Alternatives
The best way to use elemental cosmic powers is ___________________ [fill this in yourself].
“But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for...all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic affection, and citizen’s duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.”
-John Ruskin
Flying on the Moon
“There is one lunar sport that may someday become a major tourist attraction. On the Moon, inside the air-filled domes that the future colonists will erect, a man or a woman could fly like a bird. It would be relatively easy and would probably require little more than bat-like wings attached to wrists and ankles. With these, we could enjoy during waking hours an experience we have known so far only in dreams.
Muscle-powered flight opens up a whole spectrum of sports and games, from straightforward racing to an aerial equivalent of water polo. I can see the time coming, not more than thirty years from today, when the television channels will be dominated by sportscasts from the Moon. The sluggish and lead-footed sports of Earth will seem tame compared with those that could be played on the Moon.
Everything I have said about the Moon applies, in a slightly less exaggerated degree, to Mars. This is the only planet upon whose surface we may be able to venture without elaborate protection. The gravity of Mars is about a third of the Earth’s, or twice the Moon’s. The lunar records I have quoted above can thus be divided by two to indicate what we may expect to achieve on Mars. It’s a pity we cannot practice there first and work our way up to lunar standards. I am afraid a lot of people will break their necks on the Moon, attempting those high jumps and coming down headfirst.”
Arthur C. Clarke, Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!
What is the responsibility of the citizen? “One must describe as graphically as one can the moral reality of war, talk about what it means to force people to fight, analyze the nature of democratic responsibilities.”
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars
“From a distance, I can deny your humanity; and from a distance, I cannot hear your screams.”
Dave Grossman, On Killing
Chemical Weapons
“It was Ahrimanic from the first velvety phut of the shell burst to those corpse-like breaths that a man inhaled almost unawares. It lingered about out of control. When he fired it, man released an evil force that became free to bite friend or foe till such time as it died into the earth. Above all, it went against God-inspired conscience.”
Alan Hanbury-Sparrow
The Heart of Nuclear Power
Any technology can be used for harm or for good. Atomic energy is a perfect example. You can destroy society if it is used improperly, or it can provide clean, cheap energy. Nuclear energy in hospitals is one of the prime methods of curing diseases. X-rays, gamma rays, and positron emissions are invaluable in medicine. Nuclear energy can be used in metallurgy; to study metal defects; to detect secret caches of weapons; and to find terrorist organizations.
The same is true in nanotechnology or cloning or DNA identification. You can use DNA identifications for fingerprinting to protect society, to help in controlling diseases, and epidemics. It may be used to identify where the mad cow disease comes from. On the other hand, you can have a police state based on DNA, because the government can fingerprint every person in the country.
Hydrogen bombs use uncontrolled nuclear fusion, and nobody likes that. But people have been trying to control thermonuclear fusion since 1950, and this could be of great benefit to humanity. There would be cheaper, cleaner energy, without pollution. These fusion reactors are safe. They can’t explode. But it will be decades before even a hint of a promise will work. The benefit of energy is that everyone lives on energy. Ask anyone in the third world if they want more energy, and I guarantee they’ll say yes.
Fusion could be used for space travel. People have tried using mini-nuclear bombs for space travel, but that didn’t prove to be practical. The value of space travel has hardly begun. America has only existed for two hundred years. In 5,000 years we might have the ability to go to different planets, even different solar systems.
There’s tremendous numbers of galaxies—probably billions of galaxies, and each galaxy contains billions and billions of stars. We on earth are just one small solar system in this huge conglomeration. Wouldn’t it be amazing it we could explore the other trillions and trillions of planets which probably exist in the universe?
What’s the value of space exploration? There are two reasons to explore space. The most important and fundamental reason for exploration is that the human being is curious. We want to know what is going on in other places. Curiosity is good. The secondary reasons are practical - we’ll find all kinds of uses. For instance the earth is going to exhaust itself sooner or later, and it would be nice if we could find other place to inhabit.
Benjamin Bederson , retired professor of physics at New York University
Department of Peace
The United States was founded on hope, optimism, and a commitment to freedom. We can once again become a beacon of hope for the world. To do that, we must reject the current administration’s policies of fear, suspicion, and preemptive war.
Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make nonviolence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development for economic and political justice and for violence control. Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament, treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values.
Domestically, the Department of Peace would address violence in the home, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs, and police-community relations conflicts, and would work with individuals and groups to achieve changes in attitudes that examine the mythologies of cherished world views, such as “violence is inevitable” or “war is inevitable.” Thus, it will help with the discovery of new selves and new paths toward peaceful consensus.
--Dennis Kucinich
Mohandas Gandhi on Nuclear Bombs
There have been cataclysmic changes in the world. Do I still adhere to my faith in truth and nonviolence? Has not the atom bomb exploded that faith? Not only has it not done so but it has clearly demonstrated to me that the twins constitute the mightiest force in the world. Before it the atom bomb is of no effect. The two opposing forces are wholly different in kind, the one moral and spiritual, the other physical and material. The one is infinitely superior to the other which by its very nature as an end. The force of the spirit is ever progressive and endless. Its full expression makes it unconquerable in the world. In saying this I know that I have said nothing new. I merely bear witness to the fact. What is more, that force resides in everybody, man, woman, and child, irrespective of the color of the skin. Only in many it lies dormant, but it is capable of being awakened by judicious training.
It is further to be observed that without the recognition of this truth and due effort to realize it, there is no escape from self-destruction. The remedy lies in every individual training himself for self-expression in every walk of life, irrespective of response by the neighbors.”
--Harijan, February 10, 1946
It has been suggested by American friends that the atom bomb will bring in Ahimsa (nonviolence) as nothing else can. It will, if it is meant that its destructive power will so disgust the world that it will turn it away from violence for the time being. This is very like a man glutting himself with dainties to the point of nausea and turning away from them only to return with redoubled zeal after the effect of nausea is well over. Precisely in the same manner will the world return to violence with renewed zeal after the effect of disgust is worn out.
So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages. There used to be the so-called laws of war which made it tolerable. Now we know the naked truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atom bomb brought an empty victory to the allied arms but it results for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.
--Harijan, July 7, 1946