The Looney Liberal Chronicles: Chapter 12

 by Phillip Ellis Jackson  

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The danger of carrying liberal utopian thought to its illogical conclusion is a world less safe than before, and a society less free to advance scientifically than it otherwise might be.

Chapter 12:  Nuclear War, And Other Words Bush Can’t Pronounce

What would a discussion on pacifism, pre-emptive military action, the search for weapons of mass destruction, and two-to-three syllable words that George W. Bush has difficulty pronouncing be if it didn’t lead to at least some mention of the possibility of nuclear war?

Since this is a series of essays about what I and those I wrote to thought about the subject, I won’t go into a long tangent about dirty bombs vs. suitcase nukes; Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; Truman and Japan, or the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties.  I won’t even touch on MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) or the Cuban missile crisis.   Instead, other than a brief mention of this in my earlier discussion with the Brazilian pacifists, I’ve had only one substantive conversation on this issue in the last ten years.  And that wasn’t prompted by a political discussion, but by something almost as ponderous and misguided.  I wrote to a physics author who was trying to make a point about society’s resources (i.e. more for science, less for guns). It’s confusing enough to let a trained political scientist lead this type of discussion, but when the hard sciences start applying the scientific method to human action instead of agitated water molecules, it’s anybody’s guess what they’ll come up with.

You have to bear with me for a moment while I struggle with setting the premise for this discussion.  As related by the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy and Spaceflight, in 1964 Nikolai Kardashev — a Russian astrophysicist and deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow who conducted the first Soviet search for intelligent extraterrestrial signals in 1963 — came up with a scheme for classifying advanced technological civilizations.  This wasn’t the kind of “scheme” that Al Gore keeps referring to when he talks about Republican proposals to eviscerate Social Security and send the money to Dick Cheney’s offshore Halliburton bank account.  It’s a synonym for a concept, idea, or classification system that people sometimes use when they’re not trying to demonize conservative ideas.

Anyway, Kardashev identified three potential types of civilizations. He distinguished between them by the amount of power they could produce to carry out interstellar communications, since his main interest was in finding intelligent life in other parts of the universe.  It’s not necessary to get bogged down in the physics of this to understand the main point.   Anyone who’s seen more than a couple of Star Trek episodes will easily get the meaning.  If not, just catch the episode with Scottie and the Dyson Sphere the next time it comes up on Spike TV, and you’ll be more than up to speed.  

According to Kardashev:

▪ A Type I civilization could marshal energy resources on a planet-wide scale, equivalent to the entire present power consumption of the human race, or about 10¹⁶ watts.

▪ A Type II civilization would surpass this by a factor of approximately ten billion (making available 10²⁶ watts) by exploiting the total energy output of its central star. Freeman Dyson, for example, has shown in general terms how this might be done with a Dyson sphere.

▪ Finally, a Type III civilization would have evolved far enough to tap the energy resources of an entire galaxy. This would give a further increase by at least a factor of 10 billion to about 10³⁶ watts.

Carl Sagan pointed out that the energy gaps between Kardashev's three types were so enormous that a finer gradation was needed to make the scheme more useful. A Type 1.1 civilization, for example, would be able to expend a maximum of 10¹⁷ watts on communications, a Type 2.3 could utilize 10²⁹ watts, and so on.

He estimated that, on this more discriminating scale, the human race would presently qualify as roughly a Type 0.7.

So, you ask, exactly what does this have to do with American politics and the threat of nuclear war?  That was exactly my question.  The author of the physics book was an advocate of this classification system, which he used to support his social and political theories about managing society’s resources.  As I wrote to him in 1994:

Phil: In talking about the requirements to move from a Type I to II to Type III civilization, it seems to me that your perspective is so grounded in present-day understanding that you over-estimate the difficulty attached in making this change.  My reference here is to the scientific and technical requirement to meet the power-demands, etc. to advance to the next level.  These scientific/technical requirements seem to be linked to such things as "social cooperation on a planetary scale," according to your definitions.  You further state that "by definition, a Type I civilization requires a cohesive social unit that is the entire planet's population."  Further, "the social organization of a Type I civilization must be very complex and advanced, or else the technology cannot be developed."

I respectfully disagree with your evaluation.  You cite [an early astrophysicist] who said in his time, "the very thought of large ships capable of placing humans on the moon and planets was universally considered to be the thinking of a madman."  And yet, within half a century from the time this was written man landed on the moon.  I use this as a way to illustrate what I disagree with concerning your own judgment about movement between different civilization Types.  Based on what we understand today, your point is a quite reasonable one.  However, I suspect that within another 50 years "what it takes" to accomplish everything needed to be a Type I civilization will seem considerably less daunting. 

And, as significantly, I think you'll find that much of the impetus to advance to a point where we have the technical capabilities identified with a Type I civilization will come precisely from fragmented — not cohesive — government, as well as through individual capitalistic impulses rather than any implicit socialization of world resources.

Like most scientists who write with a political agenda, big government and central planning is what drives social and scientific progress. When you start with this premise, it’s an easy step to argue for national policies that reflect these values, all the while couching them in the proper Liberal rhetoric of focusing on the best needs of mankind, rather than the personal greed of a few big corporations.

I’m not saying that the gentleman I wrote to was anti-capitalist, or pro-anything in particular.  The letter I received back from him thanked me for buying his book and declined my offer to take him to lunch the next time I passed through town.  Since this isn’t about him anyway, but about the nature of the ideas he expressed, what he did or didn’t personally believe is irrelevant to this discussion.  What was of interest to me, and still is, are the implications this world-think has for another social/political/scientific issue: the possibility of nuclear war (or, in its most basic form, the possibility that at least one nuclear bomb would be fired in anger).

As I wrote in 1994:

Phil: "Common sense" in 1984, as generally reported, was that the world was a highly dangerous place and nuclear war was a real possibility (the "doomsday clock" showed almost no time left).  With the fall of the Soviet Union, conventional wisdom reversed itself.  The world, many believed, was now much safer from nuclear weapons.

However, it is my opinion that the risk of a nuclear bomb going off today is considerably greater than it was 10 years ago.  The perceived tensions may have been higher in 1984, but the availability of the bomb was limited to a few nations, each with tight controls on its use and disbursement.  Today, tensions between the world's great nuclear powers are reduced, but the threat of a bomb being used (through illegal proliferation or technical advancements like in Korea) is much greater. Beneath the verbal tirades and political maneuverings of both the US and Soviet Union was a structured command and control apparatus designed to prevent nuclear war.  That apparatus, on the part of the Russians, has been seriously weakened.  Thus today there is a higher likelihood that someone will set off a nuclear bomb or two.

Where I fault your logic in your book is that you have accepted the conventional "common sense" notion that enormous technical progress is only possible through world harmony, just the way most people believed that nuclear war was a very immediate threat.  The only way to truly understand what did/is happening is to stand the original argument on its head.  Not only was the world actually safer from nuclear war in the 1980's, but (again getting back to your point) we are advancing toward a Type I civilization precisely because we are not a cohesive social unit. The social/political aspects you cite as essential ingredients to a Type I civilization may, in fact, be detriments instead.  Precisely what you think limits scientific progress advances it.  The socially and politically fragmented world we live in acts like an impetus to scientific advancement (the "space race"), rather than an impediment.
 
In my judgment, a world government based on democratic principles would tend to drive scientific advancement to a standstill.  Because of the great disparity between large segments of the world's population, the impetus would be toward remedying the deficiencies, not advancing science.  And the deficiencies between "us" and the poorest/most illiterate parts of the world are so enormous that it would probably take generations to correct, combined with substantial social spending, if our own mixed-history of domestic results are any indicator of success. Why build a better space shuttle when we have so many illiterate people throughout the world who need to be given a basic education? 

I also believe that a world government based on totalitarian principles would certainly have the ability to focus resources on a global scale to advance science, but would it have the desire?  The Soviet Union collapsed, in a very real sense, because the scientific advancements of the West made it impossible to continue on.  I speak here first and foremost of advancements in communication, without which science advances marginally.  The Soviets tried to limit communication, and it weakened them.  In East Berlin, the TV signals from the West were easily picked up, showing the widening gulf between the two political systems, and increasing pressures for fundamental political change.  In a totalitarian world government, I think most of the world's resources would end up being devoted to limiting/controlling/circumscribing information and communication, as well as reinforcing a global security apparatus to keep those in power, in power.

In short, given the way the world really works, rather than some abstract notion of how people should behave, it was clear to me that his notion of the political/social underpinnings required for mankind to “advance” were exactly the opposite of what was needed.  The United Nations is as close today as anything approximating a world government.  It’s hardly the model of the efficient use of available resources. 

Now a U.N. dominated by one country or cabal might stand a chance of fulfilling that dream.  But this isn’t how the UN operates.  France, Germany, China and Russia have worked overtime to limit the options and prerogatives of the only remaining world superpower, not expand them.  And as the flap in February 2006 over the printing of a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam more than showed, world consensus can be an elusive thing.  If somebody doesn’t like a decision a newspaper cartoonist makes in a minor European country, it sets off worldwide protests, fire bombings, and rampages. 

The planet’s current “world body” can hardly decide where to have lunch, let alone develop the earth’s resources for a common purpose.  Substituting another world organ for the UN wouldn’t make a whit of difference, because the problem doesn’t lie with the way the UN is made up, but with the very idea of a centralized world government in the first place.  

This is the practical danger of carrying liberal utopian thought to its illogical conclusion; a world less safe than before, a society less free to advance scientifically than it otherwise might be.  The solution to the world’s problems isn’t to implement some phony “opposite version” of conservative totalitarianism.  Conservatives no more appreciate Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon telling them what to do than they want Uncle Joe Stalin to come back to power. 

In a free society there must be some regulation and some limitations on personal and corporate behavior.  But accepting this obvious fact doesn’t mean that those limits should be imposed from above. Free debate, and the free election of representatives to carry our concerns to Washington, is what separates the United States from the Palestinian Authority under Hamas rule, or Saddam Hussein’s 99.9% victory margin before the world’s leading democracies threw him in jail and put an end to his institutionalized brutality.

And just as clearly, keeping our families safe from the threat of terror, whether it’s from conventional, biological, or nuclear weapons, requires more than good wishes and good intentions.  Those unwilling to fight for what they believe deserve the fate that befalls them.  And those more concerned with maintaining a politically correct image, or seeking short-term political gain at the expense of the nation’s security, are not trustworthy enough to lead the country.  Progress will be made when the clash of opposing ideas takes place in a clear, unmitigated fashion, without the benevolent hand of a social utopian or economic liberal attempting to steer (meaning obfuscate) the discussion. 

All of which now leads me to the concluding chapter of this series as I wrap up the “lessons learned” from my conversation with Harry and a few of his loony liberal friends.

Look for the last chapter coming soon:  “Art Imitates Life Imitates Harry.”

Looney Liberal Chronicles

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