Is this significant ? underlying primal archetypes?
She collected some extremely interesting facts confirming the perinatal dimension in nuclear warfare. In her own terminology, these facts confirm the importance of the motif of "male birth" and "male creation" as important psychological forces underlying the psychology of nuclear warfare.
*****
Even more explicit was the coded message used by Japanese ambassador, Kurusu, when he phoned Tokyo to signal that negotiations had broken down with Roosevelt and that it was all right to go ahead with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He announced that the "birth of a child was imminent" and asked how things were in Japan: "Does it seem as if the child might be born?" The reply was, "Yes, the birth of the child seems imminent." Interestingly, the American intelligence listening in recognized the meaning of the war-as-birth code.
Particularly chilling was the use of perinatal language in connection with the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The airplane was given the name of the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay. The atomic bomb itself carried a painted nickname, Little Boy, and the agreed-upon message sent to Washington as a signal of successful detonation was,
"The baby was born." It would not be too far-fetched to see the image of newborn also behind the nickname of the Nagasaki bomb, Fat Man.
Since the time of our correspondence, Lloyd deMause has collected many additional historical examples and refined his thesis that the memory of the birth trauma plays an important role as a source of motivation for violent social activity (see, e.g., deMause, 1982, 1996).
The issues related to nuclear warfare are of such relevance that I would like to elaborate on them using the material from a fascinating paper by Carol Cohn (1987) titled "Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defense Intellectuals." The defense intellectuals are civilians who move in and out of government, working sometimes as administrative officials or consultants, sometimes at universities and think tanks. They create the theory that informs and legitimates US nuclear strategic practice—how to manage the arms race, how to deter the use of nuclear weapons, how to fight a nuclear war if the deterrence fails, and how to explain why it is not safe to live without nuclear weapons.
Carol Cohn attended a two-week seminar summer workshop on nuclear weapons, nuclear strategic doctrine, and arms control. She was so fascinated by what had transpired there that she spent the following year immersed in the almost entirely male world (except secretaries) of defense intellectuals. She collected some extremely interesting facts confirming the perinatal dimension in nuclear warfare. In her own terminology, these facts confirm the importance of the motif of "male birth" and "male creation" as important psychological forces underlying the psychology of nuclear warfare. She uses the following historical examples to illustrate her point of view:
In 1942 Ernest Lawrence sent a telegram to a Chicago group of physicists developing the nuclear bomb: "Congratulations to the new parents. Can hardly wait to see the new arrival." At Los Alamos, the atom bomb was referred to as "Oppenheimer’s baby." Richard Feynman wrote in his article, "Los Alamos from Below," that when he was temporarily on leave after his wife’s death he received a telegram that read, "The baby is expected on such and such a day."
At Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, the hydrogen bomb was referred to as "Teller’s baby," although those who wanted to disparage Edward Teller’s contribution claimed he was not the bomb’s father, but its mother. They claimed that Stanislav Ulam was the real father, who had all the important ideas and conceived it; Teller only "carried it" after that. Terms related to motherhood were also used to the provision of "nurturance"—the maintenance of the missiles.
General Grove sent a triumphant coded cable to Secretary of War Henry Stimson at the Potsdam conference reporting the success of the first atomic test: "Doctor has just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from here to Highhold and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm." Stimson, in turn, informed Churchill by writing him a note that read, "Baby satisfactorily born."
William L. Laurence witnessed the test of the first atomic bomb and wrote: "The big boom came about a hundred seconds after the great flash—the first cry of a newborn world." Edward Teller’s exultant telegram to Los Alamos, announcing the successful test of the hydrogen bomb "Mike" at Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands read, "It’s a boy." The male scientists gave birth to a progeny with the ultimate power of domination over female Nature.
The Enola Gay, Little Boy, and "The baby was born" symbolism of the Hiroshima bomb, and the Fat Man symbolism of the Nagasaki bomb were mentioned already.
Carol Cohn also mentions in her paper an abundance of overtly sexual symbolism in the language of defense intellectuals. The nature of this material, linking sex to aggression, domination, and scatology shows a deep similarity to the imagery occurring in the context of birth experiences (BPM III). Examples: American dependence on nuclear weapons was explained as irresistible, because "you get more bang for the buck." A professor’s explanation of why the MX missiles should be placed in the silos of the newest Minuteman missiles instead of replacing the older, less accurate ones was, "You are not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it into a crummy hole." At one point, there was a serious concern that "we have to harden our missiles," because "the Russians are a little harder than we are." One military adviser to the National Security Council referred to "releasing seventy to eighty percent of our megatonnage in one orgasmic whump."
Lectures were filled with terms like "vertical erector launchers," "thrust-to-weight ratios," "soft lay-downs," "deep penetration," and the comparative advantages of "protracted" versus "spasm attacks." Another example is the popular and widespread custom of "patting the missiles," an expression of phallic supremacy but also homoerotic tendencies. It clearly is quite appropriate for feminist critics of nuclear policies to refer to "missile envy" and "phallic worship."
Full essay=
Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution:
Psychological Roots of Human Violence and GreedStanislav Grof, M.D.*
http://grofs.forskning.magiskamolekyler.org/text/plansurv.htmlegitimacy, legitimacy LegItImacy
PLUTOCRATS DID NOT GIVE THEIR MOMS THE RIGHT TO VOTE TILL 1920 !
In The Goddess We Trust
german quote: We Believe in God , like the Americans, but unlike the Americans do not trust him
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