Sam Harris

This topic has always intrigued me and has been a life-shifter.
How did anyone working on the Manhattan Project feel?
How does any current employee of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, U.S. Military, etc. justify their devotion to their work when their work could very well help the process of killing someone?

You would hope that anyone intelligent enough to work on such a project would also be a pacifist and thus at the least be extremely ashamed of what they were doing. Alas, one could argue that having to fight the evil 3rd Reich and their Japanese allies was an extenuating circumstance, or the Communist threat, or the terrorist from Iran. My father was a military intelligence language specialist until 1990 stationed in Germany. Recently he said in class - he is a teacher now - “Making war for peace is like fucking for virginity”. In the end, in some way or another, everyone is just a hypocrite.

The number one export of all industrialized nations is weapons. While I find this reality to be appalling, it’s certainly not anything new.  From the beginning, one of the first things people specialized in was the technological advancement of weapons… of more effective and efficient ways to kill. We did start out, after all, hunting and gathering to survive. When we started exploring, we started conquering. While I’m not sure that answers your question, learning the history of how things happened helps to explain why things are the way they are now.

There is a very good documentary I watched recently called, Guns, Germs and Steel, that is available free online:

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/guns-germs-and-steel/

I’m sure you will enjoy it, and gain some insight and perhaps answers to your question.

Oppenheimer had an interesting belief (in the generic sense, not in the dogmatic sense) system.  He was fascinated by the Hindu texts (one of his most famous quotes was taken from the Bhagavad Gita).  This essay attempts to bring his philosophy into the light, although, in typical academic fashion, it’s highly speculative.

The Gita of J. Robert Oppenheimer

JC@MST - 14 March 2012 02:14 PM

This topic has always intrigued me and has been a life-shifter.
How did anyone working on the Manhattan Project feel?
How does any current employee of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, U.S. Military, etc. justify their devotion to their work when their work could very well help the process of killing someone?

Pacifism is a disguised effort for the persona to create a feeling of safety for it and its gene pool.
It is unnatural for any life form to be passive.
Read about the real Gandhi, Jesus and Mother Teresa to get a better grasp of the true human condition.

Mr. Toombaru… please do not post over the spam. It is harder to spot. Wait until it is deleted.