Abstract

The Power to Kill: From Clubs to Cobalt Bombs

"Faster, and faster, and faster" might summarize the U.S. civilization. Not only during the past few decades but actually for tens of thousands of years man has been achieving mastery over his physical environment with ever-accelerating speed. Are the brakes and the steering gear of the U.S. adequate to control tile speed-up in technology, particularly the speed-up in killing power? The difficulty is that the power to destroy has been increasing far more rapidly than the power to create, and that the power to manipulate matter and advance technologically has increased more rapidly than the power to make social, political, and ethical progress. If destructive power should go on outdistancing socially creative power, the resulting explosion might mean the end of civilization. Nuclear bombs are not in themselves the essence of the world menace. They are merely products of the age-long accelerating increase in destructive capacity.