Word: bombe
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Coming to terms with the Bomb means first accepting a basic fact about nature. When the Bomb was dropped, much was made of how man had conquered nature, exposed its deepest mysteries; in a sense, how nature, like Japan, had been brought to its knees. Yet it did not take long for the realization to sink in that the splitting of the atom not only gave people no greater authority over nature than they had before, it proved how helpless they were when handling natural forces. Since that time, there seems to have been a general divorce of human life...
...what is there to do about the Bomb, which may be reduced in numbers but not removed? The answer seems to be: nothing. Citizens of nations were introduced to the art of modern warfare by the institution of strategic bombing, but unfortunately they were introduced solely as targets. The only maneuverability given ordinary people is how they may think about the Bomb. Is it possible to do that less fearfully and more clearly? Americans do not really believe in the Apocalypse, no matter how many movies we watch. One way or another in the next few years, we will want...
...scientists, Oppenheimer said, "In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose." Oppenheimer's presumption is that the physicists, as people, had not known sin before making the Bomb, which sounds like wishful confessing. Nature is what people choose to make...
This much we already know of ourselves: we kill one another, and from age to age we will always find instruments to suit that predisposition. In a way, the Bomb may have curbed the killer instinct because of the immensity of its power. People will not, cannot use absolutely any weapons they choose anymore. But the instinct is there still, storming back and forth like a shark beyond the reef. Whatever fears the Bomb has brought, the fear of our murderous capacities is deeper. However monstrous our visions of the Bomb's future, they were only mirrors of what...
...with oneself also means coming to terms with responsibilities. Taking responsibility for one's actions and decisions seems out of fashion in the atomic age, but in that TIME article of Aug. 20, 1945, James Agee immediately saw that individual responsibility was at the heart of Hiroshima: "When the Bomb split open the universe and revealed the prospect of the infinitely extraordinary, it also revealed ... that each man is eternally and above all else responsible for his own soul." Responsibility for one's own soul inevitably involves others, since no one judges the quality of his soul in isolation...