Re: language in service to revelation or encapsulated in dyadic

Jim Woods (TrlBlzrOne@AOL.COM)
Thu, 22 May 1997 10:11:47 -0400

It has been pointed out to me that I left the concluding sentence in the
following paragraph uncompleted in my earlier reply to Wade Riddick's
note....

> I think that while more people have been killed following the exhortation
to
> 'see the USA in your Chevrolet' than by the dropping of atomic bombs,
there
> is a qualitative difference between these matters. In the first case the
> existence of the atom/hydrogen/neutron bombs moves the threshold of
> possible/acceptable/usable violence to such a horrific level that it makes
> other forms of violence appear more 'acceptable' or 'humane'. But what is
> interesting in both cases--the car and the bomb is that each becomes a
> terror (incomplete sentence)

.............when boundaries are ignored. In the case of automobiles those
boundaries related to safe operation--e.g. speed limits, good judgement,
proper maintenance of equipment. In the case of weapons, however, the
boundaries are ignored, I think, at the moment of conception. There is the
intention that the technology will do harm and once the intention to do harm
has been given license (the dispute between Teller and Oppenheimer over the
building of the bomb is instructive here?) the technology APPEARS to become
autonomous--it 'requires' us to keep going so to speak...