Monday, February 15, 2010
The Man Who Saved The World
If they ever rescinded all Nobel Peace Prizes ever awarded and instead offered them to Vasiliy Arkhipov I think it would be tough to argue that it wasn't the right move. Kennedy and Kruschev just about brought the end of humanity. Somebody explain to me why Kennedy is so revered in this country. To describe these two as criminally reckless is about as big an understatement as can be made.
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Let's not forget the other Russian, Stanislav Petrov who in the midst of the cold war, suspecting a malfunction in the Soviet satellite system broke with protocol and did not report the apparent launch of a US nuclear missile against Russia.
Of course, I suppose you could make the case that if his supervisors weren't athiest, but instead were evangelical, they wouldn't have been on a hair trigger retaliation footing to begin with, since God was on their side. I guess this just goes to show that an argument can be made that atheism can make the world a potentially much more dangerous place to live too, eh? ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
Good find and good point. He should share Nobel Prizes with Arkhipov.
I know you're mocking on the atheist hair trigger thing, but what I'm saying as far as the evangelical Christian is there is a logic to their mindset. I don't think there's anything about atheism that makes someone more trigger happy from a defensive standpoint. Your self preservation is up to you as an atheist. You launch a retaliatory strike and you know that everyone is dead, including you. I see the smiley face so I know you know what you're saying is convoluted and you're implying that my reasoning is likewise convoluted, but I guess I'm not sure.
That last sentence seems a bit convoluted, but let me state my somewhat tongue in cheek observation differently - if the Soviet leadership were Evangelical, then by your logic a scenario could potentially emerge where a false attack warning would result in inaction by the leadership based on their view that God was ultimately in control of the situation.
Therefore, in that scenario, humanity could ultimately be spared from destruction by a group of Evangelicals, as opposed to the Atheistic leadership which (in real life) held a policy of a nuclear retaliatory strike.
Obviously Kennedy was an evangelical Christian, and that is why he is so revered. It also explains why he was so cavalier about destroying the earth.
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