Today I read an article which appeared in this month's (Dec. 2001) issue of Scientific American Magazine titled, "India, Pakistan and the Bomb". The authors speak of 3 to 5 minute missile flight times between targets, effectively keeping fingers near launch buttons. They also estimate that three quarters of a million deaths might result from a 15kTon device exploded over Bombay. I was reminded of this quote;
"Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad...and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations." Rebecca West ,Black Lamb, Gray Falcon
Do you remember the story of how one of the Apollo astronauts was able to put the entire planet Earth behind his thumb? (The directors had Tom Hanks do it as well in the film Apollo 13 )
I think about this all the time. From a distance our great planet is just a little blue dot. Our entire history as well as our future is contained in that little dot. From such a distance our religious, ethnic, and nationalistic differences must seem silly and trivial. All men are more than 99.9% genetically identical. From such a distance we might as well all be considered as clones. From my vantage point, all 6 billion of us are brothers and sisters.
The hatred that brought us 35 to 60 million deaths in the last world war is an insidious virus. It may lie dormant for decades. But when the conditions it requires to flourish return, conditions of nationalistic, racial and religious bigotry, the virus springs back to produce misery on a grand scale.
We can learn to overcome our hatred and bigotry, or we can resume digging graves. But I remind you that for each grave you dig for your enemy, dig one for your family and friends.
Our future is not "out there" in the hands of some god. We've been "out there" and can only look back at that tiny blue dot containing all our love and hope. Obviously, our future is in our own hands.
I've always been ashamed of my natural irrational optimism. My reason agrees more with the wit that proclimed, "Hope deceives more than does cunning". Human history gives me little reason to hope for peace in our future. But a man has no choice but to cling to his hope, even if it is only a thread. My specific hope is that we cultivate the notion that we are all brothers dwelling on a tiny blue dot adrift in the vast emptyness of space, with only each other for comfort. This is my hope for a peaceful New Year.
Michael