Take Leadership to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
Climate change and the threat of nuclear war are the two most important challenges facing humanity.
In the early 1980s Harvey Jackins was concerned about nuclear war. He encouraged us to discharge on the phrase, “It won’t happen because . . . .“ As a result, many Co-Counselors took action. Some wrote to Present Time about the issue and their efforts. As you can see on the RC website, about fifteen articles on the topic were published in Present Time between 1982 and 1985. Nothing has been published since.
In the wide world, climate change is receiving a lot more attention than nuclear weapons. A Google search for “nuclear weapons” yielded 3,210,000 entries. A search for “climate change” yielded 187,000,000 entries—almost sixty times as many—even though people have been aware of the danger of nuclear weapons much longer than they’ve been aware of the danger of climate change.
It doesn’t make sense to ask which challenge is more important. We do know that the United States used nuclear weapons in the Second World War, that more recently mistakes have almost led to nuclear weapons being used again, and that at present two countries are threatening each other with their use.
On the positive side, the United Nations has issued a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. We can start discharging about nuclear weapons and taking leadership to ensure that the countries we live in ratify the U.N. treaty.
A place to start is telling your Co-Counselor every memory you have about nuclear weapons. Start with the first time you heard about them and continue with every book you read, every movie you saw, and every conversation you heard. I suspect you will discharge a lot. Let us know what you find out.
Santa Barbara, California, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC Community members
(Present Time 190, January 2018)