21st Century: Query 167 (Jackie Speier and J. Robert Oppenheimer)
“Every
day is Earth Day, and I vote we start investing in a secure climate future
right now.”
“The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.”
Two quotes by two very different people: one addresses climate change and the other one implies impending nuclear doom.
~ Jackie Speier is an American politician who currently serves as a U.S. Representative for California’s 14th congressional
district, serving in Congress since 2008. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
“The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.”
~ J. Robert Oppenheimer, was an American theoretical physicist and professor of
physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those
who are credited with being the “father of the atomic bomb” for their role in
the Manhattan Project, the World
War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear
weapons. The first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16,
1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico.
Oppenheimer later remarked that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad
Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” In August
1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
Two quotes by two very different people: one addresses climate change and the other one implies impending nuclear doom.
How are these
two issues aligned? Not aligned? What is the tone of these two assertions? Do
you agree with the premise of either or both statements? Why or why not?
In his Bhagavad
Gita quote, Oppenheimer recognizes his role and guilt in inventing a weapon
of mass destruction. How does his guilt line up with his message of unity to
humanity?