President Obama's Notre Dame Commencement Speech

President Obama's Notre Dame commencement speech represents a watershed moment in American politics, an extraordinary contribution to the greatest challenge that America faces at this moment in history.

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At one level, we face challenges involving the economy, environment, matters of war and peace, and health. But at a higher level, our nation has long faced a greater problem: the challenge of dealing with difference, whether in terms of race, ethnicity, economic class, religion, politics, even worldview.

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I do not exaggerate when I say this is our greatest national problem. It is our lack of skill at dealing with difference that has impaired our ability to work in and with what is called 'the Muslim world.' Our lack of skill here, in part, resulted in an attack on my hometown--I live in Manhattan--resulting in thousands of fatalities. It is our lack of skill at dealing with differences that, I fear, targets my town and my country for terrorist activities, from suitcase nukes to bioweapons. It is our lack of skill in this area that makes the environment for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan so dangerous, in multiple ways.

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Even aside from the apocalyptic, our problems in dealing with difference contaminate our personal lives. I myself have been beaten bloody by people who took issue with me, either as a Puerto Rican, or a White man. I have been ridiculed for my religion (by some of those who agreed with my politics), as well as for my politics (by some thoughtless members of my church). We need a better way to deal with differences than many of us have been taught to use.

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For nearly thirty years, since the election of Ronald Reagan as U.S. president in 1980, American political and social discourse has increasingly invoked the rhetoric of division, the demonizing of one's opponents, the winner-take-all approach to politics. As our society has become more obviously multicultural, as America has become more diverse on every possible dimension, overall we have shown ourselves to be poorly equipped to deal with difference.

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In contrast, at Notre Dame, President Obama elaborated a vision of civility and fairness in dealing with differences of opinion. He called for people to hold fast to their faith and their values, yes, but he also called for them to show respect to those with different faiths and values, always holding the presumption that one's opponents are people of good will. Obama exhorted us all to appeal to reason, to universal and not parochial principles. One of his phrases will stay with me for a very long time: "Open hearts; open minds; fair-minded words."

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Although not delivered in the high style or dramatic setting of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, President Obama's remarks may ultimately be seen as just as important in redefining American political and social life. Thank you, Notre Dame, for giving him this platform. Both President Obama and Notre Dame are most definitely On The Mark.

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I posted an earlier version of this in response to a news article at The Huffington Post (THP). I invite you to visit my profile at THP, see my other comments that are indexed there, comment on them--even become an official "fan" of my writing at THP, if you like. (And, if any reader of this blog is the person identified as "viewfromuphere," who became my first 'fan' at THP: Thank you for your support.)

On Angels and Demons and the Illuminati

With today's nationwide release of the movie version of Dan Brown's book, Angels and Demons, many people will be exposed to Brown's fictional version of those boogeymen of the conspiracy community, the Illuminati (cue creepy trumpet music: DAH Dah dah dahhhhhhh). Here, then, is a brief guide to help you discern Illuminati fact from fiction.


Two warnings: (1) I base my comments on Brown's depiction of the Illuminati in the book version; the movie may deviate from the book. (2) Although I do not reveal any plot twists, by necessity I will convey information about the Illuminati that appears in Brown's novel.

The Illuminati Really Existed

There have been several movements throughout history whose adherents were known by the name (translated into English) of "Illuminated Ones," or (in its Latin version) Illuminati. The movement to which Dan Brown is referring is the Bavarian Illuminati, founded on May 1, 1776, by Adam Weishaupt, a Jesuit-educated but anticlerical university professor who taught at the University of Ingolstadt, in upper Bavaria (the southeastern part of what is now Germany). The Bavarian Illuminati (hereafter just Illuminati, for short) were a revolutionary group that proposed to overthrow the absolute powers of the day, the Church and the Monarchy. Their plan was to replace these with a reverence for Reason, and a sort of primitive Democracy.

For the most part, the Illuminati were high on revolutionary talk, and low on action. However, what they were talking about was truly revolutionary. Had the Illuminist agenda been carried out, it would have meant a thoroughgoing reorganization of society.

Weishaupt and his associates designed a series of initiatory ceremonies, or "degrees" of initiation, by which they brought people into what was truly meant to be a secret society in the proper sense: that is, a society whose very existence was supposed to be a secret from the surrounding greater society and culture. Under Weishaupt's leadership, agents of the Illuminati infiltrated several Masonic lodges in Europe, and subverted these lodges to serve as fronts for Illuminati activities. However, Weishaupt's plans were discovered by government authorities, and several European states worked to crush the Illuminati and the revolutionary activities of its members. Within about ten years of its founding, for all practical purposes, the Illuminati were no more. Reportedly, Weishaupt himself died reconciled to the Church he had once spurned.

Until my own book on the subject is published--and, I am actively seeking representation and interested publishers!--probably the best general reference on the Illuminati, in my opinion, is the portion on the Illuminati (chapter 11) in Christopher Hodapp and Alice Von Kannon's book, Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies for Dummies. (Yes, this is a "Dummies" book--and a pretty good one, too.) Some material from this chapter is available on the May 1, 2009 post of these authors' blog devoted to this topic.

However, the Illuminati have had a much livelier existence after their suppression, as they have formed the core of Western conspiracy theories and conspiracy-themed fiction for over two centuries (a topic explored in detail in my book). However, the Illuminati of conspiracy theory and fiction differ in major ways from the real Illuminati of history. Below, I describe some of the ways that Dan Brown's Illuminati, as depicted in Angels and Demons, differs from the Illuminati of history.

The Real Illuminati Were Not A Conspiracy of Italian Renaissance Artists and Scientists

In Angels and Demons (hereafter A&D), the Illuminati were a group that existed back in the time of Galileo, whose writings give important clues to Robert Langdon, the hero of Brown's novel (played by Tom Hanks in the movie). This is nonsense.

The real Illuminati were founded in 1776 in Bavaria. Galileo died in 1642, a full century and a half earlier. Basically, Galileo was as far from the days of the Illuminati as we are from the era of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. This is not a small discrepancy.

So, why did Dan Brown position the Illuminati in the time and place that he did? Consider this:

• As one can tell from both A&D and its sequel, The Da Vinci Code, Brown is interested in questions of religion and faith as these intersect with the historical positions of the Roman Catholic church. In addition, as we can see from these two books, he (and his wife Blythe Newlon) have a great love of Renaissance art. To address all of this, it makes a great deal more sense to write a story involving Rome and the Vatican, the artwork commissioned by the Renaissance-era Catholic Church, and so forth. Where else could he place such a story, but Rome? Ingolstadt? I don't think so.

• As appears to be the case based on his court testimony a couple of years ago, Dan Brown reads widely, but not necessarily with a discriminating eye. My suspicion is that Brown has dipped into the conspiracy literature more than once for inspiration. In turn, the conspiracy community has latched onto the Illuminati as the ur-conspiracy, the Mother Ship of Western conspiracies, for a long time. Some writers have connected it to revolutionary movements occurring after the Illuminati's demise (such as the French Revolution, and the rise of Communism in Russia). However, other conspiracy writers (like Jim Marrs and David Icke) have connected the Illuminati to groups and movements that date to much earlier times, even centuries and millennia earlier. From that perspective, pulling Galileo into the Illuminati isn't much of a stretch.

The Illuminati Were Not A Conspiracy of Scientists At All

Brown's Illuminati are devoted to destroying the seat of Catholic governance through the use of extremely high-tech (even science fictional) means, as a way to usher in an age of science. This is a heavy distortion of the position of the historical Illuminati, who were not men or women of science. (I say "or women" because the historical Illuminati enrolled both genders.) The real Illuminati organization was devoted to making Reason, not Faith, the guiding principle of government and life, but that Reason was really a philosophical principal. (After all, 1776 fell well within the range of the period called the Enlightenment, right?) Reason was promoted as the principle to follow in the political process, rather than either religious faith or the supposedly divine right of kings. Thus, the Illuminati appealed to some figures in the arts, such as Goethe, and to liberally minded members of the European aristocracy. Scientists, however, barely figured into the historical Illuminati at all.

So why does Brown make his Illuminati into a conspiracy devoted to the ascendancy of science? The Illuminati, as a mythic icon, is a sort of Rorschach card into which each age reads its anxieties. To the clergy of the early American Republic in the late 18th and early 19th century, uncomfortable with their lesser power in a country with no established national church, the Illuminati were wild-eyed rationalists behind the anticlerical French Revolution. To our day, when issues of the relationship of science and religion are in the headlines, the Illuminati are anticlerical scientists. Brown is just reflecting the social anxieties of early 21st century America.

American Freemasons Were Never Involved With the Illuminati

One of the annoying claims in A&D is that the world's oldest fraternal organization, Freemasonry, is actually a front for the Illuminati. This is a staple of conspiracy literature, of course, and a full-blown refutation would take a great deal of space.

Let me put it this way. I am a Freemason: a Master Mason in the Blue Lodge, literally a man who has received "the Third Degree." In addition, I am a 32nd-degree Master of the Royal Secret in the Scottish Rite, and a Knight Templar in the York Rite (the Rites being appendant organizations that only accept Master Masons). I know several 33rd-degree members of the Scottish Rite, including some of the best-informed scholars in American Freemasonry. I have never detected even a whiff of a clue that Freemasonry is controlled by some secret "inner" organization.

The historical Illuminati did infiltrate several--probably dozens--of lodges in Continental Europe. They seem never to have had influence in English Freemasonry, where Grand Lodge Freemasonry began, let alone in the United States. Thus, what Dan Brown has to say on the subject is simply nonsense.

Then again, that's just what you would expect me to say . . . .

Enjoy the movie, as the work of fiction that it is.


[The image above, showing the cover of the book version of Angels and Demons, was obtained from Wikipedia. The copyright to this image is most likely owned by either the book publisher or the artist(s) who created the book cover. Wikipedia states that the use of this low-resolution image to illustrate an article dealing with the book is fair use under U.S. copyright law.]

Are "Young Americans Losing Their Religion" ?

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been several news reports (such as one by ABC News) regarding the Pew Center study on religion, supposedly showing that "young people are losing their religion," on the basis of the fact that the number of people in America who report "None" as their religious affiliation has grown precipitously over the last few years. However, the Pew study has been widely misunderstood. A proper understanding of this study reveals a lot about American religion over the last century, and points out an important opportunity for American organized religious groups.

What the Pew Study Really Means

What the Pew study really shows is that the number of people who have no affiliation to organized religious groups (churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, meetings, circles, etc.) has grown a great deal over the last few years. However, these young people are not "losing" their religion, so much as they are showing that they never had a serious or deep affiliation to a religious group from the get-go.

This should be no surprise. For years, many organized religions in America failed to engage their members in meaningful religious education beyond adolescence. That's a problem: personal faith that is 'frozen' in development at adolescence often cannot cope with the demands of adult life. This leaves family tradition, community ties, and habit as forces that kept many people tied to the religious groups in which they were raised.

However, the influence of tradition and community waned in America, as people began to move around the country a great deal more after World War II. Some people kept a nominal religious affiliation, but did not seriously involve their own children in any particular religious group. Now their descendants have no real ties to any religious organization.

However, every situation creates opportunities.

The Opportunity for Outreach

This presents a great opportunity for religious groups to make significant outreach efforts to those who define their religion as "none of the above," the so-called "religious 'nones' " (as they are referred to in the academic fields of the sociology and psychology of religion). At best, this would mean offering spiritual education to help people face life's issues on a mature spiritual level--more mature than what adolescents usually learn in classes to prepare for Christian Confirmation, Jewish Bar or Bat Mitzvah, and so forth. But will the religious groups of America make these efforts? Only time will tell. However, my sense of the situation is that those groups that do will grow and have a greater voice in shaping our society, while those who do not will fade.

So what do you do with all this? If you happen to be involved in a religious group, I would suggest two things. If you do not happen to be involved in a religious group, I have a different suggestion.

What Those With a Religious Affiliation Might Do

A fair number of the people who read this blog are members of religious organizations. (I know that this blog passes before the eyes of Catholics, Protestants, Latter-day Saints ["Mormons"], Jews of various inclinations, Muslims, members of the Society of Friends ["Quakers"], Wiccans, Gnostics, and Buddhists; I'm sure there are other groups represented as well in this blog's readership. Of course, many readers are honorable "nones.") Most of my readers who are affiliated with a group seem to be of what I would call the 'kinder' variety--less likely to burn people who differ at the stake, more likely to engage in dialogue for mutual understanding--and this variety of religion and spirituality, within any group, is something the world needs more of.

However, kinder is not necessarily better informed. I remember being shocked some years ago at the serious lack of religious and spiritual knowledge held by the students I taught at the University of Central Florida (where I taught the psychology of religion, among other courses). My impressions were confirmed by the grim findings reported in Stephen Prothero's excellent 2007 book, Religious Literacy. (For example: a significant number of American's actually believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. You can't make this stuff up.)

So, my first suggestion is really two-fold: (a) If your religious group offers spiritual education at the adult level--offering you a grounding in the teachings of your faith, and an adult level understanding of it--then participate in it; (b) however, if it does not, then help to institute such a spiritual education program within your congregation. Every spiritual tradition I know of has literature that can be used to create such programs. It can be done. If organized religion is to have a productive role in promoting individual and societal growth in 21st century America, it must be done.

My second suggestion: Expose your children in a serious way to your tradition. I mean the teachings, the ritual, the celebration, and discussions of spiritual issues in the home. I know that, in many cases, I am "preaching to the choir" (or coven) here, but it is still worth saying.

What Those With No Religious Affiliation Might Do

Now, to my friends the honorable "nones": Allow me, please, to invite you to an investigation of organized religious traditions. There are many good resources in this area; Huston Smith's The World's Religions is a good overview of the heart of several traditions. (This is a great book. However, it is an overview. Within every tradition he describes, there are many organized groups, and he often does not speak at the "specific group" level; for example, he says little or nothing about my people, the Latter-day Saints. He also is weak regarding neo-paganism; for which, see Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon. So, Smith is a place to start one's study, not the endpoint.)

There is a power that comes of being grounded within a lineage of teaching, a 'tradition.' Much wisdom has accumulated over the course of centuries within organized religious traditions. In my opinion, it is worth exposing oneself to these, to see what resonates with one's soul. Good fortune to you in your journey.
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I posted an earlier version of this in response to an on-line article at The Huffington Post (THP). I invite you to visit my profile at THP, see my other comments that are indexed there, comment on them--even become an official "fan" of my writing on THP, if you like.
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The picture, of the ruins of St. Bridget's Kirk, was taken in 2006 by Simon Johnston, who owns the copyright. The picture is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.

What Star Trek Meant the First Time Around

With J. J. Abrams bringing his reboot of the Star Trek franchise to the movies on Friday nationwide, I and other fans in their fifties and beyond find ourselves reminiscing about what the original Star Trek television series meant to us in the late 1960s.

We Would Have a Future

First of all, Star Trek told us that we would have a future. This was a shaky proposition at the time. The principal of my parochial elementary school interrupted my first-grade classes one day in October 1962, as the Cuban missile crisis broke into the news, to tell us that we were dangerously close to war with the Soviet Union--and to lead us all in prayer. We held drills in school for years, climbing under our desks to prepare for nuclear attack. However, with our school less than three miles from the Empire State Building--likely ground zero in any attack on New York City--we knew that, in a nuclear war, we would all be vaporized before the plaster loosened from the classroom ceiling by a bomb blast even reached our desk tops. We wondered whether we would make it alive to high school, let alone adulthood.

In the midst of all this atomic anxiety, Star Trek gave us the mythology of a future, the assurance that humanity would not immolate itself in a nuclear orgy of destruction, but rather would survive to encounter marvelous wonders and do great things: we would go to the very stars themselves.

Somehow that all translated into the idea that we, the fifth graders who watched the debut of the series on September 8, 1966, would survive--not a totally logical inference, but it worked for us. Oh, and about logic ....

Math and Science Are Cool

Second, Star Trek taught us that science and math were cool. This was certainly not anything that we learned on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the adults with the most secure jobs worked either for the City or the Mob. (No, I'm not going there.) Science and math, beyond what was necessary to make change, or calculate the odds on the ponies, seemed irrelevant in our parents' world.

Spock however, made science cool: he had the scientific answers to the seemingly impossible challenges that the crew faced weekly. Scotty, with his lightning-quick mental calculations of what the engines could do, and how long the Starship Enterprise could endure before the stresses of that night's adventure tore her to pieces--Scotty made math cool.

Sure, the science in Star Trek was largely made up, but a fair amount of it was based in reality, however tenuously. We heard about light speed, antimatter, genetic mutations, neurosurgery, artificial intelligence, and computers--all real scientific and technological concepts, even in 1966.

Star Trek got some of us to thinking that perhaps we could do something in science and math. As I grew up, my interests shifted towards social science, but I started out as a grade-school physicist and astronaut-wannabe, who was never scared by math--and I have Star Trek to thank for that, at least in part.

(In passing, I think that Star Trek really has exerted some influence on scientific and technological progress, by provoking questioning and thinking about even the seemingly wildest of its conjectures. For example, according to a recent article at Space.com, some scientists are working on the theoretical underpinnings of a faster-than-light propulsion system.)

A Future of Racial and Ethnic Equality

Third, Star Trek gave us hope that the time would come when ethnic and racial differences would mean nothing. This was certainly not the world that I inhabited. As a Polish-Puerto Rican biethnic child on the Lower East Side during the Sixties, I was beaten up now and again by bigger kids for whom someone like me was simply a biological and moral abomination.

Racial division broke out in open conflict in the larger world, as well. During the summer between second and third grades, we watched TV reports of the July 1964 Harlem riot. In subsequent years during our elementary school career, we watched TV reports of riots in Watts (August 1965), and Newark, NJ and Detroit (July 1967). As sixth graders, we witnessed the nation convulse in rioting during the spring of 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April. A month earlier, a U.S. presidential commission issued the Kerner report, famous for stating that "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal."

But not on Star Trek. Look at that bridge crew! Sure, Captain Kirk was your standard White North American leading man-type, such as viewers would see on most TV programs of that era. However, Uhura the communications officer was African, Sulu the helmsman and tactical officer was East Asian, Chekov the navigator was Russian, Scotty the chief engineer was Scottish, and Spock the science officer wasn't even entirely human. One of the most important scientists in the Federation was an African American, Dr. Richard Daystrom, reputedly the Einstein of the 23rd century, maven of artificial intelligence. Several Starfleet officers and enlisted personnel had Hispanic names, such as Commodore Jose Mendez. Characters of multiple heritages were not uncommon on the series, the most notable being Spock himself, half-Human, half-Vulcan.

And, for the most part, the different ethnic groups and races got along, at least within the Federation. Oh, sure, there were skirmishes and even open warfare now and again between the multicultural United Federation of Planets, the Romulan Star Empire, and the Klingons, but these conflicts were primarily drawn along astro-political lines, rather than along racial or ethnic differences. Where there was racial conflict, the series bluntly condemned it. (Best example: the episode where Commander Bele--refrigerator white on the left side of his body, but coal black on the right--hunted down Lokai, who had the opposite coloring. After a long pursuit, they discover that racial hatred had utterly destroyed all life on their home planet.)

I do not know where the Star Trek franchise will go from here. I do hope, though, that in our world--where ethnic hatreds kill thousands annually, where religious conflicts threaten global peace, where American children lag behind other nations in their understanding of science and technology, even as environmental catastrophe looms--perhaps something like the original Star Trek series will help to inspire the youth of the 21st century, with new tales of possible futures. That would truly be On The Mark.

Mark Koltko-Rivera is the Director for Research at Professional Services Group, Inc., where he has responsibility for the professional futurism practice.

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The picture, the official 40th anniversary logo for Star Trek, is Copyright 2007 by Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios Inc.; it is described on Wikipedia as being available for fair use.

Annals of Heroism, 1: A Way to Die, A Way to Live

Your correspondent is typically a pretty optimistic fellow, not a morbid sort. However, death is part of life, and the last nine months or so I've had death come to mind more than usual, what with the death of a parent, and now, of course, the swine flu outbreak in Mexico; even one of the family cats died. An incident mentioned in the news today reminded me that, although we have no choice but to die, we have a great deal of choice in the how of it all.

This video and this report from news organizations in Florida tell the story of 70-year-old Mr. Charles Schulze. Mr. Schulze noticed two boys, 9 and 12 years old, caught in the currents and about to drown, off Pompano Beach in Florida (pictured). According to the reports, Mr. Schulze dove in, and brought both the boys close enough in to shore for others to bring them the last bit to safety. Unfortunately, then he was at trouble in the currents himself. Although rescued, he was declared dead at the hospital.

There are lessons to be learned here.

First lesson: One needs to be prepared for the moment of trial, when it comes. My guess is that Mr. Schulze was in pretty good shape for 70 years old, to be able to swim out into the surf and save those two boys. When one sees the struggling swimmers out in the current, it's a little too late to start laying off the snack food, a little too late to start the exercise and swimming program. The trial comes when it comes; at that point, the time for preparation is past. However it is that one feels about matters of spirituality, surely the parable of the wise and foolish guests (Matthew 25: 1-13) has applicability across traditions.

Second lesson, probably the most important: Be a hero, to someone. As I have said before, our lives are not our own. Be oriented to helping people.

This so flies in the face of the prevailing ethics of the modern world: 'Look out for Number 1,' 'Make your pile,' 'Take the money and run,' 'Every man for himself.' That Mr. Schulze is being called a hero is unimportant; unfortunately, soon enough that will be forgotten. However, even the very last hour of his life had meaning and purpose that transcended the accomplishments of all the media Idols that shall ever be, all the bonuses that the so-called Masters of the Universe in the financial world have been pouting and shouting about.

I am reminded of the statement in the Talmud, the accumulated written wisdom of the rabbis of about twenty centuries ago: "whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." Everything good that these two boys could ever do for the rest of their lives, every descendant they could ever have, at that moment hung by a thread over the Abyss--and then Mr. Schulze saved their lives.

Third lesson: Don't be afraid to die doing good. The point of life is not to live forever--at least, not as the kind of beings we are now. Whether your beliefs point in the direction of the Hindu Atman; the traditional Jewish, Christian, or Islamic heaven; the Buddhist Nirvana or Pure Land; the Wiccan Summerlands; the LDS notion of Eternal Life; many other traditions besides--whatever spiritual tradition claims your attention, the point of life is to improve oneself, even to perfect oneself, through service to others. There may be much else besides, but every tradition will claim at least this much, I think. It's not about getting the most toys, or playing the life game of Pig-in-Trough, as Robert de Ropp put it in that 1960s masterpiece, The Master Game. The point is to live one of the central paradoxes of human life: by becoming someone other than we started life as--the self-centered infant, of whatever age--we become who we really are meant to be. To die doing good: the perfect endgame in the Great Game. It is how I would want to go. I hope I have the preparation and the guts to follow through on that wish.

Fourth lesson: Don't be afraid to do good after you die, either. The fact of the matter is, we can all give someone life through our deaths. We might not all have a moment of final, dramatic heroism. But how about being a hero to someone through organ donation? (Let's face it, folks--you're not going to be using them any more.) Sure, it may make you squeamish--but it can give sight to the blind, air to those short of breath, life to those whose hearts are giving out.

Having a life that means something, even in one's death: That may be the most on-the-mark of all.

(The picture, by Friejose, is from the Wikimedia Commons, reproduced under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.)

Annals of Innovation, I: The Football Lineman and the Solar City

As I mentioned in an earlier post, humanity faces quite an array of problems, ranging from global warming and terrorism to illiteracy and the threat of asteroids from space. It is a real joy to see someone doing something about one of these problems, in an innovative way. I am talking about the former football lineman and the solar city.

Time magazine reports on its website today, in an article by Michael Grunwald, that a former NFL lineman has made an innovative proposal for Babcock Ranch, a solar-powered city to be developed in southwest Florida (near Fort Myers, roughly halfway on a line between Miami and St. Petersburg). This would feature what would be the world's largest photovoltaic solar power plant.

After the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, when the volume went up on developing renewable energy sources, one argument against solar power was that 'the science isn't there yet.' It surely is now. The Florida solar power plant presumably would look and function something like the photovoltaic array at Nellis Air Force Base (Nevada), currently the largest solar photovoltaic power plant in North America (pictured above, from the Wikimedia Commons). The Nellis array, when fully developed, will supply over one-quarter of the power used on this base, which is home to more air squadrons than any other U.S. Air Force base in the world, including four air wings attached to the United States Air Force Warfare Center. Somehow, solar power is good enough for one of hte largest and most important bases of the U.S. Air Force. It should be good enough for much of the rest of the United States.

This idea for a solar city in Florida--what Time is calling the Sunshine City in the Sunshine State--is the idea of Syd Kitson, who, after six years playing as an NFL lineman for the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys, turned many years ago to real estate development. As Kitson put it in Grunwald's article, "The time has come for something completely different."

Kitson's proposal for his solar city includes details that would make his development sustainable and self-contained, with a green orientation that is unprecedented for a community of its size. That would be a major change of orientation for Florida, where communities typically are not sustainable, do require a car to do anything, and do carry an enormous carbon footprint per person. (I lived in Florida for over eight years. Sorry, my friends and former neighbors. I'm not saying that New York City, where I live now, is any better, either.)

My point in describing all of this is two-fold. Sure, I am promoting green ideas. However, beyond that, I am promoting innovative thinking. Here's a guy who played pro football for years. However, when that career ended, his thinking and ambition did not. He was willing to think outside the box, and to apply his intelligence to addressing some of the significant problems that our society faces: how to design sustainable communities, with renewable power, so as not to make our current environmental crisis even worse.

May his tribe increase. And may we each follow this example: each of us, in our own way, applying our intelligence in innovative ways to address the problems of the world. Yes, we can. Yes, you can. An innovative orientation like Syd Kitson's is definitely On The Mark.

Nuclear Disarmament: Yes We Must

As an elementary school student during the 1960s, I and other students across America took part in drills to prepare us to survive a nuclear attack. We dutifully crawled under our desks, to shield us from falling plaster, I guess. Then, on the walk home, I stood at the corner of First Avenue and St. Marks Place in Manhattan, looking to the northeast at the Empire State Building--not even two and a half miles away. It was widely rumored that the Soviets had two 20-megaton hydrogen fusion bombs aimed there. My school desk would not provide much protection against a blast that would vaporize the entire city block on which my school stood. I was stunned to learn, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, that some American political leaders and think tank consultants, such as Herman Kahn, talked about 'winning' a nuclear war, and about 'acceptable' levels of American casualties during a nuclear conflict--casualties in the tens of millions, of which I would undoubtedly be one, along with everyone I knew.

For a total of eight months during 1978-1980, I lived in and near Hiroshima, Japan, where one of the first atomic bombs had been detonated, at the end of World War II. The Hiroshima atomic fission bomb, "Little Boy," was a weak little monster by today's standards, with 'only' a 13-kiloton yield, or the explosive equivalent of 13K tons, or 26 million pounds, of dynamite. (A 20-megaton hydrogen fusion weapon has the explosive equivalent of 20,000K tons, or 40 billion pounds, of dynamite--well over 1,000 times the power of "Little Boy.") Yet, the Hiroshima weapon immolated about 75,000 civilians instantly (with more dying later). At the museum in Hiroshima's Peace Park, I saw artifacts and photos illustrating blast effects. In this city divided by many rivers, photos of bridges showed the permanent "shadows" created by the brilliant blast, shadows left behind by morning commuters, as well as children who had been walking to school on those bridges at 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, when the children and the commuters and everyone else were turned into piles of hot ash. (See photo above; note the outline of the shoes.)

(Yes, I know the received wisdom about the bombing being 'necessary to end the war.' I don't buy it; the historical facts show otherwise. See Howard Zinn's essay about this claim.)

The 1980s saw the publication of books like Carl Sagan's A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, which documented how even 'small-scale' nuclear war could bring about global nuclear winter, changing the climate of the planet for generations, ending human civilization. (See also Schell's The Abolition, and his 2007 book, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.)

In the 1990s, with the political disintegration of the Soviet Union, I wondered who was taking charge of Soviet nuclear arms. I learned that, for all practical purposes, no one was; nuclear materials were being protected on lonely bases by rusty locks and corruptible guards. Consequently, there is now a lively international black market in nuclear materials and technology.

Yesterday in Prague, President Obama made an observation that should have been obvious since the demise of the Soviet Union: "In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up." He has called for a renewal of American and international efforts toward nuclear disarmament.

I am not a pacifist. However, I have come to understand that the mere existence of nuclear weapons presents a threat to the survival of the entire human race. They must be eliminated from the armories of the nations of the world, and they must be kept from the hands of stateless terrorist forces.

Some say disarmament cannot be accomplished at this late date. I say this is a problem of will, not practicality. We have satellite technology that can read newspaper headlines from space; surely we can find a way to monitor the world for nuclear weapons.

Some say disarmament is weakness. I say it shows the will to survive. We are not the stronger for holding weapons that can destroy humanity; we are only making it more probable that some extremist politician or military officer or terrorist will someday use them.

I do not wish my someday grandchildren to end up as shadows on a bridge. Let us end these weapons now, before they end all of our hopes and dreams. I urge you to contact your federal Senators and Representative to instruct them to follow the President's lead on this matter, including the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Nuclear disarmament is clearly On The Mark.

Reference

Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger. (2009, April 6). Citing rising risk, Obama seeks nuclear arms cuts: Warns of spread of bomb technology in black market. The New York Times [late edition], pp. A1, A8.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Adam Harrison Levy for posting the Hiroshima bridge picture on the site of DesignObserver with his story, "Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs."