 |
|
|
|
Franco Dupré Franco
Dupré wrote this short essay - probably for a Pugwash Conference which
he was planning to attend - perhaps twenty years ago. But this text
was never published, presumably because of the excessive self-criticism
Franco applied throughout his life to his own writings (a remarkable
physics textbook for biology students, on which he labored for decades,
will only be published postumously). When Franco suddenly died (see
his obituary in the April 1999 Pugwash Newsletter) I tried to retrieve
this little jewel, which I remembered but of which I did not then manage
to find a copy. Now Annemarie - Franco's wife - found this text among
Franco's papers, and with her permission we print it here - not least,
for its "prophetic" ring, in the context of current efforts to revive
the idea of anti-ballistic missile defense. A silent massacre has been going on for years on Italian highways: hedgehogs are being run over by cars far more frequently than are other animals. What is it that predestines them to such an end? The hedgehog (Erynaceus) is a small, quiet insect hunter which has almost no enemies, thanks to a very effective defense technique: whenever it feels in danger it rolls up into a ball of spines, untasty to any predator--a behavior pattern which has always been very efficient in saving these animals from danger. But not today: when "attacked" by a car, rolling up is of no help; the only chance of survival would be to run away as other animals do. Before a totally new situation, the well-established reaction, designed to save, becomes deadly. Can the fate of the hedgehog be taken as a didactical analogy, an aid to getting a feeling and an understanding of the complete novelty of the situation created by nuclear weapons? Populations actually feel its novelty, but only in the form of fear, a paralyzing, numbing fear; they are not capable of rationally understanding its basic diversity, nor are most governments and military. Fear triggers all kinds of instinctive responses, those of mistrust, of aggression, of hate, of looking for hiding places or for superiority. Our actions and judgements are governed by a cultural background, in turn based on a behavioral heredity which goes back thousands of centuries, which makes us fear any attack from an ambush, which makes us seek shields to protect our fragile body; we despise and hunt spies because they uncover our hiding places. We try to have more and better weapons than others. But today, in the era of the absolute weapon, we are forced to learn that there is no effective hiding, that building up defense cannot be interpreted other than as a problem of aggression, and that more and better arms bring us only closer to a holocaust. We are forced to learn that, because of the enormous overkilling capacity stored in both arsenals, that nuclear submarines hiding in ambush are the best guarantees for stability, that satellites spying from the sky offer us a chance to reduce reciprocal mistrust, and that inspections sniffing into our own country are needed to build up confidence. These facts are now slowly being understood by some, but this anti-instinctive, purely rational understanding is still too weak to be able to keep under control our spontaneous reactions, which break through violently as soon as fear arises: again, we roll up like hedgehogs into the old cultural patterns of war. But in a world which is shrinking because modern large-scale events do not halt at borders, which confronts us with dangers which our instincts and culture are not prepared to cope with, our only chance is to learn to control these reactions rationally, to make the ever-existing war culturally impossible, to change our behavioral patterns, recognize that it is deadly for mankind to "roll up" into defense and aggression in front of nuclear weapons. This learning program poses a great didactical challenge, and an urgent challenge for survival, in the hope that mankind might avoid meeting the same end as hedgehogs. |
 |