better as well—where we
understand that the challenges we face today, from the existential threat of
climate change to building a global economy where no one gets left behind, are
too great for any one nation to solve on their own, and that to achieve our
goals and meet the challenges of this age, we have to work together. The world
is changing. We have a chance to change the dynamic.”</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The eco-philosopher Thomas
Berry insisted that the earth cannot be saved in pieces. </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Anyone
who puts solar panels on their roof benefits the planet as a whole. Anyone who
builds more coal-fired plants to generate electricity degrades the planet as a
whole. My survival and yours depends upon both of us, all of us together, doing
what is necessary for the survival of all, including trees, fish, bees, plants
and rivers, whether you are my adversary or my ally. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Military strategists
warn generals not to fight the last war—in other words, to adjust their
thinking to actual present conditions. But in every war around the world, the
reality is we are fighting that last war, and, to an ever-increasing absurd
degree, it is completely the wrong war. So how do we start to fight the right
war against the right enemy—war against war itself and against global climate catastrophe?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A Peace
Corp volunteer once said something that sounds like the merest bromide but is
profoundly true: “The earth is a sphere, and a sphere has only one side. We are
all on the same side.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pogo said
something similar: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” These snippets of folk
wisdom point the way to survival. Because we are all in the same leaky boat, the
right war begins with a global climate change in the way we think. </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Heeding
Vonnegut, <span style="color: #404040;">we can realize the true
cost-effectiveness of mobilizing against our real adversaries in a way that
leads to survival and even a new flourishing.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 15.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-81343734581727162552022-10-15T18:18:00.001-07:002022-10-16T06:24:51.981-07:00Shame and Hope<br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">The primitive stupidity of
the global “security” system in which we continue to drift sixty years after
the Cuban crisis is beyond shameful. We have known all along that the nuclear
taboo could be broken and that it would lead nowhere good.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">The system has done too
little to incentivize Putin to behave sensibly. Just as Hitler lost touch with
reality, Putin has also. He dehumanizes his adversaries and operates from the
paranoid projection that they will stop at nothing to destroy him. He has
ignored essential moral and practical questions: Is the risk of Armageddon
worth pursuing obsolete imperialist impulses? How could he feel no pity for the
Ukrainian people given the millions of dead that Russia required to resist
Hitler’s imperialism not so long ago? What would international security look
like if everyone behaved like him?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">But the shame is precisely
that everyone <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does </i>use, or in truth
misuse, power in the international community based on the same cynical
principles of force and counterforce which motivate Putin. Nuclear deterrence
is an unworkable and self-destructive system that leads only in one horrible
direction. We are not trying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nearly </i>hard
enough to evolve alternatives, as if we were paralyzed by the challenge of
killing war before war kills us. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">The club, the bow, the gun,
the tank, and the nuclear bomb trace an evolution of violence toward this
moment when war has lost any association with victory. The U.S. and NATO <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could </i>stop the Russian military in its
tracks, just as the U.S. could annihilate China should it attack Taiwan, but
the exercise of such ultimate force bears a serious chance of transforming much
of the globe into a radioactive smoking ruin. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">Shame on Mr. Putin for his callous
violence and Orwellian rationalizations. Shame also on the greed of arms
manufacturers and their political lobbyists. Shame on the diplomats who offer
peace only in the form of an iron fist of domination. Shame on all leaders,
both here and abroad, who misuse religion or nationalism or lying demagoguery
to hold on to power. Shame on all of us for our passivity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">Why not try taking 5% of the
trillions we spend on the weapons and enormously expanding international
student exchange programs? Educate these traveling students to the reality that
we’re all in this together and that building transnational face-to-face
relationships is the most important thing they can do both to prevent war and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>address the climate emergency. One generation
of such a program would reduce international tensions with infinitely more
effectiveness and infinitely less cost than nuclear deterrence. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">Such exchanges could and
should be put in place immediately for the military leaders of nations,
allowing them to become friends, share the truth that the only way to win is
not to play, and return home more prepared to restrain the shameless schemes of
their civilian masters.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">The 1929 Kellogg-Briand
Treaty outlawing all war has never been revoked, though it has been honored
more in the breach than the observance. It was signed by, among others, the
U.S. (the Senate ratified it 85-1!), China, and the Soviet Union. While the
Pact abysmally failed to outlaw war, the treaty is a stirring record of
aspiration. Responsible leaders understood the futility of war and the
reasonableness of doing everything possible to prevent it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">The present equivalent of the
Kellogg-Briand Pact is </span><a href="https://www.icanw.org/"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;">The United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons,</span></a><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> ratified so far by
59 countries, even if none of them are nuclear weapons states. Nuclear weapons
are now illegal under international law, and the world is waiting for the nine
nuclear powers to come to their senses.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 22.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-60858273482955637212022-09-27T08:20:00.000-07:002022-09-27T08:20:03.617-07:00More Unites Us Than Divides Us<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">This
summer my daughter and I had the privilege of running the entire Grand Canyon
of the Colorado from Lake Powell to Lake Mead. There were thirty people on our
two rafts, many from states like Texas and Oklahoma. We were looking forward to
evening campsite conversations with citizens holding political convictions
different from our own. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">The
conversations never happened. A few offhand remarks quickly made it clear who
thought the presidential election of 2020 had been stolen and who believed it
had a legitimate winner and loser. By tacit agreement any discussion of
religion or politics became a threat to the relaxed vibe of the river
experience. And so we lost an opportunity for dialogue across our political
divide, in the perfect setting of a national park owned in common by all
citizens—improbably high cliffs of rosy stone, two hundred dizzying rapids, and
the Milky Way sprinkled across the blackness of the night sky.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">The sour
mutual contempt poisoning our national media has shed a lot of heat but not much
light. The easiest way to monetize the airwaves seems to be a variation on the
old “if it bleeds it leads”: if there’s hating, high ratings. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">Some of
our differences are real and deep—equality and accountability under the law come
to mind, or what truths are self-evident, or abortion, though even that complex
issue has been used by demagogues to stir up potential voters. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">Other
issues seem downright manufactured: are teachers really bent upon “grooming”
children or making them feel guilty about our difficult history of racism? Mr. LePage
was absolutely right when he said that teachers should teach children how to
think and not what to think—99.9% of teachers in Maine or anywhere else would surely
agree.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">Whatever
our differences, mutual contempt will not help us resolve them. It’s only a
short few steps down from that contempt to something infinitely more dangerous:
dehumanization, where we assume that the only solution to our conflicts is to
eliminate the opposition outright. History has shown us the black hole that
lies down that road. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">No
Republican or Democrat is less than fully human. In America or in Lincoln
County, we will only prosper together. Conflicts between values can only be resolved
by never-ending reasoned debate. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">A
typical conflict between two positive values which is both local and national
involves preserving the commons on the one hand and keeping the tax base robust
on the other. At one extreme land is removed from the tax rolls to the point
where community necessities like schools can become insupportable. At the other
extreme we could lose the precious commons that is one of the primary reasons
we choose to live here. There is no clear resolution, only ongoing attempts at
balance.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">What
gets lost in reflexive contempt for those with whom we disagree is the value of
really listening to opposing points of view, which can lead to more inclusive
solutions. Dialogue between those who disagree, like democracy itself, is worth
the risk and hard work to keep it going and keep it civil. The civil resolution
of conflict is just as foundational to a working democracy as the vote. We are
seeing the alternatives in Russia, Iran, Myanmar and far too many other places.
They aren’t pretty. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">We may
not be as far apart as we think. Using a model tested by Chloe Maxmin, we
knocked on doors of Republicans in our town and simply listened to people’s
concerns. Even if we heard things with which we deeply disagreed, we were always
treated with friendly good will. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">But it
also sometimes seems as if politics occupies far too much of our mental
landscape. Even before the mid-terms, we are already deep in into the
presidential sweepstakes of 2024. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;">As the
threat of Covid diminishes, perhaps there will be opportunities in Lincoln
County not only for conversations across party lines, but even robust civil
debate. Maybe we should care less about who might “win” such encounters and
more about how they could strengthen the bonds of community as we get to know
one another post-Covid and, hopefully, post-polarization. Imagine a chicken
barbeque or lobster bake where Democrats <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and<u>
</u></i>Republicans met together in celebration of civic engagement and the
privilege of living in such a beautiful corner of our small planet.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></i></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-59189877657532345482022-09-27T08:19:00.002-07:002022-09-27T08:19:08.163-07:00War Is Obsolete<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We have communicated
directly, privately and at very high levels to the Kremlin that any use of
nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for <span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">Russia</span>, that the US and our
allies will respond decisively, and we have been clear and specific about what
that will entail,”— </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jake
Sullivan, National Security Advisor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Here
we are again, possibly as close to a possible nuclear war in which everyone
will lose and no one will win as we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis a half
century ago. A half century! And still the international community, including
dictators, has not come to its senses around the unacceptable risk of nuclear
weapons.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Between
then and now, I volunteered for decades with a non-profit called Beyond War.
Our mission was educational: to seed into international consciousness that
atomic weapons had rendered all war obsolete as a way of resolving
international conflict—because any conventional war could potentially go
nuclear. Sometime after the happy end of the Cold War, the original effort of
Beyond War disbanded, then reconstituted in smaller but still crucial efforts
like Beyond War Northwest, based in Oregon, or larger ones like World Beyond
War. Such efforts are replicated and extended by millions of organizations
around the world that have come to similar conclusions, including big ones like
the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, winner of the Noble
Peace Prize. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">But
all these initiatives and organizations have not been enough to move the
international community to act on the truth that war is obsolete, and so, not
understanding the urgency and not having tried nearly hard enough, the “family”
of nations are at the mercy both of the whims of a brutal self-involved
dictator—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> of an international
system of militaristic security assumptions stuck on stupid.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">As
a thoughtful and smart U.S. Senator wrote to me:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“.
. . In an ideal world, there would be no need for nuclear weapons, and I
support U.S. diplomatic efforts, along with those of our international
partners, to limit nuclear proliferation and promote stability across the
globe. However, as long as nuclear weapons exist, the potential use of these
weapons cannot be ruled out, and the maintenance of a safe, secure, and
credible nuclear deterrent is our best insurance against nuclear
catastrophe. . . </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I also believe that maintaining an element
of ambiguity in our nuclear employment policy is an important element of
deterrence. For example, if a potential adversary believes they have a full
understanding of the conditions for our deployment of nuclear weapons, they
could be emboldened to conduct catastrophic attacks just short of what they
perceive to be the threshold for triggering a U.S. nuclear response. With this
in mind, I believe a No First Use policy is not in the best interest of the
United States. In fact, I believe it could have significant adverse effects
regarding the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as our allies who rely on the
U.S. nuclear umbrella—notably South Korea and Japan—may seek to develop a
nuclear arsenal if they do not believe the U.S. nuclear deterrent can and will
protect them from attack. If the U.S. cannot extend deterrence to its allies,
we face the serious possibility of a world with more nuclear weapon states.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
can be said to represent establishment thinking in Washington and around the
world. The problem is that the Senator’s assumptions lead nowhere beyond the
weapons, as if we are trapped forever in the swampland of deterrence. There is
no apparent consciousness that, given that the world could end as the result of
one misunderstanding or misstep, at least a small portion of our creative
energy and immense resources might usefully be spent on thinking through
alternatives.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Senator would surely argue from his assumptions that Putin’s threats make this
exactly the wrong time to talk about nuclear weapons abolition—like the
politicians who can be counted on after yet another mass shooting to say that
it is not the moment to talk about gun safety reform.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
situation with Putin and Ukraine is classic and can be counted upon to repeat
itself in some variation (cf. Taiwan) absent fundamental change. The challenge
is educational. Without the clear knowledge that nuclear weapons solve nothing
and lead nowhere good, our lizard brains turn again and again to deterrence, which
sounds like a civilized word, but in essence we are primitively threatening
each other: “One step further and I will come down on you with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">catastrophic consequences</i>!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Once
enough of the world sees the utter futility of this approach to security (as have
the 91 nations who, thanks to ICAN’s hard work, have signed the United Nations
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons), we can begin to risk the
creativity that becomes available beyond deterrence. We can examine the
opportunities we have to make gestures that acknowledge the uselessness of the
weapons without compromising our “security”(a “security” already utterly
compromised by the nuclear deterrence system itself!). </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For
example, the U.S. could afford to stand down its entire land-based missile
system, as former Secretary of Defense William Perry has suggested, without any
crucial loss of deterrent power. Even if Putin didn’t feel threatened before
and was just using his apprehensions about NATO to rationalize his “operation,”
he surely feels threatened now. Perhaps it is in the planet’s interest to make
him feel less threatened, as one way to prevent Ukraine from the ultimate
horror of being nuked. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
it’s past time to convene an international conference where representatives of
responsible nuclear powers are encouraged to say out loud that the system
doesn’t work and leads only in one bad direction—and then begin to sketch the
outlines of a different approach. Putin knows as well as anyone that he is in
the same trap as the American soldier in Vietnam who said “we had to destroy
that village to save it.”</span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-29048766923443292252022-09-07T11:45:00.000-07:002022-09-07T11:45:07.553-07:00Nine Stupid Nations<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“Stupid” is the most harsh
and humiliating adjective that can be flung at a person, let alone a
nation-state. What’s the usual response to being called stupid? Nothing
positive. We just go into reaction and resistance.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">I’m sorry, but there is no other
word to describe the obstinate refusal of the nuclear powers to cooperate to
dismantle their nuclear arsenals at the same time the climate emergency sweeps
across the world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">According to </span><a href="https://www.icanw.org/spending_report"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">ICAN,
the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons</span></a><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">, in 2021 the nine nuclear nations spent a total of
$82.4 billion on their nuclear programs—$156,841 a minute. The ultimate driver
of this profligate, irrelevant, dangerous spending turns out to be: profit,
shored up by $117 million in lobbying.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">The major rationale the
nations give for keeping their weapons is deterrence. But did they deter Putin
from his (stupid!) invasion of Ukraine? They did not. Did they deter 9-11? They
did not. And should deterrence break down, as it almost inevitably will unless
we change, instead of victory by any one party to conflict, the outcome would at
best be nuclear winter that leads to the starvation of most of the world’s
population, and at worst a devastation that ends the human experiment
altogether. Tolerating such a “security” system surely qualifies as the
ultimate stupidity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">The United States was the
biggest spender on nuclear weapons in 2021: $44.2 billion. It’s as if the left
hand of “defense” has no idea of the real threats to our strength and security
over on our right hand (dangerous heat waves, anyone? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thousand year floods? Fires which devour whole
towns?).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Pakistan is one-third
underwater. Yet they spent over a billion dollars on their nukes in 2021.
India’s spending was equal to Pakistan’s, even as parts of India become too hot
to work outside in daylight. China, Russia, France, Israel, Britain, North
Korea—all face daunting climate challenges that are becoming existential
threats.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Who will be the first nuclear
nation to admit this out loud? To make perfectly safe unilateral gestures of
good will like openly bringing into port a nuclear submarine or standing down
some land-based missiles? To build a political consensus among their
constituents that we are on a road to nowhere and must make a major shift? To
turn a deaf ear to lobbyists who seductively pretend to represent “security”
when in fact they represent omnicide? To convene an international conference
toward abolition? Such a conference would be built upon two well-understood
principles: A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought; and the
planet will not be habitable for our grandchildren unless we smarten up and repurpose
that 82 billion a year—and much more—toward solar panels and batteries and wind
turbines and geothermal plants—for our common security as a planet. Meanwhile,
stupid is as stupid does.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-48191060667417395772022-09-06T12:31:00.003-07:002022-09-06T12:31:53.026-07:00The Great Ship<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 26.0pt;">The great ship,</span></b><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">
a thin disc a quarter mile wide, had hovered for a month in geosynchronous
orbit over the Earth, invisible, undetectable by any human device. Those on
board, citizens from a planet in the Andromeda galaxy, were finishing up the
observations planned for this particular flyby (these occurred every Earth
decade). They gathered on the bridge for a last conference before departure. Through
gigantic windows they could view the ethereal blue curve of the planet under their
scrutiny.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“Never in all our
explorations have we observed a more striking opposition between gorgeous
beauty and the degree of the trouble this particular planet finds itself in. So
tempting to break the solemn rule of the Intergalactic Federation not to intervene.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“Let’s begin with nuclear
weapons. Humans are inherently tribal, but the destructive magnitude of their arsenals
has raced ahead of their tribal mind-set, accelerating a fear-based “we
build/they build” cycle.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“The possibility of nuclear
winter has only partially penetrated military strategy, not enough to cause
their generals to take a second look at the collective assumption that more is
better.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“The war in Ukraine and the
tensions over Taiwan have caused a ratcheting up of polarization, intensifying
the illusion that nuclear weapons are the only way to deter attack—where in
fact the reality is that deterrence has not prevented aggressions like the
terrorist assault on New York City, or the invasion of Ukraine.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“Humans remain blind to the
reality that the deterrence system itself could actually become the cause of a
war no one can win and no one wants, because they assume deterrence will work
perfectly for all time. They refuse to take into account inadvertence, human or
computer error, or the confusion when tensions escalate out of control. And so
far the nine nuclear powers cannot find a way beyond their fear of letting down
their guard. ”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“What about the United
Nations?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“It has had moments of
effectiveness, but the structure of the Security Council is self-cancelling
when it comes to the really big issues, on account of the veto muscle of the
superpowers.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“Humans participate in
millions of non-governmental organizations working toward abolition. One of the
most effective is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which
is working to get more and more nations to sign on to a total ban through the
United Nations Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“The organization with
possibly the greatest potential of all to make a difference is something called
Rotary. It boasts 1.3 million participants in 33,000 clubs in 172 different
nations. Many of their members are business people, with a strong interest in
the relationship between peace and economic prosperity. They have the right
values and a culture of good will and problem-solving that is consistent across
national boundaries. They are effective. If they got behind the U.N. Treaty,
pressure would increase on the nine nuclear nations to rethink their policies.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">“Let’s pray they rise to the
occasion.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20.0pt;"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-75343760674256922502022-08-03T09:20:00.006-07:002022-08-04T06:43:50.737-07:00Beyond the Mulish, Look to the Stars<p> </p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Nancy
Pelosi’s stopover in Taiwan may be brave or foolhardy, but the Chinese
reaction so far (lots of live-fire weapons drills close to the island
nation, along with acts of cyber-sabotage) suggests how threatened the
government of the Peoples’ Republic of China feels.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman even suggested that her visit
could touch off WW3. It’s a measure of the strangeness of political
“face”<span> </span> (we denigrate the Chinese preoccupation with
“face,” as if our “credibility” did not amount to exactly the same
thing) when the diplomatic visit of a lone government official can
become the kind of spark that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
played in setting off WW1. But almost any inadvertency could start WW3,
because deterrence, to “work” (until it doesn’t “work” that is) requires
hair-trigger preparedness.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">It’s an outrage, it’s evil, it’s incredibly stupid, and it ought to be illegal under international law. Oh, wait a minute, it<span> </span><i>is</i>illegal
under international law. See the Kellogg-Briand pact against war, in
force since 1929; the treaty on Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (NPT), in
force since 1971; and also the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition
of Nuclear Weapons (<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family: georgia,serif;">TPN</span>W) in the process of being ratified by a majority of the world’s nations and having the force of international law<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/&source=gmail&ust=1659706994755000&usg=AOvVaw1wgPe47SExpP6wO3LHC6gY" href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">applicable to all</a>since 22 January 2021.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Democratic
nuclear powers rationalize their weapons as good because their
governments are representative, but in reality, world-ending weapons are
all world-ending, not “good” nuclear weapons because they are in the
hands of good people or “bad” nuclear weapons because they are in the
hands of totalitarian dictators. The catastrophe resulting from
escalating into even a limited nuclear war would render such a
distinction meaningless.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Nobody,
including both the non-democracies and the democracies, wants war.
Meanwhile the deterrence system remains a holocaust waiting to happen
that would dwarf the Nazi Holocaust. Nuclear policy consists of mulish
refusal of nuclear nations to come together in their own self-interest
and move beyond obsolete, unworkable games of chicken. <span> </span>All
these smart people interested in wielding power seem blind to the
reality that it is perfectly feasible technologically to verifiably,
reciprocally reduce nuclear weapons to zero, thereby raising humankind's
chances of survival considerably.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
merciless and pointless invasion of Ukraine and the equally pointless
war China threatens to make on Taiwan (or the second Gulf war for that
matter) indicate a profound sickness in power dynamics—the failure to
act upon the truth that we are all in this together on one small planet,
and we either are going to destroy everything or learn to get along and
save everything. The cries of the hungry and displaced are not cries
for trillions of dollars to be spent in endless arms renewal.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">President Biden is a good, decent public servant, but he presides over what<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/review/thermonuclear-monarchy-by-elaine-scarry.html&source=gmail&ust=1659706994755000&usg=AOvVaw1oHr9IzO4TP3_yQCu0h2hJ" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/review/thermonuclear-monarchy-by-elaine-scarry.html" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">Elaine Scarry</a><span> </span>calls a thermonuclear monarchy, identical to the nuclear monarchies of oligarch-dictators like Putin and Xi Jinping.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Where
is citizen mobilization around a larger vision of self-interest that
would yield servant leadership at the top? Limitless egocentricity
insists that the whole nuclear system continue merely for a few men to
preserve their power. In the U.S. this egocentricity manifests of course
in the phenomenon of Trump, who identifies with dictators and wouldn’t
mind being one.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
misunderstanding of power dynamics on the part of these leaders, the
utter failure to see past the short-term to the actual state of the
Earth at this moment in the great unfolding story of the human
experiment, is breathtaking.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Mulishness,
even if it is an insult to mules, may be the word to describe this
complete misunderstanding, this narrowness of focus on remaining in
power at all costs, including the casual willingness to use even nuclear
threats in defense of that power. When leaders try to maintain a
deterrent system which can fail at any moment for the flimsiest of
reasons, the far, far greater power of nuclear weapons is going to
inevitably come back to bite us all in our collective butts with its
poisonous fangs.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">When
it comes to the environment, the reality of our oneness as a species
has begun to penetrate, but not nearly far enough into the collective
soul to make the necessary difference. The ecophilosopher<span> </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://thomasberry.org/quote/the-great-work-our-way-into-the-future/&source=gmail&ust=1659706994756000&usg=AOvVaw23ZEUIPN-Mlbm892CVVFx4" href="https://thomasberry.org/quote/the-great-work-our-way-into-the-future/" style="color: purple;" target="_blank">Thomas Berry</a><span> </span>asserts
that this moment on the planet, the radical degradation of our oceans,
our air, our soil, along with the rapid extinction of thousands of
species of birds and insects and other forms of life, represents the end
of the 65<span> </span><i>million<span> </span></i>year period of the Cenozoic, which began with the demise of the dinosaurs.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Our
energy as a species must now be focused upon bringing the whole Earth
community together into a new moment of creative collaboration, which
Berry has called the Ecozoic. That task far transcends the obsolete
power dynamics, based in fear, hate and helplessness, that energizes not
only the leaders of too many nations but too many of their followers as
well.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Ultimately nuclear weapons and environmental disaster represent an identical misunderstanding <span> </span>of our interdependence with each other and the biosystem.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">We
are, as Berry says, at the end of an old, unworkable story. The new
story, whatever form it may take, involves the harnessing of our
creative energies in the context of forces infinitely larger and more
mysterious than the political ego.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 22px; margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">As
one example of what might encourage us to move safely into the future,
we need look no further than the Webb telescope—to the cooperative
spirit displayed by scientists from 14 nations who realized the project.
Even more importantly, let us look to the vision the Webb reveals of
our place among hundreds of billions of galaxies. We humans are an
integral part of 13.85 billion years of creativity. We are the universe
looking at itself in wonder. That wonder has the potential to dissolve
our obstinate mulishness, re-energizing our politics, our economics, our
religious convictions, and our understanding of self-interest.</p><p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-81167510917038972432022-07-13T13:34:00.003-07:002022-07-19T15:30:01.766-07:00July 12, 2022<p>On Tuesday July 12, as the horrors of war in Ukraine ground on,
chewing up soldiers and civilians alike in its indifferent maw, the
January 6 Committee held yet another hearing that tied the
pathologically narcissistic Mr. Trump ever closer to a conscious
conspiracy to violently subvert our election process, a conspiracy that
resulted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/us/politics/jan-6-capitol-deaths.html">at least seven</a> deaths and many more injuries and ruined lives.</p>
<p>But if we saw Putin and Trump each misusing power that unleashed
unnecessary death and havoc, on that same ordinary day we also saw
humans at their extraordinary best. Approximately 20,000 scientists from
all over the world celebrated as they shared with us some of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmMRMIE3MGw">first images</a> downloaded
from the Webb telescope, or, as they would like it called, either the
JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) or the Webb Observatory.</p>
<p>It took a quarter of a century of highly technical creative work,
involving 14 countries, $9.7 billion, and most of all a scientific
spirit of cooperation that sadly feels far rarer than it ought to be on
our small planet, to put those microscopically aligned mirrors millions
of miles out beyond the distortions of our atmosphere. Three hundred
forty-four procedures, “points of failure,” any one of which gone wrong
would have completely halted the mission, had to go exactly right over
the deployment period of 30 days. And every one of them did, including
the launch of the reliable Arianne rocket, the intricate unfurling of
the layers of protective foil that keep the instruments from
overheating, and the mind-bogglingly complex imaging technology that has
now begun to send back crystal-clear images of the early universe, a
gift to all of us on earth.</p>
<p>Clearly the universe brought to us by the Hubble and now the Webb is
so huge and so numberless in its stars and galaxies that it is
impossible that we are alone here. There are <i>400 billion</i> planets <i>just in our own galaxy, </i>among which are six billion that appear to have earth-like qualities<i>, </i>asserts the physicist Brian Thomas Swimme of the Human Energy Project<i>. </i>It is only a matter of time until
contact happens between us and other forms of sentient life somewhere
out there. Given the dire state of our planet, it is tempting to indulge
the fantasy that a benign advanced alien civilization might communicate
to us some pointers about sustainability and war-prevention.</p>
<p>But we can already intuit the kind of advice we might receive from
these hypothetical aliens, over and above any magical new energy
technology they might provide. Surely such advice is perfectly modeled
by the cooperative spirit that made the Webb a reality: the aliens would
tell us that we are pouring money into the useless sinkhole of a
nuclear arms race that will render us extinct unless we stop. That we
are quibbling about who should bear the burden of changing to
sustainable forms of energy. That we are denying that we occupy a single
ecological system of ocean, air, and soil. That our leaders are stuck
in obsolete fantasies of power and control. That we need to redefine
self-interest beyond pointless nationalism, learn to get along, and
share the finite resources our small planet, because our fates are
radically interdependent.</p>
<p>There is a valid moral argument to be made that the $10 billion it
took to design, build and deploy the Webb could have been spent to
ameliorate the many forms of suffering endured down here on earth. But
the counter-argument is that we desperately need living examples of
high-risk/high-gain cooperation toward common goals that point the way
toward how realistic and feasible it is for us to ease our global
suffering. The resources are available to do <i>both</i> the Webb <i>and</i> feed
the starving, but we continue to siphon them off into ill-conceived
projects like the Lockheed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ($1.7 trillion) or
the <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57240">renewal</a> of the American nuclear arsenal over 10 years ($634 billion)—or the brutal vanity of Russian imperial delusions.</p>
<p>In the light of the stupendous achievement of the Webb, Trump’s
screaming fits as he refused to relinquish power or Putin’s ridiculous
dreams of restoring Russia to 17th century glory look primitive,
infantile, grossly detached from reality.</p>
<p>Putin with his state terror and Trump with his pathetic but dangerous
schemes operate in a context of grievance, fear, and hate. The line
from the song from “South Pacific,” “You’ve got to be carefully taught
to hate and fear,” implies that this infection is hard to catch. Not so;
we are far more vulnerable to it than the most contagious Covid
variant. I have to inoculate myself constantly against it, as perhaps
this column already demonstrates. These self-centered leaders give me
raving fits of indignation. The Webb story on the other hand is,
refreshingly, one of detached, open curiosity. Does this open and
curious attitude have any implications for our political culture? I hope
so.</p>
<p>We can look upward and outward from the echo-chamber of despair,
greed, fear, and cynicism that mark our era. We can dare to set new
planetary goals—feeding all the hungry, finding homes and work for
refugees, demonstrating the advantages of representational government,
and deploying the technologies of wind, solar, and battery to move
beyond fossil fuels. The scientists that pulled off the Webb have
provided the most powerful possible example of setting a high goal and
then learning how to work together to achieve it.</p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-88707265880978952452022-07-06T07:50:00.003-07:002022-07-06T07:50:23.512-07:00 The Nuclear Superpowers and True Self-Interest<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br /><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">A number
of nuclear strategy </span><a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-04-19/new-nuclear-age"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">experts</span></a><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> have agreed that the only
sensible response to China’s alarming new buildup of nuclear weapons is for the
U.S. itself to build more and better weapons. The apparent purpose of this
buildup on our part is first to ensure that our deterrent is ironclad, and
second it is argued as the only viable way to force the Chinese (and perhaps even
the Russians, eventually) to the arms control table. After all, it worked
before, when President Reagan outspent the Russians and helped end the first
cold war.</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">There
are three factors suggesting that this supposedly thoughtful establishment
policy is performatively contradictory and growing more so year by year, decade
by decade.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">First, there
is the dark paradox of having the weapons at the ready on hair-trigger precisely
so that they will never be used. It is already a kind of miracle that we have
been able to make it through decades of nuclear confrontation without making a
fatal mistake (though the </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">catalog</span></a><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> of known near-misses is
profoundly sobering); how much longer can our good fortune last? As the
delivery vehicles move from supersonic to hypersonic, windows of decision become
ever smaller and opportunities for misinterpretation ever larger.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Second, nuclear
winter. Carefully designed computer models predict that it would only take
about a hundred detonations over large cities to raise tons of soot into the
upper atmosphere sufficient to cause a global freeze that would destroy most
agriculture for a decade. This inconvenient truth not only cancels out any
advantage afforded by competitive numbers of warheads but also throws
deterrence strategy in general into disarray. If one hundred weapons can kill
the planet, what’s the point of thousands more? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">And
third, opportunity costs. Together, the three superpowers are planning
trillions in spending to upgrade their arsenals both in terms of quantity and
“quality” (reliability, speed, ease of launch, variety, precision etc.) when
the world is crying out for funds to feed the starving, find homes for
refugees, vaccinate against Covid, get beyond fossil fuels, and heal a degraded
environment.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">If
nuclear weapons could resolve the present tensions over Taiwan and in Ukraine,
someone would presumably already have used them. But we all know that these
weapons are completely useless as part of a winning military strategy. The game
is up, but because of the international obsession with credibility, the game continues,
no matter how meaningless, crazy, immoral, criminal, silly, and stupid ordinary
citizens around the globe are convinced that it is. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">From the
institutional perspective of nuclear nations, obviously the system of nuclear deterrence
is not seen as stupid, because each nuclear power is certain it would be
subject to blackmail if it showed weakness by any unilateral disarmament
initiative. Without the U.S. nuclear deterrent, perhaps the Chinese would more
likely risk invading and subsuming Taiwan, or Putin would be even less
restrained in his push for empire than at present. These suppositions do not
even include the self-perpetuating momentum provided by the profit motive of
the arms manufacturers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
nuclear nations are stuck in a system which has no exit, no good outcome—unless
they realize their common interest in change. As of today 66 nations have comes
to their senses and ratified the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons, good news for all of us.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">What
will drive the 9 nuclear nations toward the realization that they and their
citizens share <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">together </i>a probability
of annihilation unless they move <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">together
</i>toward reciprocal, verifiable arms control? But someone must make the first
move that initiates a possible virtuous circle. Why not the U.S.? As former
Secretary of Defense Perry suggests, we could retire our entire land-based
fleet of ballistic missiles without any loss of security. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">The
Chinese are said to be unwilling to engage in disarmament talks at the moment.
But things can change as the self-interest of nations changes. For example, the
Chinese have a demographic problem: their rate of population increase is </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-population-is-about-to-shrink-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-famine-struck-60-years-ago-heres-what-it-means-for-the-world-176377"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">falling fast</span></a><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> due to their one child policy a
generation back. How might that reality affect their strategic priorities?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;">Strategists
know that the arms race and the unfolding of current events in general is an
ever-surprising unstable state. But it is clearly difficult for them to look
down the time-stream and see that unless we change the nuclear paradigm by
aggressively building agreement around the futility of the game, there is a
waterfall ahead toward which the world is drifting. Nuclear arms control will
inevitably take place in a context of conflicts large and small, including
apparent Chinese intransigence and continuing war in Ukraine. But once
strategists disenthrall themselves of the supposed necessities of deterrence, a
new picture of a shared self-interest in moving beyond the nuclear age may come
into focus. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-78934782277786686152022-07-03T16:58:00.003-07:002022-07-03T16:58:20.279-07:00The Lost Conversation<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Eight
days of rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with my daughter
promised to be an exceptional experience. Introducing myself to a fellow voyager,
a Texan, I joked that surely Texas wasn’t really planning to secede, because it
would be a pain to have to obtain a visa to visit Austin. This didn’t seem to
go over very well. Perhaps I had overreached. I retreated for the rest of
the trip into an affable neutrality.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Turns
out others did the same. There would be an occasional dig at Biden’s senility, or
a whisper about Trump’s criminality, but soon a taboo began to govern the
otherwise warm and caring sociability of our group. Even though we were a
diverse assembly of thirty people, gay and straight, black and white, aged 9 to
81, a freewheeling dialogue about politics or religion in the group at large was
strictly off the conversational table. In spite of us all being citizens of one
country floating down wild rapids together in our country’s most magnificent
national park, on a deeper level we remained as alienated as groundhogs and
gardeners.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
that was fair enough as far as it went: people had paid for a challenging
outdoor adventure, not a seminar on current events or conflicting
epistemologies. Both of which continued to unfold at top speed without us.
While we were without internet in the Canyon, Roe was overturned, and the poised
young assistant to Mark Meadows tied the ex-President ever closer to the
planning of the January 6<sup>th</sup> insurrection.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Progressives
opened political conversations among themselves and no doubt conservatives did
also. But because I find loyalty to the ex-President or to gun rights so
mysterious, as a progressive I would have welcomed some sort of dialogue with opposing
views, though we all sensed it was a bridge too far. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What we
did have in common was the experience of the river and the canyon. Sleeping
outside in the dry 90 degree heat at night, we shared the closeness of the
stars ringed by looming black towers of stone, stars that included a spiral arm
of the Milky Way, a faint mist of light that feathered across the more familiar
constellations.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of
our participants was heard to assert that creation began 6000 years ago. During
a hike up a small side-canyon, our guides pointed out a visible manifestation
of the Great Unconformity, where quartz-like crystals rested directly on
schist, indicating a geological gap, an erosion of evidence of a billion and a
half years of change. My daughter, a trained biologist, was over the moon to
have found a small rock with fossil ancestors of sea stars compressed into it before
there was even a canyon at all but only layers of sediment spread out under a
vast shallow sea. </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The scientific
evidence of a 13.85 billion-year unfolding from matter to cellular life to
mammals with a capacity to care for their offspring seems to erase a lot of
unnecessary conflict between science and religion—again a rich possible theme
for a dialogue that never was. The factions in our group seemed fatally
inhibited, perceiving each other as an immovable “they.” </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Still,
there were unmistakable “we” experiences. Midway down the river came one that
topped even the raft-swallowing green rapids and the mile-high stepped cliffs
glowing in the morning sunlight. We had stopped at yet another dry
side-channel. After a short hike up through narrowing walls of smooth stone,
with no advance warning, we came upon a string quartet playing Elgar!
Waterproofing their instruments, the musicians had arrived safely by raft to concertize
in this most wildly improbable of venues.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
music drew us into the larger conversation of the universe with itself: an
enigmatically self-organizing system had crushed and melted and swirled titanic
masses of rock, which over hundreds of millions of years sank below and rose again
above great seas, leaching out elements that combined into the first forms of
cellular life—life that became self-sentient and sawed down other woody forms
of life to fashion cellos to play notes derived from harmonies already built
into the cosmos, harmonies drawn forth into distinct combinations by the mind
of Bach or Elgar, now conveyed to insect-bitten, sweaty river voyagers by these
generous performers. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Call this
unfolding creative process God or Evolution or what you will, we were in it
together, regardless of the lack of a conversation that might have led to some
affirmation of our group’s interdependence as citizens of one country, or at
least as humans on one planet. Secession from the universe is not an option—even
for Texas.</span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Palatino; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></i><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-10604477812334112752022-05-28T10:50:00.007-07:002022-05-28T12:27:02.644-07:00Welcome, Children<p> </p>Welcome, children, to the world we so-called adults are handing
over to you—a planetary culture of lies and power. The greater the power, the
bigger the lie. The Russian lie that a “special military operation” is not a
war, and the Ukrainians brought this on themselves. The Chinese lie that the
Uyghurs are being well cared for in education camps. The American lies that
Trump actually won re-election, or that the Congress is helpless to do anything
about school massacres. And maybe the biggest lie of all, that real security can
come from having more world-destroying weapons than the other guy.
<p class="MsoNormal"> <br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">American children, welcome to the shame of a country that,
outrageously, requires you to endure lock-down drills against a random lottery
of death for the sake of Second Amendment “freedom.” Those in power fanatically
deny the root cause of massacres, which is, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">obviously</i>,
the sheer number and availability of guns in our country—400 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">million</i> of them. Welcome to a culture that
is beyond embarrassing in its hypocrisy, that fusses and fumes over the rights
of fetal life but is apparently indifferent to your safety in the classroom. Where
an infantile ex-president panders to the NRA by nattering on about mental
illness when he himself is in dire need of intervention for pathological
narcissism. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Children, your classmates keep dying because the pretty obvious
18<sup>th</sup> century meaning of the Second Amendment has been grossly perverted
by that NRA, accommodated by empty suits like Messrs. Cruz and McConnell along
with empty robes like judges Scalia and Thomas and Alito. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">21<sup>st</sup> century gun safety is surely not that
difficult. Adults wishing to exercise their privilege to possess a gun need a
kind of training similar to what the law requires to license, register, insure
and drive a car. Potential gun owners need to be run through an instant national
background check, including at gun fairs, and wait 48 hours, and if no red
flags come up, they can present documents that confirm that they have had
safety training, and then properly register their gun—as long as it’s a
civilian and not a military weapon. It is now technically feasible to render a
gun unusable without its sensing a particular fingerprint, just as we each have
unique keys to our car. These reasonable hoops are a minor inconvenience and
not some slippery slope toward the moment they come to take our guns.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Children, sorry to let you in on a disconcerting aspect of
adulthood: violent power, unaccountable power, leads to lies on every level,
such as: a good guy with a gun is the best antidote to a bad guy with a gun—or
a good guy with a nuclear weapon is the best antidote to a bad guy with a
nuclear weapon. Back in the 1950s when I was a child, we practiced “duck and
cover,” an insult to our budding intelligence, supposedly protective
against a nuclear explosion, but just as disheartening as your lockdown drills.
If we do not change direction on this planet, what is coming will make Uvalde
look like a garden party. Those experts who say that safety lies in having more
weapons than our adversaries forget that there are already more than enough
weapons to destroy life on earth, just as the glut of assault weapons in the U.S. is enough to kill every schoolchild.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We can do better on every level. But only when power becomes
accountable, and that is up to all of us, those who have the privilege of voting
and those who act courageously and resourcefully even without the vote, like
the Russians who risk jail to protest a dirty war. You yourselves have demonstrated
that resourcefulness, such as when Miah Cerrillo, an 11 year old survivor of
the Uvalde massacre, smeared blood on herself, played dead, and dialed 911 for
help. Her fear did not paralyze her the way it paralyzes too many hapless
politicians. Or Zander Moricz, the gay president of his high school class, who gracefully
sidestepped his principle’s ham-handed efforts to censor his use of the word “gay”
by talking instead in his graduation speech about learning to feel pride in his
curly hair.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Children, we are part of a great contest, but it is not the
war that so many politicians and nuclear strategy experts and arms
manufacturers tell you we are fighting. We are in a world war against violence
and monetized hate and unaccountable power, power that rationalizes any lie to
justify itself. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A big part of winning this war for truth and accountability is
our willingness to see in ourselves what we criticize in others. We are all
human and imperfect. When we admit this, our hearts expand enough to feel pity
not only for all the dead children, whether in Uvalde or Mariupol, but even for
the powerful who may never know the joys of servant leadership, of making a
positive difference in the lives of their constituents. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Too many of us hate our enemies more than we love our
children. That fear helps create a planetary culture of bullies who are obsessed
with obtaining the kind of total control that puts them above accountability,
even if it means indifference to the massacre of the innocent, by assault rifle
or artillery or nuclear bomb. It is not a sign of weakness to sit down with
others, even others with very different views, to look searchingly together at
what is our true and shared self-interest. When we do, we can move beyond empty
posturing and begin to see how we might make the world a safer place for children—at
least a world that permits children to live to be adults.</p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2105632239357090594.post-82605704305358482252022-05-19T12:21:00.004-07:002022-05-24T07:27:11.882-07:00Humility<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Humility is endless. —T.S. Eliot</span></i></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Winslow Myers</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Secretary of Defense Lloyd
Austin declared that he wants Russia weakened. Of course he meant militarily
weakened. Still, his words summoned an echo of Versailles in 1918, when the complete
humiliation of Germany planted the seeds for the next world war. Unlike 1918,
we inhabit a nuclear world, where humiliating other nuclear nations may be
infinitely more dangerous. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Putin has done criminal harm
on a colossal scale. But Putin and his minions are not all of Russia. I have
had friendly Zoom conversations with Russians who are just as interested in
peace and representative government as we are. While Putin seems to be far from
interested in democracy, it is hard to imagine that he is not interested in
avoiding nuclear war. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Sharing that interest with
Putin means staying humble about our own faults and refusing simplistic good
guy versus bad guy scenarios. There are no good and bad nuclear weapons.
Everyone is human and fallible. Preventing escalation requires confronting
Putin’s arrogance without humiliating him, even as he fails to humiliate
Ukraine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">It is humbling to admit how
much the U.S. and Russia share in common. First, those in power in our own
country have launched their own imperialist wars with murky motives against
Vietnam, Iraq, and others going back into our distant past. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Second, accountability. The
Russian state does not hesitate to poison or murder its critics without
consequence. But the U.S. also has a systemic accountability problem. Our
police too often get away with racist murder. The richest among us find ways of
paying no taxes at all. No politician has been made accountable for the costs
and consequences of war and torture. Our previous president seems to possess an
impenetrable Teflon coating that repels all attempts at legal accountability
for corruption.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Third, the U.S. and Russia
share delusion and nostalgia, including the delusion that endless arms races
will bring us the security we long for. Putin is soaked in grievance about the
breakup of the Soviet Union and thrives on delusions of restoring Russia to 17<sup>th</sup>
century glory. He has tried to keep his citizens in a state of delusion about
the invasion of Ukraine. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">America too suffers from nostalgic
delusion. Vast numbers of our citizens, encouraged by politicians eager to ride
to power on the whirlwinds of deception, believe nonsense about voter fraud.
Anti-scientific Covid misinformation has led to numbers of deaths higher than
any other nation. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Too many white Christians,
threatened by inevitable demographic change, long for a version of national
greatness that never was, again encouraged by politicians and commentators who
have mainstreamed formerly extremist racist ideas. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">No national culture, whether
in Russia or America or China or anywhere can thrive if it bases its religious
or political principles in fear, lies and exclusion. Just as many in Russia may
be accepting Putin’s delusion that Ukrainians are all Nazis worthy of
extermination, many in the U.S. along with their supposed political
representatives have bought into delusions of conspiracy because they have felt
threatened and humiliated by unaccountably rapid economic and cultural change. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">The U.S. Supreme Court clings
to nostalgic interpretations of a Constitution that was conceived in a
different world. The framers would recoil at the Court’s definition of money as
speech, or if they could see how a gross distortion of the meaning of a
well-regulated militia and the right to bear arms has resulted in a nation
awash in 400 million guns where mass killings are routine. If Democrats and
Republicans stereotyped each other to the extent that those guns were used to
resolve our cultural differences, it would make Ukraine look like a picnic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">American and Russian military
arrogance were equally humbled in Afghanistan. Whoever “wins” in Ukraine, there
will be no genuine victory. War between nations is really civil war. Besides
the harm to the Ukrainian people themselves, the war has caused a global food
crisis, because so many nations depend upon the bounty of Ukrainian
agriculture. Our real challenges, like preventing nuclear apocalypse and
sustaining the biosystem that supports us, transcend both the quarrels of
nations and the quarrels within them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">National pride has
strengthened the arm of Ukrainian resistance. But as Teilhard de Chardin
asserted, “the Age of Nations is past. It remains to us now, if we do not wish
to perish, to set aside ancient prejudices and build the earth.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">We—we the planet—are between
an old unworkable story and an emerging one. In the old story, nature is a
resource to be exploited in support of economic prosperity dependent upon an
illusory model of infinite natural resources, and both nature and other humans are
best controlled according to the principle of might makes right. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">In a possible emerging planetary
story, we have the chance to see that we have more in common than what divides
us, based in the challenges we face together. Tanks, fighter jets and nuclear
missiles—and the greed, hatred and paranoia motivating their endless
deployment—do nothing to address the death of coral reefs, the breakdown of
ocean ecosystems and fisheries, the rise in sea levels, the mass migrations of
refugees. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;">Because our global situation transcends
“us and them,” there’s a relationship between the opposites of humility and
humiliation. Keeping our own faults in mind, we can avoid the arrogant
temptation to humiliate the Russian nation. Both we and they are in need of
radical self-examination. The U.S. may be alienated from Russia at the moment,
but we still need to join each other as soon as we can in both disarmament and
ecological initiatives. Our very lives depend on it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 20pt;"> </span></p>
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mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Winslow Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00419051906906312598noreply@blogger.com0