The (Cold War) Mentality: What Is it? What Isn't It? No. I
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T]he unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. Albert Einstein, 1946
Even if we could, by some miracle, reverse the course on which we are set, unless we change our way of thinking, of being in the world – the way that is destroying us as we speak – it would all be in vain. Iain McGilchrist, from Home Page on YouTube’s Channel McGilchrist, retrieved 12/8/23
Einstein wrote the words in the epigraph above the year after the first atomic bombs were dropped by the United States on cities in Japan—the first and only use, so far, of nuclear weapons in combat.
What did Einstein mean by “modes of thinking”? He didn’t say. He did say, or clearly imply, that our current “modes of thinking” needed to change if we were to stop a “drift” toward “unparalleled catastrophe.” The word “modes” did suggest something important about what he thought was needed. It was not a solution to a problem. It was not a what but a how.
In 1946, when Einstein wrote this, there might not have been many of us who felt we were drifting toward unparalleled catastrophe.
In 1946, we were flush with our victories in World War II, victory in Europe over the German Nazis and Italian Fascists, and, in the Pacific theater, over the Imperial militarists in Japan.
Not only had we won wars with these adversaries, but we, almost alone among the allies, had in our country fought no battles and had suffered almost no destruction. On December 7, 1941, we had experienced that terrible surprise attack on the naval base we’d built at Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii that we’d staked our claim to. That attack is what finally got us into the war with Japan, as you probably know, and also the war against the German Nazis and Italian fascists that was already being fought by Great Britain and other European countries.
After Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces did attack and take the Philippines, another possession we were claiming, this one right next to Japan.
When it came to attacks on the continental United States, German submarines had landed some saboteurs on our shores but they hadn’t accomplished much. Late in the war, the Japanese had tried floating over on the prevailing wind balloons that carried bombs and incendiary devices, and some did get all the way here, but they also hadn’t caused much damage. Most of us didn’t even know the Japanese had done this. We weren’t told by the authorities. They didn’t want to alarm us.
This meant that after the war we had very little rebuilding to do. As “the great arsenal of democracy,” a phrase used during the war by President Franklin Roosevelt, our industries had been massively stimulated by the war effort. We were in debt to no one. Other countries were in debt to us. We were sitting pretty.
That’s if we disregard the 400,000 of our soldiers who were killed in the two theaters and the wounding, often horribly, of 300,000 more.
Even there, others had had it much worse. I’m not sure how many of us knew just how much worse. The Soviet Union, after being invaded by Germany, had lost more than 25,000,000 of its people, fifty times more than we had, and most of its infrastructure. China had lost more than 10,000,000 people and was on the brink of the resumption of a civil war between Communists and Nationalists. During World War II, the two sides had stopped fighting each other and joined forces to fight the Japanese.
Since World War II, we haven’t won any wars, unfortunately, though we haven’t lost any catastrophically, and haven’t had to fight any of them on our home territory. We’ve had the actions in Korea and Vietnam, and we had the “War on Terror” that President Bush embarked on after the attacks on 9/11/2001, which were on our home territory, and worse than anything we had suffered on our home territory in World War II. We didn’t win the War on Terror either but maybe you can’t win a war on “terror.”
Congress hadn’t declared any of these “wars” even though our Constitution requires Congress to declare our wars. We had the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union which, since it was a “cold” war, might not have needed to be declared. Some people think we won that one. The Soviet Union sure didn’t win it: in 1991, like 45 years after the Cold War started, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. But some people think, and I’m one, that we both lost the Cold War. Maybe the Russian people won, I don’t know. They did get out from under Communism.
Immediately after World War II, there was something else on the plus side, as far as we were concerned, anyway. We had the atomic bomb and we were the only country that did. Some in the United States believed, or allowed themselves to hope, that our having the atomic bomb and being the only country that did meant there would be no more war. Who’d be crazy enough to start a war now, with us, anyway? Or with any of our friends?
After World War I, there had been people who thought, or hoped, that the invention of the machine gun would end war.
In 1946, Einstein made it clear he wasn’t among those who believed that our having the atomic bomb meant there would now be no more war, not unless a “world government” could be instituted. He and physicists like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr knew that the Soviets would develop nuclear weapons, and soon, much sooner than some of our leaders thought. The military head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, had declared it would take the Soviets twenty years. It took them a little over three. Here at home, that scared some of us who might not have been scared before.
[I]f I am right, that the story of the Western world is one of increasing left-hemisphere domination, we would not expect insight to be the key note. Instead we would expect a sort of insouciant optimism, the sleepwalker whistling a happy tune as he ambles toward the abyss. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary (2009), p. 237