Polite Despair
STATION 3YA put on a Fourth Anniversary programme for the first atomic bomb dropped in anger. Six people spoke; two scientists, a schoolteacher discussing the changed militdry prospect, two men starting careers, and a mother of young children. None of them was very happy about our chance of survival except the mother, who made a brave attempt to convince herself that through atomic power man would reach undreamed of heights of achievement. Was it a representative gathering? Not altogether. It was a cross-section of the articulate section, which is accustomed to express its polite despair of any conventional solution to the problems set by the atom bomb. One member of the panel did speak of the need for a new sense of spiritual values, and mentioned Albert Schweitzer’s conception of reverence for life. But it is not much use talking of spiritual values and then turning back to polite despair. Spiritual values connote being rather than talking, and until people are ready for a little being, the problems of atomic energy, which are materially insoluble, will remain a matter for polite despair.
G. leF.
Y.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19490819.2.19.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 530, 19 August 1949, Page 11
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187Polite Despair New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 530, 19 August 1949, Page 11
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