Why "Oppenheimer"?

The film triumphed at the latest Academy Awards.  

I saw the film as a somewhat long biopic which included a number of anecdotes that I was not familiar with. 

I haven't spent a lot of time on the history behind the development of the atomic bomb, but because of my interest in science and some of the personalities involved at the time, I have some background:  Feynman's autobiographical essays, articles about Einstein, about the Manhattan project in general.

I knew that Oppenheimer was a controversial choice to head the Manhattan project because of his association with communism; that he sometimes amused himself at Los Alamos by picking the locks on classified file cabinets; that there was concern that a nuclear explosion might set off a reaction that would burn up the world.

We might be enraged that Oppenheimer's career was destroyed by an ambitious red-baiter.  But today, even before the movie, Oppenheimer is still considered a hero, while the man who persecuted him is mostly a footnote.  

Did the film try to persuade us that our paranoia about American communism warrants the kind of behavior perpetrated by this persecutor?  It showed us that the tactics and arguments used then, are still being used now; and that they are still effective.  But I heard no mention of this for as to why the film should be given an award.

I can't see that all the awards it received were for performances of products that were superior to those of the other nominees.  In my opinion, others should have received those awards.

Which leads me to conclude that what was really being awarded was a celebration of American military power. 

Oppenheimer's quoting the Bhagavad Gita, "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds," is appropriate to the atomic bomb, but it is also appropriate to the United States as the only possessor of an atomic weapon at that time, and demonstrably the most powerful military in the world.  

That the Manhattan Project began the arms race should no longer be a surprise.  Every technological product which advances power over other humans seems to set off an arms race; social media, for example; AI, for another.

Oppenheimer quoted Krishna, as if Krishna were to blame.  But Krishna is a god, merely an embodiment of our nature, a way of projecting our inclinations onto another, to avoid our taking responsibility for our desires.

 

NOTE:  Adam Hochschild writes in King Leopold's Ghost, p. 279, "... More than 80 percent of the uranium in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs came from the heavily guarded Congo mines of Shinkolobwe."  This is, mined with African slave labor.

The Master Race

 

Science News

from research organizations

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AI outperforms humans in standardized tests of creative potential

Date:

March 1, 2024

Source:

University of Arkansas

Summary:

In a recent study, 151 human participants were pitted against ChatGPT-4 in three tests designed to measure divergent thinking, which is considered to be an indicator of creative thought. 

 

So, once AI proves itself to be more intelligent than meat people, will we, the meat people, concede that they, the AI, should rule us, the meat people, and concede to them the rights and privileges of that we believe are due to superior races? 

 

Should the AI be given the benefit of the doubt? the place at the front of the line? be the one whom any law benefits first? the one whose life is valued above anyone elses?  This is the algorithm that racial superiority uses, and so, the answer, to be consistent is, "of course."

Christianity, the Puritans and Anti-Semitism

 I was taught in elementary school, and it has been confirmed by later reading, that the Puritans left England for Holland in search or "religious freedom" -- the right to worship God in their own way.  The Dutch were tolerant, and let the Puritans worship as they pleased, but the Puritans became dissatisfied with Dutch tolerance as it seemed to give their children the wrong idea about religious tolerance.

The Puritans decided to leave tolerant Holland for New England, where they could impose their own form of religion.  The Puritans would not tolerate any version of Christianity other than their own, and ruthlessly punished, persecuted or banished anyone who deviated from it.  The Salem witch trials were apparently a result of such Puritan intolerance.  In short, the Puritans imposed a religious state.

An article from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. traces the history of antisemitism beginning with passages in the Bible which identify "the Jews" as responsible for the death of Christ, and goes on to note that early church fathers, including St. Augustine, condemning the Jews.  It discussed the fraught relationship between Jews and the kingdoms of Christian Europe, were Jews are allowed, tolerated and subsequently persecuted, forced to convert or expelled.  It also notes that in Muslim Spain, Jews rose to positions of responsibility and power, but forced to convert to Christianity or were banished when Christians retook Spain in the Reconquista, and that even people of Jewish ancestry, who had converted to Christianity generations before, were persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition.

So when we get to North America, we have Jews fleeing the antisemitism of Europe, nevertheless, into a Christian land.  As Ronald Reagan said, the US is a "Christian country."  But that means that the US is an antisemitic country, since antisemitism is essentially a Christian prejudice.  The rest of the world seems either to have accepted the presence of Jews or were ignorant of them.  The US seems to have a negative attitude or barely tolerated Jews.

And now if we add a newly resurgent Christian Nationalism which seems to be a kind of modern Puritanism, the rise of antisemitic behavior in the US is not a surprise.  Conservative or Christian Nationalist Christians may claim sympathy for Jews, but only so long as Jews are oriented towards Israel, and do not try to become part of the US power structure.