Missile Defense

One thing's clear. Trust and distrust have to go together, and be balanced. And hope for honorable content has to be balanced with wariness, because we know what people so often do, and what, at least sometimes, and in some ways, we do ourselves.

These are good reasons to try to control nuclear weapons, and try hard. And good reasons to try to reduce the misfires of human conduct that produce wars. And good reasons to try to avoid "solutions", just or not, logical or not, that don't take quantitative (and for humans, that means emotioal and aesthetic) account of human consequences, for the real, imperfect animals that we all are.

Pain and death are to be avoided, when it is possible.

I believe that it often is.

rshowalter - 07:53am May 10, 2001 EST (#3645 of 3647)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The new, internet, computer, and sociotechnical possibility to refer back to what was said, and access complexity, is a new human gift - that can make a lot of things better, and some old kinds of problems much more soluble than before.

A lot has happened on this thread since March 1, and I believe that the good effects have been real, and worht the effort. These posting summarize the thread up to March 1. Not many may find them of interest, but some might, and some, looking back at this posting at some later time, may find the citations useful. Today, I'm thinking especially about 817 and 818, and will talk more about them.

813: rshowalter 3/1/01 4:08pm ..... 814: rshowalter 3/1/01 4:12pm
815: rshowalter 3/1/01 4:14pm ..... 816: rshowalter 3/1/01 4:25pm
817: rshowalter 3/1/01 4:27pm ..... 818: rshowalter 3/1/01 4:32pm

818-819 include this: KEY QUOTE: #748: To reduce threats, one needs to apply assurances that, in limited ways, for limited times, weapons are not going to be used. It is a FACT that the Russians, as a nation, feel that they have been, and still are, subject to an active first strike threat from the United States, and this fact can be checked. If one thinks about the Golden Rule, and applies it to the Russians, one has to remember this. If one asks how US actions are regarded in Russia, one has to remember this. rshowalter 2/22/01 4:48am

#757: I feel that issues of morality deserve special emphasis in a discussion of nuclear costs. Moral damage has all sorts of costs, in quality of life and straight economic terms, because the complex cooperations of productive business are, so often, based on predictablity and trust. Therefore, moral inconsistency can be expensive. I suspect that a major problem, in most underdeveloped countries, involves such inconsistencies. I don't see how anyone, or any nation, can adopt a "first use of nucear weapons" policy, and maintain a moral consistency - it seems to me that our nuclear policies are corrosive to our whole moral and intellectual life. rshowalter 2/22/01 6:55pm

rshowalter - 07:53am May 10, 2001 EST (#3646 of 3647)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

People interested in religion and ethics may be particularly interested in #792-797. ... rshowalter 2/27/01 6:03pm .--. It begins: ..... Tina Rosenberg represents one of the most admirable flowerings of a tradition, admirable in many ways, that , taken no further than she takes it, makes an effective nuclear disarmament impossible.

. . . .

An aesthetically satisfying justice can be defined for each and every set of assumptions and perspectives that can be defined. But there are too many sets of assumptions and perspectives that cannot be escaped in the complex circumstances that are actually there. . . .. .. . .

The situations Rosenberg describes, where she hungers for justice, do not admit of satisfactory justice. They are too complicated. . . . . . What is needed, for logical reasons that are fundamentally secular rather than religious, is redemption. ...Expository Poem: Secular Redemption: http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/1345

The word "solutions" might be substituted for "justice" and the conclusions would be much the same.

We're in a mess. We can fix things so they are a lot better than they are. It will take a mix of trust and distrust, justice and looking away -- and careful reframing, step by step. Or, we can go on, and it is far from inconcievable that the world will end, or at the least, be unbearably ugly, yet again, more than before, when that was not necessary.

(1 following message)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense