Do We Know What We Are Afraid Of?

...We shall also be able to see that reforms are needed, both in the quality and the quantity of our education, but that this does not mean we should convert our educational system into technical institutes or into something resembling Tom Brown's school days...

...The addition of intercontinental ballistic missiles to the Soviet arsenal no doubt puts us in somewhat greater danger than we were in before, but the difference between the two perils scarcely seems enough to account for our sudden near-panic...

...They would have to act far less rationally than they have been acting lately in order to disregard our present retaliatory power...

...We do have considerable numbers of jet bombers whose range General Le May demonstrated not long ago by flying one of them non-stop to Buenos Aires, and these bombers, with nuclear bombs, are stationed at bases within striking distance of the U.S.S.R...

...We are the victims of excellent, although probably , unintentional, propaganda in the form of two orbiting metal objects...

...We could not ignore them or doubt them or neutralize them as we had neutralized Russian propaganda before...

...For an explanation of our fear we must look further...

...But for several years we have known that the Russians had atomic and hydrogen bombs and the bombers to deliver them...

...But—and this is the third reason the Paul Reveres offer for their anxiety—perhaps the Sputniks have damaged us disastrously in what is ponderously called the struggle for the minds of the uncommitted peoples...

...Almost no one has taken this ideological propaganda seriously, partly because we have a strong practical bent hostile to any theory, but also because we have a set of deeply-felt beliefs that counteracted whatever the Communists said, insofar, indeed, as we listened at all...

...It betrayed us into believing that we could contrive technical—mostly military—solutions to all the problems that beset us and kept us from attempting more promising non-technical solutions...

...stand a good chance of extermination by radioactive fallout...

...If the uncommitted peoples revered technological accomplishment as much as we do, they would have pledged allegiance to us long before the Sputniks...

...Many foreigners, wearied by our boasts about the American standard of living and by our insistence upon their gratitude—as though they were indigent brothersin-law—have certainly been pleased to see the Russians get the jump on us...

...CLAIRE ZIMMERMAN is assistant professor of psychology at Wellesley...

...In the same way, our faith in the superiority of American technology was proof against Russian propaganda of a less ideological kind...

...There is no lack of inventiveness in this country, but it is choked by the fear that now limits our goals to a mere checking of Russian moves, fear that binds us to the old, sterile formulas, fear that stands in the way of accepting new ideas...

...Just as the healthy adolescent moves into adulthood by seeing that he could never learn to handle his problems for himself as long as he relied on what he thought was his parents' omniscience, so we must understand that our belief in American technological supremacy was a handicap rather than an advantage...

...Although material accomplishment has always been tremendously important to us, and the Russians were aiming in the right direction when they talked of their rising steel production, their hydroelectric projects, and their advanced mining techniques, most of the time we simply did not believe them...

...And it is also unlikely that they will join us in the future merely because we catch up with the Russians or outdo them in missile technology...

...Now it is clear, of course, that we do not yet have an ICBM, but that is far from saying that we are without deterrent power...

...The Sputniks went right over New England and Iowa and California...

...If a man is to be shot at, it does not seem sensible for him to get into a frenzy of anxiety over news that the shooting will be done with a .45 instead of a .44, as he had thought...

...Most of us have "known" with the certainty that comes from never having been required to think much about it that all but a very few Americans are members of the middle class or soon will be...

...It is doubtful that the Russians could wipe out these bases with nuclear missiles before enough bombers could get in the air to do irreparable damage to Russia...

...No doubt our position in this theater of the cold war is somewhat worse now than it was before the Sputniks...

...But it is unrealistic to think that the Sputniks impressed these people exactly as they impressed us or that we can repair whatever damage our prestige has suffered by training more technicians to invent more efficient ways to kill people...

...Much of our fear is really a response to the psychological damage the Sputniks did to one of our most central beliefs—our belief in the necessary and eternal superiority of American technology...

...We must similarly adapt to our loss of belief in what we thought was an American birthright...

...that our government of the people is run by the people for the people...

...The first explanation for our fear that appears vaguely in editorials and official statements is that Soviet possession of missiles capable of launching satellites puts the United States in much greater physical danger than before...

...On the other hand, if he can accept the necessity to abandon his unrealistic belief without losing his other, better-founded convictions, then he can cope successfully with the real problem of relating to his parents as people, not paragons, and he can use the real opportunities which this new relation offers him...

...Unfortunately, we have not yet done this but have, instead, rationalized by using three major explanations that are plausible but will not stand examination...

...The Sputniks had a meaning for many of us that was absent from all previous Russian propaganda, and, for the first time in 40 years, the Russians got inside our mental guard...

...It is only when people learn and accept the reason for their fear that they become less fearful and able to deal with the real problems that have been camouflaged by the imaginary ones...

...And only by understanding and thus reducing anxiety can people see clearly the opportunities that exist in situations previously believed hopeless...

...Clearly, they have not been much charmed by our past achievements in the science of destruction, even when these achievements seemed more advanced than the Russians...

...and they were concrete, technical achievements, the type of achievement we have always admired most...

...When people do not understand why they are afraid, they tend to see their world as a threatening place, full of unspeakable dangers and almost insoluble problems...

...Whatever the Russians can do, we concluded, we can do better...

...Not knowing what we are afraid of, we have alternated between wild impulsiveness and frozen rigidity...

...Perhaps because they sense this, some of those who are ringing the alarm bells add as a second reason for their fear that we have lost our deterrent power, since we are unable to retaliate with Intercontinental Ballistics Missiles should the Russians use them on us...

...Our faith in the supremacy of American technology has been badly shaken...

...by OWEN STRATTON & CLAIRE ZlAAMERMAN The worst danger in what the Sputniks have proved about the advanced state of Russian technology is that this proof has driven so many of us into a condition close to panic, in which we are not really sure what we are afraid of—a condition not greatly changed by our launching of a much smaller satellite...

...It is a dead give-away of how power-oriented, how tinged with unconscious colonialism, our attitude is when we betray our belief that it is the prestige of weapons that wins the uncommitted peoples...

...Abandoning a major article of faith is an unsettling experience at best, and when we are not clear what has happened, the result is fear and panic...

...For some time we have known of the large Russian submarine fleet and of the probability that submarines armed with missiles like the Navy's Regulus could destroy at least our coastal cities...

...And in between frantic plunges, we have talked solemnly and rigidly about "security" and about winning or losing a nuclear war as though such a war could have any end but utter disaster...

...that wage increases are not a division of the fruit of increased productivity, but bribes with which big business lulls the toilers...

...If the neutrals did not embrace us then, it is unlikely that they will cleave to the Russians now simply because of the Sputniks...

...For us, the opportunities in this field are tremendous, but our addiction to tariffs, our agricultural surpluses, and our belief that nothing except war and charity is beneficial if it cannot be shown on the black side of a ledger demand real inventiveness on the part of Americans to overcome...

...Since 1918 the Communists have been telling us, with almost no effect, that workers who think of themselves as members of the middle class are actually members of the proletariat, deceived by capitalist lies...

...To see this is painful and may lead to psychological crisis if he begins to think that all his beliefs are as unfounded as this one...

...This alternation between impulsiveness and neurotic attempts to use formulas that have already failed again and again is the classic symptom of acute anxiety, bordering on panic and stemming from causes that are not clear to its victims...

...These beliefs have been proof against theoretical propaganda...

...We are like an adolescent who sees for the first time that his parents are not the all-knowing and perfect people he believed them to be...

...When they are not frozen by their fear, they spend their energy in frantic, unimaginative attacks on these "problems" which have been created, in large part, by their very fear...

...And others have said with almost equal authority that survivors of nuclear explosions in a future war OWEN STRATTON is chairman of the political science department at Wellesley College...

...that constitutional government is not a means of promoting the general welfare, but rather an engine of monopolistic oppression...

...Acceptance of what has happened will strip our eyes of the cataracts of fear, let us see our opportunities, and put us in a position to take advantage of them...

...The first step toward responding rationally and creatively to spectacular Soviet advances in science is to identify and understand the reason for our fear...

...People in a position to know have assured us that there is no complete defense against a determined nuclear attack borne by aircraft and pre-Sputnik missiles...

...We shall be able to see, for instance, that we have an educational system that is not all bad, by any means, and is in some respects unequalled by anything else in the world...

...The world is—literally—full of opportunities for us, but in the end nothing will succeed unless we can restore the flow of inventiveness to public policy...

...and that our high standard of living is a necessary accompaniment of free American enterprise...

...Although the ability of the Russians to attack us with ICBM's, our inability to retaliate in precise kind, and the erosion of our dignity abroad are matters of some consequence, the situation in none of these respects is so much worse now than it was before the Sputniks that it reasonably justifies our sudden state of near-panic...

...and, in any case, to destroy the bases the Russians would, in the process, have to destroy much of the world it is said they want to rule...

...And on the rare occasions when we did believe one claim or another, we neutralized it by reminding ourselves of all our deep-freezers and dishwashers...

...But the Sputniks were a different sort of propaganda...

...We have talked excitedly about turning the American educational system upside down to produce more engineers and scientists and have committed the remarkable stupidity of the intensive propaganda build-up for the Vanguard missile failure...

...What has happened to us is similar to what happens to a man when he goes broke after spending a lifetime feeling superior to everybody else because he was the richest man in town...

...By the same token, the cure is insight into what has hapened, painful though the insight may be...

...Recovery from the confusion of fear will also enable us to see that the area in which the Russians have reaped their greatest gain is not in technical achievement, but in offering the people of Asia and Africa economic and technical help designed to meet their needs and, ironically, in giving them the most fundamental of all capitalist forms of assistance— that of mutually beneficial trade...

...Get rid of the fear, and we can start moving once more, not down the narrow and ignoble path of catching up with the Russians in weapons, but in a broad advance over the whole plain of achievement in genuine science, physical and social, in the arts, and in all the great range of human values and aspirations...