Preventing World War III, Part 3

‘I … Dedicate This to the Peacemakers Everywhere.’

“We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb, and for better or for worse we are living in Oppenheimer’s world.  So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.”

Cillian Murphy won the best actor award at the Oscars this year, in a film that also won the best film award.  In his acceptance remarks, he closed with the words above.

I do not usually follow the Oscars, but the above words struck me deeply, especially as Murphy has said: “for better or for worse we are living in Oppenheimer’s world.”  He meant by this the Atomic Age, of course, but J.R. Oppenheimer, as in Kai Bird’s and Martin Sherwin’s original book, American Prometheus, is a figure of both “Triumph and Tragedy.”

Oppenheimer led a mission with Albert Einstein, H.H. Arnold, and other atomic scientists who announced, exactly 77 years ago, the urgency to consider “One World or None,” for humanity’s survival.  He paid dearly for his activism and for not going along with the war agenda and the glorification of the A-bomb that he himself created.