Letter to The Activist:

I was sitting, yesterday, with a mutual friend in a restaurant in downtown Berkeley. We discussed the pressure the Weapon had exerted and said we are pinned, now, between necessity and the abyss. It is important, is it not, for conscience to speak clear and loud, for conscience to rattle the self-complacency of the backward, air-conditioned brains who pretend that nuclear weaponry is simply another manageable fact among a host of manageable facts. "Ah, between the weaponry and the solution are a great number of factors which keep all parties concerned sperate from one another." After this statement we sat silent for a time.

To break the gloom I suggested we look at all the factors that gave rise to the Weapon in the first place. That generally, when you begin to trace the cause of a disease you have to break the hypnotism that keeps you fascinated by the disease itself and the overpowering effect it has on the living body. After long discussion we came to the central conclusion. That the cause that gave rise to the problem was two -fold. One was political decision-making and the other was the general decision the civilization made at a particular point in time. The political facts started with the bombs dropped on Japan, then the development of the H-bomb, the Soviet development of the H-bomb, the year in, year out relations in the Cold War, the adding on of nuclear powers, the rise of terrorists who wanted them for their own pernicious use.

Politicians and the bureaucracy attempted to make the issue thoroughly professional but of all existing issues it's obviously the one that laughs to scorn all professional pretense.

Theory+raw material+research&development+labor+commission from authority=nuclear weapons. Translated to institutional terms this means: the theoretical scientist+corporation+corporation&scientist+universities+government.

There is fear in the personal psychology of self but then there is a kind of social repression by every means of manipulation possible. I had identified these social images that repressed the fear:

1. social vanity
2. general utopian schemes
3. the glut of desire apotheosized by a common commercial society
4. disillusionment that can't overcome its own criticism
5. worship of the debased

Of course, these are particulars. There is a general atmosphere circulating unconsciously in a city environment, especially, that represses the fear; noise being one which has a physiological as well as psychological effect on large groups of people. Plus, the utter, stark disorder or appearance of disorder in any city. Plus, the tremendous speed and power within the environment with a total will of its own, making the individual meaningless and making the individual fight that meaninglessness, sometimes with courage, sometimes with absurdity so that he is no longer in relation to life an nature but the environment surrounding him, doing him in. All of this pressure engorges the unconscious mind and give over to the will a kind of possession; it finds its acts in reality.

Well activist I see strengths and weaknesses in your attention to this cause. Certainly there is need for the expression of the will of conscience in a loud voice. And attention on the issue collects all kinds of surprising resources from the good will of people. But, friend, there is great weaknesses to your commitment. For one, you recommitment can be rationalized away by those observing it. And your commitment tends to attract the same kinds of people over and over again. And your protest becomes a senseless end in itself. They are, finally, defeated by self-righteousness and sentimentality. Perhaps, in the long run, your commitment in only a way to purge the tension of anxious emotions from a feeling of helplessness. And, don't forget, people have a natural suspicion of any when they perceive the traditional democratic ways being circumvented.

Do you believe these things? That the present leadership left to itself will lead inexorably toward conflict no matter how profound its understanding of the "world conditions" are?

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