Hey there Chris - your piece asks careful attention from the reader to follow where you go especially in the last sections. The section begins when you indicate: "This is why Oppenheimer’s admittedly rousing finale nevertheless struck me as hollow." And as I'd paraphrase, the movie's conclusion ends with a sobering, but obvious, gesture toward the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons. With the focus on the integrity of Oppenheimer the individual man and scientist-citizen, the implication is that the stewardship of nuclear weapons would be better in the hands of "serious people, bona fide Ivy Leaguers, who know their Marx from their molecular dynamics," rather than the whims of politicians. This is what rings hollow, though, because it misses a more probing exploration of the relationship between science, expertise, the general population, and state power.
So here I'll keep trying to paraphrase, that where you'd turn by contrast and what the film ignores or fails to grasp is the way that nuclear weapons alienate citizens, the general populations, from a sense of direct responsibility for the security of their state. When nuclear weapons are left in the hands of the technicians who can only understand them, the small set of politicians and elected officials who defer to the technicians on all the operational knowledge- or at best if not merely technicians then bona fide Ivy Leaguers with a sober feeling of responsibility and soul (knowing Marx from molecules etc.)-- then that sequestering of responsibility for security has an impact on the souls of everyone else.
One of the points you note is that the dependence on nuclear weapons in the setting of globalization or late capitalism, extreme interconnectedness and global alliances, is an aspect of fragility. While it might seem very remote and unlikely, if nuclear weapons were launched, the entire global system would be implicated and involved. So: the general population which except for actual military personnel and their families doesn't have to worry much about participating in security, but simultaneously the entire humanly built planetary system is made fragile to what could happen. General population both is "off the hook" and entirely "on the hook" with everything else at the same time. All this is because of technology. H.G. Gadamer in "Reason in the Age of Science" talks about the way that the use of technology involves handing oneself over to the workings of the machine -- with effects on the human capacity to think for oneself and for the good of one's community.
I'm writing all this out to see if I can follow -- and if you'd add more or offer any clarifications.
There’s much to be said, but for now I’ll respond somewhat more brusquely than I was in the piece: I didn’t find the film’s conclusion to be as impactful as many have said, precisely because I think it’s in service to state power and to those who wield it. The final scene, if you read between the lines, is actually an appeal to be saved by the national security state. We’ve done this “bad thing” (the bomb) and now only people like Oppenheimer can save us—people who represent science, the Ivy League/Oxbridge, and the kind of melancholic elitism summed up in Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor.”
Perhaps this conclusion is not wrong—that’s debatable. But I do think it’s important that we don’t stop at a superficial reading of the film’s ending. Of course it would be bad if an atomic bomb were detonated. But the very need to police this threat has created its own set of problems. We are, in fact, living in “Platonic cave” where illusion and reality are oft-mistaken. As Michael Howard has put it: “The state ‘apparat’ [is] isolated from the body politic, a severed head continuing to function automatically, conducting its intercourse with other severed heads according to its own laws.”
I enjoyed the movie and your comments. Thanks
Hey there Chris - your piece asks careful attention from the reader to follow where you go especially in the last sections. The section begins when you indicate: "This is why Oppenheimer’s admittedly rousing finale nevertheless struck me as hollow." And as I'd paraphrase, the movie's conclusion ends with a sobering, but obvious, gesture toward the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons. With the focus on the integrity of Oppenheimer the individual man and scientist-citizen, the implication is that the stewardship of nuclear weapons would be better in the hands of "serious people, bona fide Ivy Leaguers, who know their Marx from their molecular dynamics," rather than the whims of politicians. This is what rings hollow, though, because it misses a more probing exploration of the relationship between science, expertise, the general population, and state power.
So here I'll keep trying to paraphrase, that where you'd turn by contrast and what the film ignores or fails to grasp is the way that nuclear weapons alienate citizens, the general populations, from a sense of direct responsibility for the security of their state. When nuclear weapons are left in the hands of the technicians who can only understand them, the small set of politicians and elected officials who defer to the technicians on all the operational knowledge- or at best if not merely technicians then bona fide Ivy Leaguers with a sober feeling of responsibility and soul (knowing Marx from molecules etc.)-- then that sequestering of responsibility for security has an impact on the souls of everyone else.
One of the points you note is that the dependence on nuclear weapons in the setting of globalization or late capitalism, extreme interconnectedness and global alliances, is an aspect of fragility. While it might seem very remote and unlikely, if nuclear weapons were launched, the entire global system would be implicated and involved. So: the general population which except for actual military personnel and their families doesn't have to worry much about participating in security, but simultaneously the entire humanly built planetary system is made fragile to what could happen. General population both is "off the hook" and entirely "on the hook" with everything else at the same time. All this is because of technology. H.G. Gadamer in "Reason in the Age of Science" talks about the way that the use of technology involves handing oneself over to the workings of the machine -- with effects on the human capacity to think for oneself and for the good of one's community.
I'm writing all this out to see if I can follow -- and if you'd add more or offer any clarifications.
Many thanks Ole!
There’s much to be said, but for now I’ll respond somewhat more brusquely than I was in the piece: I didn’t find the film’s conclusion to be as impactful as many have said, precisely because I think it’s in service to state power and to those who wield it. The final scene, if you read between the lines, is actually an appeal to be saved by the national security state. We’ve done this “bad thing” (the bomb) and now only people like Oppenheimer can save us—people who represent science, the Ivy League/Oxbridge, and the kind of melancholic elitism summed up in Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor.”
Perhaps this conclusion is not wrong—that’s debatable. But I do think it’s important that we don’t stop at a superficial reading of the film’s ending. Of course it would be bad if an atomic bomb were detonated. But the very need to police this threat has created its own set of problems. We are, in fact, living in “Platonic cave” where illusion and reality are oft-mistaken. As Michael Howard has put it: “The state ‘apparat’ [is] isolated from the body politic, a severed head continuing to function automatically, conducting its intercourse with other severed heads according to its own laws.”