...but I can imagine that a few important thoughts crossed his mind. And I bet one of them was along the lines of “How the fuck did I get myself into this situation?” and another was something like, “How is it that pressing this button (or trigger or whatever) can kill so many people?” And a third may have been, “Okay: I can press the button and kill a zillion innocent people, and maybe end the war. Or I can not press the button and not kill a zillion people, and definitely not end the war, which could end up killing three zillion people.”
I don't know if what happened next was psychological moral disengagement or justification or fear or confidence or what. Obviously, he pressed the button and had to live with himself, never knowing what would’ve happened if he didn’t. Around a year ago, I was in a much, much milder version of a similarly-structured crossroads—being in the perilous place where I somehow arranged to have power over the direction of a few lives, namely my own, and had to make some tough decisions without the benefit of a crystal ball. Let me tell you—it sucked. I didn’t want to have any control over anything, thank you, especially something that could seriously fuck some stuff up and potentially harm people.
It’s hard not to think about how it turned out now that I’m a year down the path of the fork-in-the-road I decided upon. I don’t have any clue how things would’ve turned out otherwise, but I have to say: It feels like this was a wise decision. Likely, in my situation, it would’ve somehow been manageable the other way as well, but it had more potential to make life much worse. I guess what I’m saying is that there was no winning choice—both of them came with a truckload of pain, just different trucks. In the end, I namely went by intuition. Intuition can be a scary thing to trust, but I did trust it. When I remember it, and its consequential sleepless nights and hellish nastiness, I feel quite sad. When I remember how amazing all my friends were, and the external sources of support that seemed to come from nowhere and lift me up, that feels comforting and hopeful. It’s better now, much better.
*The bow-tie nebula is composed of material cast off by a dying sun-like star as it enters a new phase of evolution.
4 comments:
I don't think dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was as much about ending the war (which, if you look at it historically, probably would have ended in the next few months anyway---Hiroshima/Nagasaki may have hastened it a bit) as it was about scaring the everloving shit out of Russia, who Truman would already see was going to be a problem once all was said and done (even though they were our allies at the time).
Oh wait.
I missed the point of your post, didn't I. Yeah. I do that a lot.
And, of course, (but just to clarify), I don't think dropping bombs on anyone is okay. Neither is war. This is commentary on the feelings of people in tough situations....
Cavu,
you are a truly good woman.
That is all.
and we are all proud of you for dropping the bomb. Or not.
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