Author: Kent Busse
I am inherently a very happy person. As a happy person, of course I understand sadness. I share the burdens of the less fortunate, and join reverently in the sober commemoration of this day.
But if I were only a negative, unhappy example, I would not persuade you to be an abolitionist like me. You do not want to follow me in negative thinking. It is only by extending hope in positive outcomes and shared happiness that I can persuade you that we must abolish nuclear weapons totally and forever.
A deceiver will argue that security is the arm of flesh: namely, superior coercive power and dominance. However, either a brief or a thorough examination leads directly to the realization that balance of terror is still terror, and that the real possibility of mutual annihilation does not make annihilation less likely.
Positive understanding teaches that lasting security lies in collaboration and cooperation. In conflict resolution and in ordinary daily enterprise, success is not established by selfish competition and dominance, but rather by the ability to work together toward shared outcomes. Beating our swords into plowshares reconstitutes them as tools of production.
I do not deny outbreaks of irrational and aggressive behavior; instead, I subject them to (a) a social contract (b) governed by reason (c) which leads to mutually agreed and implemented (d) rule of law. The essence of a society is its ability to use this cooperative mechanism to replace internal and external isolation, ignorance and brute force.
Therefore today I call upon you to move beyond preoccupation with the unthinkable, into the realm of a kinder, gentler, existence. I realize that this must begin with me, and I promise you that as you adopt this thought pattern of happiness, you will create and cultivate those associations in which you can persuade those nearest you to join this chorus of expanding circles. When our hearts are pure and our persuasion is effective, it is the summing of these circles that will ultimately carry the day and result in worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons, beginning at home.
May we never take our eyes off the prize, and may our love be so pure that it will indeed bring others into our new day of shared happiness.
copyright © 2010 Kent Busse
I thank Kent for sharing these uplifting thoughts. For 3 decades I lived within blocks of the site of the first man-made self-sustaining nuclear reaction — Enrico Fermi’s under-the-stadium experiment with uranium and graphite, leading to building The Bomb. Back then (1942) he telegraphed Roosevelt, “The Italian Navigator has landed.”
Soon thereafter, the experiment was disassembled and moved to a forest preserve (Argonne) where “if something went wrong” it wouldn’t take out half the city.
As with Columbus, massive devastation followed this discovery. We have yet to put the genie back in the bottle, or move past simply invoking the rhetoric of abolishing weapons of mass destruction made from Enrico’s discovery. The challenge is still there; the stakes are humanity itself.
In the mid 1960s I witnessed the dedication of a huge sculpture by Henry Moore, on the very site of that first “atomic pile.” I urge people to drive by and contemplate it. (Ellis Avenue, between 56th and 57th — straight west from 57th Street Meeting.) The imagery is fittingly ambiguous: one can see an emerging bud coming up from the earth — a sign of life and hope. Or (what most of us see) one can see a skull.
We must never take for granted the existence of nuclear weapons, or assume that The Unthinkable will never happen. Bradford Lyttle, in his “Apocalypse Equation” has shown how a probability of weapons use (intentional or accidental) approaches certainty the longer we live with these monstrosities.
Human inventiveness gave us this threat; human determination — and the Grace of God — can move us to try to undo some of the damage and prevent its reoccurrence.
Those of us in the only nation to have ever used the weapons in war have an especial responsibility to lead the way toward their abolition.