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SHALL WE CHOOSE DEATH?
Bertrand Russell
December 30, 1954
I am speaking not as a Briton, not as a European, not as a member of a
western democracy, but as a human being, a member of the species Man, whose
continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts: Jews and Arabs;
Indians and Pakistanis; white men and Negroes in Africa; and, overshadowing all
minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between communism and anticommunism.
Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one
or more of these issues; but I want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings
for the moment and consider yourself only as a member of a biological species
which has had a remarkable history and whose disappearance none of us can
desire. I shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group
rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is
understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it. We have to learn
to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves not what steps can be
taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer
are such steps. The question we have to ask ourselves is: What steps can be
taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all
sides?
The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not
realized what would be involved in a war with hydrogen bombs. The general public
still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. It is understood that the
new bombs are more powerful than the old and that, while one atomic bomb could
obliterate Hiroshima, one hydrogen bomb could obliterate the largest cities such
as London, New York, and Moscow. No doubt in a hydrogen-bomb war great cities
would be obliterated. But this is one of the minor disasters that would have to
be faced. If everybody in London, New York, and Moscow were exterminated, the
world might, in the course of a few centuries, recover from the blow. But we now
know, especially since the Bikini test, that hydrogen bombs can gradually spread
destruction over a much wider area than had been supposed. It is stated on very
good authority that a bomb can now be manufactured which will be 25,000 times as
powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima. Such a bomb, if exploded near the
ground or under water, sends radioactive particles into the upper air. They sink
gradually and reach the surface of the earth in the form of a deadly dust or
rain. It was this dust which infected the Japanese fishermen and their catch of
fish although they were outside what American experts believed to be the danger
zone. No one knows how widely such lethal radioactive particles might be
diffused, but the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with
hydrogen bombs is quite likely to put an end to the human race. It is feared
that if many hydrogen bombs are used there will be universal death - sudden only
for a fortunate minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and
disintegration...
Here, then, is the problem which I present to you, stark and dreadful and
inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race1 or shall mankind renounce
war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish
war. The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national
sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than
anything else is that the term 'mankind' feels vague and abstract. People
scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their
children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity'
And so they hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern
weapons are prohibited. I am afraid this hope is illusory. Whatever agreements
not to use hydrogen bombs had been reached in time of peace, they would no
longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides would set to work to
manufacture hydrogen bombs as soon as war broke out, for if one side
manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side that manufactured them
would inevitably be victorious...
As geological time is reckoned, Man has so far existed only for a very
short period one million years at the most. What he has achieved, especially
during the last 6,000 years, is something utterly new in the history of the
Cosmos, so far at least as we are acquainted with it. For countless ages the sun
rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, the stars shone in the night, but it was
only with the coming of Man that these things were understood. In the great
world of astronomy and in the little world of the atom, Man has unveiled secrets
which might have been thought undiscoverable. In art and literature and
religion, some men have shown a sublimity of feeling which makes the species
worth preserving. Is all this to end in trivial horror because so few are able
to think of Man rather than of this or that group of men? Is our race so
destitute of wisdom, so incapable of impartial love, so blind even to the
simplest dictates of self-preservation, that the last proof of its silly
cleverness is to be the extermination of all life on our planet? - for it will
be not only men who will perish, but also the animals, whom no one can accuse of
communism or anticommunism.
I cannot believe that this is to be the end. I would have men forget their
quarrels for a moment and reflect that, if they will allow themselves to
survive, there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future to exceed
immeasurably the triumphs of the past. There lies before us, if we choose,
continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead,
choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal, as a human being
to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so,
the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, nothing lies before you but
universal death.
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发表于 2016-7-10 11:36:40