The real threat that comes from nuclear power is
not it higher destructivity or its global effects. The real threat
comes from the lack of an adapted philosophical background.
Scientific shift in military policies
Nuclear energy is a rather new technology based on
the new scientific knowledge gained by the research in quantum theory
and gravity. Even though these technologies are discovered some
century ago, our ontological and epistemological traditions are
arrhythmic to it. More recent philosophical schools revolving around
quantum theory, some times even based on it, have not entered or
entered yet the general consent in political economy.
As
in former scientific revolutions a philosophical shift is to be
expected, not so much due to the inspiration gained by new
technologies but borne out of the real need to match new techniques
and resources to the conceptual understanding of our daily life.
The
tendency in local and global politics is, at least in theory, to
substitute nuclear energy with more “environmental friendly”
energy production and nuclear weapons by arms designed more precisely
in its geographic effects and environmental persistence and to reduce
dangerouse tools like nuclear wappons.
However,
the danger, at least in my opinion, comes not so much from the high
potential of destruction of these wappons but from the complete and
absolute innocence of what they actually are.
Subjectivity of existence
Since
Kant and with him the modern reading of Aristole the Western culture
is based on the idea of objectivity and the existence of reality
independen from us.
Quantum
Theory is challenging this idea. If something in potential comes into
existence depends on the observer. It is through the interdynamics of
a ever multipliying number of observers that space comes to be,
through which time can cross. It is not us making a short walk on a
long line of chronological existence. This is what common science was
telling us. Time is experience only due to the changes we observe in
our environment.
To
make an example. A chair does not exist as an object fact,
independent from us. It only exists because it was made by someone
who had vision that one day, someone might wish to sit on it. Perhaps
this person would be identical with creator. This is not important.
The chair was made to be seated on it. This makes it a chair. And one
thay someone will use this chair and sit on it. If there was no one
to sit on the chair, and no one to know that once in time there
should be a chair to sit on it, then there would be no chair. This
means for this concrete chair, in our example, its existence depends
directly the person who sits on it. But further and even more
interesting for our argument is, that the person who sits on the
chair, owes his very own existence to the chair, at least in part.
This persone is somebody who sits on chairs, who might eat chicken,
who drives a car, who meats with other such individuals who drive
cars, sit on chairs, have language and recognize each other as
similar, calling themselves human beings.
Meaning of nuclear science
My
point is, that the existence of nuclear wapons is not just something
out there that came to be due to some objective law of chronological
development in arms raising. Nuclear wapons are a direct result of
our own awareness of realty, which trhough awareness is build.
Quantum theory and gravity were first steps towards this awareness,
Gödels law, high migrative activity and cultural relativism have
further made the infinite pontentiality of life visible. Nuclear
wapons are the expression of highest potentiality. They make us aware
that with a relative low efforts we have become able to destroy
massively our planet and most part of life on it in a glimps of time.
Nuclear science also shows us, that laws in physics are not fix and
stable and that our very presence has an effect on it.
Borders
between good and bad break up, and the highly interconnectivity of
all existence in this universe becomes ever more common sense. This
propose the central problem of all martial art. How is the enemy that
remains if my identity depends so deeply on the other. How can offens
agains other be justified if moral judgements of good and bad are an
uncertainity themselves?
The worls a safe place
The
idea that nuclear wapons are dangerous and should therefore not be
used is simply a stupidity dressed up in current humanistic fashion
speaking about being kind to each other. This is not point. Humanity
has shown very capable in all periods of time to find the adequate
wapons and tequnes to destroy each mutually in large masses. We
certainly do not need nuclear wapons for this purpose. So even
without them, the world would not be a safer place. As long as human
beings desire to destroy others, they will do so. But, given that one
day we learn to love each other and stop killing, still nuclear
energy proposes a dual threat. On one hand, it is danger to use
materials and apply techniques that are not fully understood. On the
other hand, even renouncing to use all related to nuclear science,
the knowledge about is still there. 100 years almost quantum science
has been more or less hidden from the common people. Still it has
been applied gradually and awareness about it is growing. What is
missing is to apply it to philosophy and common sense, which in my
opinion not always goes hand in hand.
The
major impulse for change in human society was human couriosity about
their environment and daily things. The major threat throughout all
scientific revolutions came from the arrhythmic between applied
science and applied philosophy. The difficulty is not to make nuclear
energy safe, but to englobe it in our world view.
What
makes our world dangerous is the lack of knowledge about it. Fear is
born out of the lack of understanding, that makes us feel ensecure.
The
world has never been a save place. There is nothing certain in life.
But for our psychological health human beings need to make idea, an
image of reality whith which we can feel compfortable.
Fear and control
Large
masses of human beings have been killed in recent history by large
ovens, made out steel – two tools that are still use and nobody
worries about that. Most people on this planet find their death due
small wapons, hunger and easily to be treated desease, and this makes
nobody feel unsafer on this world. Nuclear wapons are not a threat in
first place due to their potential to exterminate humanity – a
possibility that is not absolutely certain, but hopefully shall never
be put on test. Nuclear science is a threat to our peace of mind. It
might be a good argument to come to more harmony in international
relations between nation states. But nation states are coming to
their conceptual end. There is a large agreement that ever more
conflicts in international security comes from Criminal Organizations
like Mafias, or terroristic groups. Ever more people belong to
different places and feel committed to diverse associations at the
same time.
The
use of fear and threat is a common mean by terroristic agents. What
security do people have, that nation states themselves, when the
further loose their power, will not use smaller, supposedly less
dangerous wappon base nuclear science to maintain their control?
Meaning of uncertainity
I
favour the discussions between Medwedew and Obama. They come from
very different political and philosophical traditions. Their
divergent points of view and the collaboration between Russian and
American scientist, politicians and philosophers can bring knowledge
to completely new levels. But humanity really needs to feel saver
again in a uncertain world is a vision different enough to make
common people see beyond the known lines, but in language that is
understood by the people on the street. We need to find answers to
what the ends of life, the meaning of the existence of war and
conflict are to us living in the 21st
Century. We must learn to live with uncertainity, relativity and the
infinity of potentials- the Pandora’s box, that quantum science and
gravity have opened to us.
