Creative Reactions to Life Under the Nuclear Sword

Abstract

In this brief essay I want to examine one of the positive aspects of life under the threat of nuclear war: the creative struggle against it. By this I do not mean to suggest that war or the threat of war is good or necessary for human advancement. Yet it is true that dire circumstances do sometimes bring out creative and heroic characteristicsperhaps only briefly in response to an immediate situation, but sometimes working to produce a lasting transformation of behavior and character. As a would-be scientific psychologist, I try here to avoid, as much as possible, a hortatory tone and to maintain some detachment from the problem in hand. Yet I write out of a sense of urgency and engagement, and a conviction that psychologists can play a special role, inter alia , in helping others to find their special roles, helping them to adapt to nuclearism by struggling against it. No matter how one tries to intellectualize the problem, the better to solve it, it cannot be denied that we are dealing with a great moral issue and that morality and creativity are embroiled with each other in a number of ways: 1. It is widely believed that a creative person ought to exercise his or her gifts.