Posted by
Steve Smith on
Feb 14, 2012; 7:19pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Peter-van-Uhm-Why-I-chose-a-gun-Video-on-TED-com-tp7279097p7285176.html
"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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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org