Nuclear explosion 

                                           (credit: FEMA, via Wikimedia Commons) 

So, at 13, I developed a love for science. However, at this time, I also developed an obsession with a second matter: the moral side of human life.  I felt deeply that we are facing one particular problem that we desperately need to solve. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that the problem to which we should be devoting our best hypothesizing and testing efforts is us.

A year before, I’d seen terror in the faces of the adults around me – my parents, my teachers, even adults in stores I went into. October 1962. Humanity was hovering on the brink of nuclear war. Few of those adults understood how atom bombs worked, but all of them knew if those bombs were used, they would cause horrible destruction, and maybe even an end to civilization. By smart human agency and some luck, we came through that crisis. But only just.

A bit over a year later, I got another massive psychological shock. Shortly after the time of our grade 9 lesson on the scientific method, U.S. President Kennedy was assassinated. Two days later, his alleged assassin was also assassinated.

These two events – the Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK’s assassination – led me to conclude that the adults of my world had little understanding of, or control over, what was going on. At the very least, I concluded, if our leaders were doing their best, then the model of human behavior they were using was inadequate.

It’s very frightening for a boy to see such fear and confusion in the eyes of the adults he has been trusting all his life. Then, in grade 9, I learned of this amazing method, this thinking tool, that I could use to solve any problem. I believed that then, and I believe it now. There is hope for us if we reason well.

So, I set a challenge for myself: use the scientific method to discover why we humans act the way we do, and if that much could be solved, then use the model developed via this line of research to hypothesize about how we could act to keep reducing the odds of our destroying ourselves.

What follows in this essay is what I have been able to conclude so far from my study of the humanities and social sciences. My hope is that a younger person will pick up this line of inquiry and run with it. Some young person will pursue this project, develop the model of history that I present here, make a strong case for their version of that model, and then persuade enough of their brothers and sisters of its accuracy to form a critical mass: a group of people resolute and skilled enough to reset the guidance system of this pale blue dot.

That guidance system, of course, is the human species. Us.

                                U.S. President John Kennedy with wife, Jackie, 

                        Texas governor, John Connally, and his wife, Nellie Connally 

                             (minutes before JFK was assassinated; Nov. 22, 1963) 

                             (credit: Victor Hugo King, via Wikimedia Commons)