THE ATOMIC DILEMMA
Sir-In the Question Mark report, Dean Chandler says: "Man is incapable in his own strength:to find a way out." Man has found the way in and can find the way out. The civilisation that. is threatened is entirely man made. It has been said that man lives in history by scrawling his autobiography in the margin of every page of the book of nature. No one outside of man has made civilisation as it is today. Even when he believes himself to be under divine inspiration, man is still just man, constructing his societies, developing his cultures, creating, modifying, destroying according to the architecture of his thought in any age. Nothing that man does endures forever; none of his purposes are fulfilled for ever; none of his knowledge is final and imperishable. He thinks he can detect purposes or aims behind the natural processes of his environment. But his universe is man-made; as the philosophers assure us, each of us has his own universe revealed by the individual eye, ear, and sense of touch. Professor Oliphant favours a central world authority adequately equipped to prevent the use of atomic and other mass destruction weapons. Mr. Dumbleton fears this might become a world tyranny: But this might be guarded against if the supreme authority were composed of representatives of all nations, holding office in accord with a kind of roster, and being in office for only one or two years at a time. A hundred and fifty years ago Kant saw the necessity for such a central world authority as a means of securing what he called "Eternal Peace." Man has shown himself willing to surrender what he considers rights in order cooperatively to secure a wider security. World conditions seem to point to the advisability of the more powerful and enlightened nations agreeing on a plan, combining, and then persuading or compelling the rest to come in. There is risk of conflict this way-but conflict seems almost inevitable anyway. To wait for universal voluntary agreement, or universal spiritual awakening, is to dwell in a fool’s paradise.
J. MALTON
MURRAY
(Oamaru).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 782, 16 July 1954, Page 5
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353THE ATOMIC DILEMMA New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 782, 16 July 1954, Page 5
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