What is your duty in life? Toughest question in the world to answer. We wander around in life, scratching our heads fulfilling what we think our mission is by being good parents, brothers/sisters, friends, educators, mentors, workers, and neighbors.
Some people are lucky enough to know from a young age what they want to do. It’s in the heart and informs every move they make in such things as classes to take, people to connect with and the path is clear. Others struggle to find a way and paths open up in strange ways.
Watching the movie “Oppenheimer,” Robert Oppenheimer was a prodigy destined for greatness. It wasn’t always an easy road, but his journey was laid out due to his love of science and ability to see beyond the natural world to levels of understanding only few people attain. Friends with Einstein, there was an unspoken understanding of the latest scientific theories and how science could be used to help us evolve as a people.
As a youth, it’s hard to imagine being responsible for the lives and deaths of tens of thousands and the destiny that was laid out for him – the same could be said for President Harry Truman as well. The decision to develop and drop the bomb and end the war is a dire moral dilemma that implicates cause and effect scenarios that lead to a quagmire of feelings, questions and new realities.
It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback and say it was a mistake to drop the bomb, but it’s harder when its personal. When I confronted my mom with the issue, she noted that my Uncle Bill would’ve been in the first wave for the invasion of Japan. We were told, in Japanese society, there was a never surrender mentality. No one knew the power of an atom bomb. No one could imagine the devastation that could be unleashed on a population and how it may impact a civilization. It is estimated that tens of thousands, possibly millions, would’ve lost their lives in Japan and the war could have been prolonged by years.
Now we live with the reality of the pandora’s box that was opened so many years ago. My Uncle Ray was drafted into the army and visited Hiroshima in early ‘46. The images were ingrained in his mind as he shared with us images near the epicenter of the blast and had pictures to prove it. The black and white photos of rubble of incinerated cities depict humanity at its worst and haunt us to this day on the Internet. I remember hearing about shadows melted into walls and before and after pictures show vibrant cities full of life that became vacant fields with tiny remnants of nature withering on the vine.
Christopher Nolan artfully addresses these implications in his film; at first, through symbolic representations of western thinking like biting apples while making scientific decisions, poisoning apples depicting those who want the worst for enemies. Through the Eastern tradition he uses Gita verses while making love and again when the bomb is dropped. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The other verse being, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.”
There is two Robert Oppenheimers in my view. The man before the war and the man after the war. Before the war, it was a scientific race to develop a method to end the war. After the war, he was a man on a mission to determine ways to take the apple we’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge and fortify blockades and guard against it, so we never have to eat from that tree again. Stunning remorse and the shell-shocked realizations left those in the know in tears and proves that those individuals had an understanding that the world would never be the same again. Though some scientists like Oppenheimer were haunted with guilt over their roles in using science for destruction, others like Truman made peace with the use of the bomb, justifying a quick end to a horrible war.
Quantum Mechanics has taught us that we are filled with holes and space, but the spirit of what it means to be human takes consciousness to another level. We are so much more than just neurons, muscle, organs, skin and bones. We are beings with voices, and experiences and emotions that get tangled in the moral ball of yarn we use to function in a society.
In a techno age where computers and technology are assuming roles once held by individuals, we are still learning how to live with one another and adapt to new realities and evolutionary schemes being presented.
Philosophy and religion tell us our souls are engaged with a struggle to understand our moral responsibility on a daily basis. Born in the nuclear age, each person has a finger on the button in terms of how he uses his power for good or ill. Do we respect the rights of individuals to engage and make decisions that entail supporting creative decisions that affirm life and creation? Or do we let the latest whims of society dictate how we respond and go along to get along?
Some of us are in higher positions of power who are making life and death decisions daily. We are each wrestling our own angels in terms of knowing what to do for the good of all in our lives. In Bible scripture, Jacob wrestles the angel and the angel was overcome. But his wrestling caused his hip to go out of place. There is a cost for wrestling with the one’s conscience and recognizing its primacy. We see this in the movie “Oppenheimer.”
If anything, the story of Oppenheimer and his moral struggle with the use of science should give every individual with a conscience pause as to how he can function in a world that is, seemingly, out of his control and make the whole of society pause; if for just a moment and remember the horror of historic catastrophes of the human condition as well.
spirit beat 