*"Some people say we never use nuclear weapons. The truth is we use
nuclear weapons every day to keep the world safe..."
*/-The Honorable Andrew C. Weber, Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Programs/
*"If you came upon two men in the road with one fist gripping
eachother's collar and the other cocked back ready to strike, but not
yet having struck, would you call that Peace?"
- *The Dalai Lama, Spiritual and (formerly) political leader of the
Tibetan people and a worldwide Buddhist Community
------------------------------------------------------------------------
<rambling personal anecdote>
When the Dalai Lama came to SFe roughly 20 years ago, I joined a
Buddhist friend at a small gathering at the Stupa out on Airport Road.
I had studied Buddhism from a very objective point of view... I had
little if any direct connection to the system of thinking but was
impressed by the mix of objectivity and subjectivity that they seemed to
hold in close juxtaposition. I liked most of the Buddhists I knew. I
identified well with Libertarian's values but found most if not all
arrogant and mean-spirited... Buddhists were nearly the opposite... and
I was strangely attracted.
The Dalai Lama's personal presence, along with his very small entourage
of Monks was impressive... I'd been in the presence of "powerful" and
"important" people (e.g. Bill Clinton, Jack Kemp, Steve Jobs, etc.) but
the serene unself-consciousness of this man and his entourage and their
genuine good humor was nearly overwhelming.
That evening I attended the larger gathering at SF High's auditorium...
shuffling along for nearly an hour as tens of thousands of people,
talking quietly amongst themselves about a range of things from radical
politics to their personal experience as Buddhists or Buddhist-groupies,
to what they had for breakfast (yes, mostly bland, low-fat, healthy
stuff). It was polite, friendly, patient, orderly. I knew some of
these people and I had probably been in line with them at the Paolo
Soleri for a concert or at the grocery waiting to checkout... these were
not all normally quiet, thoughtful, polite, serene people. In other
contexts they might be hooting and hollering or pushing and shoving or
at least snorting impatiently as I fumbled for my change.
At the end of perhaps an hour "speech", the Dalai Lama opened the floor
to questions and there were only a few, almost without exception, on the
inane side... punctuated nicely by his polite and obvious (in
retrospect) answers.
"Are you here to urge the US to bring economic sanctions against China?"
/"I am not interested in violence of any kind and economic sanctions
are a form of violence." /
"Are you going up to Los Alamos to urge them to quit making nuclear
weapons?"
/"I don't believe we have much in common to discuss, if someone
there would like to talk with me, I would be happy to travel there
to talk with them."
/
"But haven't Nuclear Weapons helped to keep the Peace for 50 years?
Don't you have that in common with them? An interest in Peace?"
/"If you came upon two men in the road with one fist gripping
eachother's collar and the other cocked back ready to strike, but
not yet having struck, would you call that Peace?"
/
As I remember it, this ended the questions. We all left the giant
gymnasium as quietly and politely as we entered. There was no loud
chatter to speak of, mostly quiet murmerings and observations about this
and that from his talk and again, from each person's day...
Within a few months, as I remember it... Bill Clinton had just visited
Los Alamos and the Pope visited Denver. These are two other highly
powerful figures. Both of these fellows had multiple layers of
"fanged" security, advance people weeks ahead carefully arranging for
security. Bill flew in on Marine One (or two or three... as all three
arrived flying in low up the Rio Grande in a weaving pattern formation)
with a huge retinue of Secret Service boys and girls. The Pope rode
through the streets of Denver in his bulletproof glass cage atop his
Pope-Mobile. There was no evidence of any security for the Dalai
Lama... perhaps his 3-4 bald-headed monk-friends were secret Ninjas
ready to fly off in all directions at once in Crouching Dragon and
Flying Tiger moves... but even that I think not. The crowds in both
occassions needed a police cordon to keep them back from these
"important men" and there was a mixture of (mostly) cheering and (a tiny
amount of) jeering. This simple contrast made the Dalai Lamas words
ever more poignant...
I came to Los Alamos myself as a young idealist... a bit of a pacifist
in many ways... including being a staunch vegetarian. But I
believed Andrew Weber's story. I believed in Mutual Assured
Destruction (MAD). I believed in the West African Proverb brought to us
by Roosevelt of "Walk Softly and Carry a Big Stick". It had the nice
overtones of isolationism coupled with the ego-enhancer of the big
stick. It sounded like a high road to me in those days. I wasn't
working directly on nuclear weapons myself but I understood that my work
in computer science was only one level of indirection away and was
mostly if not entirely supported financially by the nuclear weapons
program. I thought MAD was at worst a necessary evil.
About the same time as the Dalai Lamas visit, the implications of the
end of the Cold War were sinking in. Los Alamos was no longer allowed
to drop bombs down holes in Nevada and light them off... we were now
spending the same (or higher?) budget on computer simulations... I was
happy to see the enhanced interest in my career choice... and generally
happy to know that the good people of southeast Utah (not to mention Las
Vegas) might not need to worry as much whether one of our "tests" might
go awry and vent more nasty stuff into the air they breathe and the
water they drink. I wasn't a huge anti-nuclear activist or
anything... just aware that the work I was involved in was anything but
benign.
Among the things I was learning as the shadow of the Cold War receded
was how wild and prolific the Soviet Nuclear program had been. Even if
the US was being uber-safe in it's testing, the USSR had taken some
pretty big risks and done a lot of questionable things, the "Arms Race"
while keeping a certain "Cold Peace" had set a very wicked precedent and
probably left some even more wicked consequences.
Another was that I was beginning to meet "real Russian Scientists",
doing a stint reviewing project proposals solicited by the State
Department in their "Keep a Russian Scientist Off the Street" program.
They were mostly humble and thoughtful and many had as little interest
in weapons and warfare as I had, even if they had been working in the
general domain of nuclear weapons. Many were a lot like me, despite the
image of the Angry Bear we'd been given as children and reinforced as
adults.
At this point, It is the US and it's allies who have their fist cocked
back, but have not yet struck. India and China, India and Pakistan are
in a clench like the one the Dalai Lama described... vacillating from
relatively relaxed but wary to highly tense. Israel has had each of
it's Arab neighbors in a once sided Clench for decades, and now is
facing (with ourselves and perhaps Europe) standing in line behind them
in a fresh version of that Clench with Iran. Peace?
I can't claim that our "Big Stick" isn't a good reason that worldwide
violence as retreated to a national or regional (think Korea, SE Asia,
Bosnia, Iraq, Subsaharan Africa, Central America, etc.) level without
blossoming into another international conflict on the scale of WWI and
WWII but I would not call what we've lived under (and especially much of
the rest of the world) *Peace*.
Perhaps it is not in (hu)man's constitution to be at peace with his
neighbors (now all one global village bristling with weapons pointed
akimbo?). But what I saw and heard that evening when the Dalai Lama
visited gave me hope for something better than this, something better
than MAD.
</rambling personal anecdote>
/Why I choose not to own a gun/ (to be shared in another rant another time).
- Steve
*
*//
/
/
On Feb 12, 2012, at 6:23 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
When I spent 2 years at Syracuse University helping 273 draftees
avoid going to the failed Vietnam war, I was completely surprised by
the military: they were smart, willing to listen, and amazingly,
decided to let 273 war protesters not go to the war.
This was in stark contrast with the civilian authorities (the Draft
Board) who were deaf, dumb and blind in comparison.
So this led me to watch this strange TEDx where the talk was on "Why
I chose a gun"
http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_van_uhm_why_i_chose_a_gun.html
-- Owen
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