{"id":80633,"date":"2016-10-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80633"},"modified":"2016-10-02T17:16:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T16:16:22","slug":"the-simple-act-of-pushing-a-button","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/the-simple-act-of-pushing-a-button\/","title":{"rendered":"The Simple Act of Pushing a Button"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"david<\/a>\u201cSince the appearance of visible life on Earth, 380 million years had to elapse in order for a butterfly to learn how to fly, 180 million years to create a rose with no other commitment than to be beautiful, and four geological eras in order for us human beings to be able to sing better than birds, and to be able to die from love. It is not honorable for the human talent, in the golden age of science, to have conceived the way for such an ancient and colossal process to return to the nothingness from which it came through the simple act of pushing a button.\u201d<\/p>\n

I recently came across this quotation by the great Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/em> and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. \u00a0The quotation is from a 1986 speech by Garcia Marquez entitled \u201cThe Cataclysm of Damocles.\u201d\u00a0 In the short quotation, he captures what needs to be said about nuclear weapons succinctly, poetically and beautifully.\u00a0 With a few deft literary brushstrokes, he shows that the journey of life from nothingness to now could be ended with no more than \u201cthe simple act of pushing a button.\u201d<\/p>\n

The button is a metaphor for setting in motion a nuclear war, which could happen by miscalculation, mistake or malice.\u00a0 Of course, it matters whose finger is on the button, but it matters even more that anyone\u2019s<\/em> finger is on the button.\u00a0 There are not good fingers and bad fingers resting on the button.\u00a0 No one is stable enough, rational enough, sane enough, or wise enough to trust with deciding to push the nuclear button.\u00a0 It is madness to leave the door open to the possibility of \u201ca return to nothingness.\u201d<\/p>\n

On one side of the ledger is everything natural and extraordinary about life with its long evolution bringing us to the present and poised to carry its processes forward into the future.\u00a0 On the other side of the ledger is \u201cthe button,\u201d capable of bringing most life on the planet to a screeching halt.\u00a0 Also on this side of the ledger are those people who remain ignorant or apathetic to the nuclear dangers confronting humanity.<\/p>\n

We all need to recognize what is at stake and choose a side.\u00a0 Put simply, do you stand with life and the processes of nature that have brought such beauty and diversity to our world, or do you stand with the destructive products of science that have brought us to the precipice of annihilation?\u00a0 We must each make a choice.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>

Image by The Official Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) Photostream \u2013 flickr.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I fear too many of us are not awakened to the seriousness and risks of the unfolding situation.\u00a0 We are taken in by the techno-talk that amplifies the messages of national security linked to the button.\u00a0 Nuclear deterrence is no more than a hypothesis about human psychology and behavior.\u00a0 It does not protect people from a nuclear attack.\u00a0 It is unproven and unprovable.\u00a0 Nuclear deterrence may or may not work, but we know that it cannot provide physical protection against a nuclear attack.\u00a0 Those who believe in it, do so at their own peril and at our common peril.<\/p>\n

The possibility of \u201ca return to nothingness\u201d is too great a risk to take.\u00a0 We must put down the nuclear-armed gun.\u00a0 We must dismantle the button and the potential annihilation it represents.\u00a0 We must listen to our hearts and end the nuclear insanity by ending the nuclear weapons era.\u00a0 If we fail to act with engaged hearts, we will continue to stand at the precipice of annihilation \u2013 the precipice of a world without butterflies or beautiful roses, without birds or humans.\u00a0 The golden age of science will come to an end as a triumph of cataclysmic devastation, which will be humanity\u2019s most enduring failure.<\/p>\n

Reading, discussing and understanding the meaning of Gabriel Garcia Marquez\u2019s short quotation should be required of every schoolchild, every citizen, and every leader of every country.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

David Krieger is founder and president of the <\/em>Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a>. <\/em>Amongst several of his wide-spanning leadership endeavors in global peacebuilding, he is a founder and a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000, councilor on the World Future Council, and is the chair of the Executive Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Dr. Krieger is the author of many books and studies of peace in the Nuclear Age. He has written or edited more than 20 books and hundreds of articles and book chapters. He is a recipient of several awards and honors, including the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology Peace Writing Award for Poetry (2010)<\/em>. He<\/em> has a new collection of poems entitled <\/em>Wake Up.\u00a0 For more visit the <\/em>Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website: www.wagingpeace.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wagingpeace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On one side of the ledger is everything natural and extraordinary about life with its long evolution bringing us to the present and poised to carry its processes forward into the future. On the other side of the ledger is \u201cthe button,\u201d capable of bringing most life on the planet to a screeching halt. Also on this side of the ledger are those people who remain ignorant or apathetic to the nuclear dangers confronting humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}