Dualism: an ultimate and extreme example.

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"The war we are fighting until victory or the bitter end is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx. Christ: the principle of love. Marx: the principle of hate."

Joseph Goebbels--Third Reich propaganda minister

This is the same extremism that fed our cold war with the Soviet Union, motivated the war in vietnam, and nearly exterminated civilization with a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This nuclear war was averted only by one man, a colonel in the Russian Navy. It shouldn't be up to one man to determine whether civilization exists or dies.

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@coluber2001,

Are you suggesting that it was wrong for this "one man" to avert a nuclear war?

He made have not had the right to make this decision for all humanity, but I am glad that he did.

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@coluber2001,

coluber2001 wrote:

a colonel in the Russian Navy.

Did the Soviet navy have the rank of 'colonel'?

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@maxdancona,

Where did you get the idea that I said it was wrong for this man to avert a nuclear war? That would be insanity.

The Russian submarine was under intense pressure from American ships for hours, and apparantly under the impression that they were at war, loaded the nuclear-tipped torpedo into the tubes. The Russian Colonel who was the commander of the fleet of four submarines happened to be on that particular submarine countermanded the order to fire the torpedo.

I'm saying that he should never have been put in that position to have to make a decision like that.

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@coluber2001,

Quote:

I'm saying that he should never have been put in that position to have to make a decision like that.

But if he wasn't put in that position to have to make a decision like that, than (according to the narrative you are telling) than no one would have countermanded the order to fire the torpedo, and presumably the torpedo would have been fired.

You are making a statement that people shouldn't be put in a position where they can decide to "avert a nuclear war". Then you are telling a story where someone was put in that position, and presumably you agree that it was a good thing that he was.

You are contradicting yourself. It is pretty easy to imagine a situation where either the Colonel wasn't part of the task force organization, or maybe the communications were down. That would mean that he wasn't in the position to "avert a nuclear war".

What do you think would have happened if this commander were not in the position to countermand the order?

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@centrox,

It's very confusing what rank Vasili Arkhipov was. At any rate he was equal in rank to the captain of the submarine, though he was in command of the fleet of the four submarines. I remember reading that he was Colonel Vasili Arkhipov.

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@coluber2001,

I don't think name of the rank matters... nor does the fact that this particular tale happens in the military. This is another example of something fairly common in high stress situation where someone in command has to make a quick decision to avert disaster.

Fire chiefs all of the time have to decide to send in their firefighters, or to pull them out. Making a wrong decision is tragic and sometimes even the right decision is painful. Doctors also make decisions of life or death when treating critical patients.

In each of these cases, you hope that the person in command makes a right decision. In hierarchical organizations, whether it is a firehouse, or a hospital, or a military unit... you have people in command for exactly this reason.

This example isn't making the point that I think Coluber wants to make. Actually the point the Coluber actually wants to make isn't very clear. If the point is that we shouldn't have armies, or nuclear weapons, or war... then fine. But as long as we have armies with nuclear weapons, making sure they have solid command structures led by people who can make rational decisions is probably a good idea.

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@maxdancona,

The submarine had lost all Communications with Moscow and maybe the other submarines. They were virtually an isolated island and believing that they might have been at war with the US., though they were listening to the miami radio stations. U.S. ships were bombarding the submarine with practice depth charges, air conditioning was out in the submarine, and their batteries were low. They were under intense duress and the decision to fire the torpedo was an act of desperation. Arkhipov kept his head, and I think that's why he was in charge.

All of this is available on a DVD "the man who saved the world." and a book, I forget the title. Arkhipov's Memoirs haven't been translated. But it was only after his death that his Memoirs were published. Before that nobody knew what had happened.
.

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@coluber2001,

According to that narrative it sounds as if the military chain of command worked. He was the ranking officer, in charge of making the final decision. And, he made it.

It is a good story. I don't really understand the point you are trying to make with it.

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@maxdancona,

You have to go back to the original Goebbels's quote. That essentially God or goodness or truth is on our side and that justifies the destruction or extermination of the other side. That dualism is identifying with one side of an interdependent opposite and opposing the other side. That's the mottos of both the United States and the Soviet Union which described this philosophy. The United States = freedom and the Soviet Union = equality and both felt that they should destroy the other. Only France had a unifying motto: Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood.

I'm not saying anything new. Everybody knows this.

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@coluber2001,

coluber2001 wrote:

It's very confusing what rank Vasili Arkhipov was. At any rate he was equal in rank to the captain of the submarine, though he was in command of the fleet of the four submarines. I remember reading that he was Colonel Vasili Arkhipov.

Arkhipov had, in October 1962, the substantive rank of Vice Admiral, and was commander of the submarine flotilla comprising the B-59, B-4, B-36 and B-130, but because he also served as second-in-command of the B-59, he was, while on board that vessel, deemed to have the same rank as its commander, Captain Savitsky. A naval captain is equivalent to a colonel in the ground forces. A vice admiral is equivalent to a lieutenant-general, three ranks higher than a colonel. So, yes, somewhat confusing. Savitsky wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo against the US forces which had depth-charged them. Typically only the political officer of a vessel and the commander had to agree to launch a "special weapon", but because of Arkhipov's role as flotilla commander, his vote, which he withheld, was also required.

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@coluber2001,

Quote:

That essentially God or goodness or truth is on our side and that justifies the destruction or extermination of the other side.

The belief that goodness and truth is on our side is part of being human. We are social creatures. We couldn't exist in society without believing the goodness and truth are on our sides. Currently, in the US, we believe goodness and truth support gay marriage, and equality and oppose slavery and child marriage.

I could point out that we both took life, and sacrifice life to defeat the party of Goebbels because we believed goodness and truth were on our side. But even now, we act as though our beliefs about equality, and justice and liberty represent goodness and truth.

I don't know why you are singling out France. They believe "Freedom", "Equality" and "Brotherhood" equal goodness and truth... and God knows that the French have killed people to support their beliefs. They are no different than any other society.

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@maxdancona,

Excellent, I did not know he was vice admiral at the time of the incident. He was second in command on board the submarine K19 in 1960. It was one of the first Russian submarines armed with nuclear missiles. One of the two nuclear reactors had a coolant failure problem and radiation leakage. Arkhipov averted a mutiny and himself was exposed to radiation. His cool head during the incident may have been why he was put in charge of the fleet of submarines in Cuba. The k-19 incident was dramatized, perhaps over-dramatized, in the movie k-19 Widowmaker. It stars Harrison Ford as the captain and Liam Neeson Arkhipov. An excellent movie worthwhile watching.

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@maxdancona,

But the French at least have a motto to fall back on. We don't. Our motto is freedom not freedom and equality. To us they are in opposition.

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@coluber2001,

We have a motto to fall back upon too...

Quote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course, we have not always lived up to our motto... but then, neither have the French.

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@coluber2001,

I was just going to say that.

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Quote:

The belief that goodness and truth is on our side is part of being human. We are social creatures. We couldn't exist in society without believing the goodness and truth are on our sides. Currently, in the US, we believe goodness and truth support gay marriage, and equality and oppose slavery and child marriage.

And that is exactly the opposite of the point I'm trying to make. That religion is not comprised of identifying with one side, the good, and opposing the other side, the evil. That is not religion. That is the what passes for religion such as that so strongly stated in the Goebbel's statement:
"The war we are fighting until victory or the bitter end is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx. Christ: the principle of love. Marx: the principle of hate."

This is what we have to learn from the monsters of History. If we say well, everybody thinks that way, then we have learned nothing.

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@coluber2001,

Quote:

That religion is not comprised of identifying with one side, the good, and opposing the other side, the evil. That is not religion.

Quote:

This is what we have to learn from the monsters of History. If we say well, everybody thinks that way, then we have learned nothing.

Do you really not see the contradiction here?

When you use the phrase "monsters of History", you yourself are identifying with one side, the good, and opposing the other side, the evil.

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@maxdancona,

Of course, but sometimes you just have to use words.

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"I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination."
Alan W. Watts

It's a hallucination machine within which I've spent most of my life. I do have some periods of Illumination. You have to value those moments. These are moments of clarity and creativity which really expands your identity and make you feel alive and make the world and the Universe alive. Otherwise your identity is limited by what your intellect says it is.

Or as Anthony Hopkins says:
We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.

Anthony Hopkins

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Dualism: an ultimate and extreme example.

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