Varnish on the waffles

...So as encouraging as some signs are, we shouldn't be too encouraged by what has been called a "rising consciousness," because it isn't clear yet that it means a real willingness on anyone's part to change very much...

...May we do absolutely anything in order to survive...

...We got an occasional preacher, who said that nuclear destruction was prophesied, and a couple of young blow-them-all-up sorts, but for the most part people responded with an enthusiasm which was so eager it made it clear to us that a buried anxiety was surfacing...

...That demand is a bit like insisting that the doctor who diagnoses cancer cure it once and for all...

...But this is sophistry...

...Much of Jewish religion blossomed under just such a situation, including the particular variety of Jewish religion which came about because of Jesus...

...It is funny in a dark way that people who find abortion terrible, as I do also, think that the destruction of whole cities full of people can be justified as long as it is done for the sake of the right ideology...

...The problem, however, is not nuclear war but the acceptance of total war- a war which allows the slaughter of civilians- which has made nuclear war a question more of style than substance...

...What does it mean to say that we are willing to use nuclear weapons...

...And, as Schell understands, given the state of technology a war today means the possibility and under some conditions the great probability of nuclear war...

...military spending, and city councils in every section of the country have passed resolutions calling for a freeze on the production of nuclear weapons...

...But this begs the more important question...

...Apparently...

...What Schell says is simple and necessary...

...More recently there have been conservative objections to the level of U.S...

...It may be that nothing less than a thorough change in the way we see our relationship to government will keep us from ending the world...

...But we have to remember that in relatively recent times the loyalty which ideology demands has given us genocides of Armenians, homosexuals, Gypsies, handicapped men and women and children, most of the Jews of Eastern Europe- and most recently, the non-Khmer Rouge Cambodians, whose murderers are now supported by the Reagan administration for reasons which ought to give his own ideologists pause...

...JOHNGARVEY...

...We need to change...

...Almost all of the people who stopped by the booth were in favor of an end to the arms race...

...Putting negative feelings about being blown up into practical form isn't as easy as it would be in a world run by the sane...

...But terror of that ending, sensible as it is, has been challenged by conservative Christians who have argued that opposition to nuclear weapons is based on the idea that there is nothing worse than dying...

...Nuclear apocalypse has become an appropriate metaphor for us because, following the horrors of World War Two, the death camps, the fire-bombing of Dresden, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we realized that human beings are capable of doing anything, obeying any order, committing any a-trocity in the name of any ideology or national allegiance...

...It was good to see so many people bear witness to the fact that they don't want to see the human race kill itself...

...It is the finality of nuclear war which terrifies us...

...The death of a child by napalm is as final and complete as the vaporization of a city...

...When I saw photographs of children on fire in Vietnam I realized, as I am sure many parents did, that it was an accident that they were not my own...

...As long as we gather under systems which depend upon allegiances smaller than the fact of our shared humanity, and as long as we assume the right of those who wind up, by whatever means, in charge of those groupings to kill those who oppose their ambitions (something we assume any time we accept the idea that anyone ought to kill or die for his country), we will have wars...

...We see an interior collapse which seems to be without any limit or end, and we see the external possibility of ending it all in one vast white silent flash...

...Republican doctors and lawyers contributed money and signed nuclear freeze petitions...

...After pointing out that everyone dies anyway, they charge that opponents of the arms race believe that survival means everything, and that death is the worst thing that could happen to anyone...

...Not that it isn't good to see people beginning to understand that their nation's systems of defense could end the possibility of life on earth- that awareness is certainly better than the sleepy acquiescence we have been used to, the crazy willingness to trust the people in charge which has marked the time from Hiroshima to the present...

...All sorts of concerns are sucked into that real possibility, based on our honest knowledge of what we are willing to do, the way light and time are said to be pulled into the density of a collapsed star, a black hole...

...If death is not the worst thing that can happen (and I agree that it is not...

...We can get fascinated by the special effects approach to nuclear war- but if we do we ought to remember that the non-nuclear fire-bombing of Dresden raised the surface temperature of that city to one comparable to that of the surface of the sun, made it hotter than Hiroshima...

...but then what...

...Waking up requires a readjustment, and where the readjustment involves something so vital as our survival as a species, it will have to be a profound one- more profound than a simple understanding that it is technically possible for us to kill off everyone else...

...At the end of The Fate of the Earth Jonathan Schell raised questions and gave, no simple answers, and was criticized for doing so...

...Some critics of Schell's point of view seem to want a strategy which will allow our nation-states to hold on to everything they now think they have, including the notion that their citizens ought to be loyal to them, and at the same time move towards a situation in which they would no longer threaten one another...

...A nuclear freeze, new treaties, a build-up of conventional trpops to replace the deployment of nuclear warheads- these things only postpone a horror which will remain inevitable as long as we continue to think the way we think...

...One objection is that a cut-back in nuclear defense means more troops in Europe, which means the possible return of conscription, the last legal form of bonded servitude...

...Proponents of arms control disagree on the freeze proposals and the value of SALT...

...Loyalty has given us our times, with all of its bloodbaths...

...It is encouraging...

...Sometimes a metaphor can take over and do extra duty, appear to be more than it is and, in this case, encourage us where we have no business being encouraged...

...Jesus rather explicitly separated himself from those who supported the status quo and from those who thought of opposition to the status quo as a problem to be solved in terms of power...

...Some conservatives have argued that opposition to weapons of total destruction is nearly a sign of a lack of faith, because such anxiety betrays a lack of faith in the reality of a life beyond this limited, anxious, earthly one...

...But this sudden surge of feeling isn't much more than turning over in bed, a twitch during a nightmare...

...That understanding is a beginning, but that's all it is...

...the end of the world is not a stupid concern, especially when you have all the equipment at hand to make it possible...

...During Ground Zero Week in my own home town a group of people from various local peace organizations (Pax Christi, Quakers, members of the Church of the Brethren and others) distributed literature about the arms race on the public square...

...We can do what only God was thought to be capable of doing: we can end the world...

...The terror isn't unreasonable...

...When our children are more, not less, cynical about governmental authority the world will be safer...

...It is easy to shove the kid around in a stroller with a sign around his neck which says "war is not healthy for children and other living things" (whoever said it was...

...When Schell pointed this out he was criticized for not offering a specific blueprint away from sovereignty to sanity...

...here we have to be aware of Socrates, Job, the valiant mother in the second book of Maccabees, as well as Jesus and all martyrs), neither is domination by an enemy force...

...and having learned that horrible truth about what we are willing to do and be, we also learned, with Hiroshima, that we are capable of finishing the whole job off...

...Of several minds: John Garvey VARNISH ON THE WAFFLES FEELING BAD ABOUT BEING BLOWN UP ISN'T ENOUGH IT WAS ENCOURAGING to see nearly a million people show up at the beginning of the UN's special session on disarmament...

...He said that we will face the problem of nuclear annihilation as long as we insist on national sovereignty...

...To kill another human being is a much worse thing than dying at his hands...

...The various signs of dawning awareness are doing more work than they ought to...

...But where nuclear weapons are seen as the particular demons of our age, where their unique horror crowds out other horrors, other demons might escape our understanding and return to possess us in new forms...

...Both the established power and the power which was willing to take its place were missing the point- maybe because power, control, and domination were the terms in which both sides thought, terms which had nothing to do with his kingdom...

...NATO allies object to " no first use " pledges...

...It is an understandable desperation, but not rational...

...But although I hate to pour varnish on your waffles, as one of Major Hoople's boarders said, I think it would be a mistake to think that this means more than it does...

...Army veterans encouraged the effort...