In follow up to the articles: Why We Need War, and Reaction to: Why We Need War, Joseph Caldwell writes the following two emails. I have added links to the web-pages he mentions. Again, I want to state that I am not promoting his ideas here. I am reporting them. I am hopeful that humanity will wake up and begin to work together to employ alternative solutions to the ones described by Caldwell.
J. George Caldwell
Dear Dr. Wilken:
I appreciate your posting my article on war to your SynEarth site, and to AlasBabylon. I realize that you do not advocate war at all, and my article seems to. My main point is that I believe that war is both necessary and inevitable, for the various reasons that I set forth. The effects of war are also terrible and horrible. But the economic development and peace that have placed billions in grinding poverty and disease, and have robbed many men of any means whatsoever of providing for their families, are also terrible and horrible. I do not advocate killing people with bayonets any more than I advocate killing them with the starvation and disease that prolonged peace and economic development have brought.
Given the spirit of your website, it took real courage to post my article. Most people do not want to hear about “doom and gloom.” Most people deny much of what I say, because it does not correspond to what they desire for their future. I see from your website today that you are “taking flak” for having posted my piece. I regret that you may suffer on my behalf, and I thank you for your consideration and presentation of my point of view. It is not a popular point of view.
I want you to know that I have been pondering these issues for many years, and my opinions are the result of long hours of thoughtful contemplation. I did not begin to write on this topic until I began to work in the poorest regions of Africa. I have seen, over the past decade, far more human poverty and misery than most Americans could ever imagine.
I have come to believe strongly that the solution to the world’s problem will be a religious one. I have spent many hours reading religious works—I have read the entire Bible and the Koran twice in the last ten years, in addition to other works on religious philosophy. Recently, I have spent many hours reading the works of Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov—a very Christian man of peace. I meditate/pray daily, albeit with no spectacular results. On my last vacation here in Africa, I spent all of my spare time (and my wife’s!) writing the “Church of Nature.”
I am the first to admit that I cannot see the future in detail—I can only offer my considered opinion of the nature of the planet’s problem. I have spent a career in science and engineering, much of it in systems engineering. My approach to solving problems (apart from meditation and prayer) is the classical approach to systems engineering: study the problem, posit alternative solutions, establish criteria for comparing the alternatives, and select of a preferred alternative. I readily admit, however, that I do not have a particular solution for the present predicament. My approach at the present time (The Omega Project) is to make a strong case that large human numbers and industrialization are destroying the planet’s biosphere and that a long-term sustainable human population for the planet is very small, so that when global war does occur, those who prevail will strive to work for a small human population and a sustainable biosphere. I am not advocating a war, and I am not urging others to go to war. I do believe that continuing the way that we are is headed for total disaster, and that war may lead to a better world. I also believe, as you know, that war is both necessary and inevitable, and probably better sooner than later. As you point out, the next war may well “eclipse humanity.” But it is very clear that continuing down the current path is gradually “eclipsing” the entire biosphere.
I have rambled on too long. I just wanted you to know that I appreciate your presenting my point of view, and I hope that you do not “lose sleep” or get too much “bad press” over having done so.
Thanks!
J. George Caldwell
J. George Caldwell
Timothy Wilken:
In my e-mail of last night, I forgot to comment on Alan’s following remark:
“I found Caldwell’s piece to be provocative, and I sense that there is some truth in what he says, even if his case is weak. He makes a lot of bald assertions, but does not do enough documentation or persuasion. Both your text and his have interesting incoherences, as though written by individuals confused as to how they ended up saying what they are now saying. For example, he gives a long quote from Toynbee’s “The Suicidalness of Militarism” which seems perfectly inconsistent with his thesis. He never explains how this inevitable great war would reduce the population to the dramatic extent that he thinks is necessary (wars, even the bloodiest ones, seldom have much effect on population).
Toynbee’s observations on the suicidalness of militarism are not at all inconsistent with my article. I believe that war is necessary and inevitable, and that a war sooner is better than a war later. But I believe that a global war would certainly be catastrophic for the developed world, i.e., would be suicidal for it. And, from the point of view of reducing industrial output, that, given my world-view, is fine. Alan seems to think that I am promoting global war, and that war would “make things better” given a usual (modern-developed-world) sense of values. Global war would in fact be suicidal for the developed world, but that is fine, if one’s viewpoint is that the developed world is the problem. Toynbee’s remarks on the suicidalness of militarism are not at all inconsistent with my thesis—they are in fact totally supportive!
Alan seems to conclude that my article advocates global nuclear war. That is not really the point, but I can see that one could argue either way whether it does or it doesn’t. My thesis in the article is that war is necessary—a dualistic complement to peace, one might say. In other articles I argue that war is probably inevitable, and probably better sooner than later. From my own viewpoint, however, I am not advocating global war at all. I believe that it is necessary and will happen, and I believe that (with positive action) a better world may result from it (just as some might argue that a better world resulted from World War II) but I am not trying to promote war or encourage anyone to start a war.
Regarding his comments on why I never explain how this inevitable great war would reduce the population to the dramatic extent I think necessary… Alan is right—I don’t explain it in the article. If he were to read my book, Can America Survive?, he would see that I show that a moderate-sized global war (1000 warheads on 1000 largest cities) would destroy only two-thirds of the world’s population. That leaves two billion left, which is not a long-term sustainable number (e.g., a low-per-capita-energy global population of 200 million very poor people, or a high-per-capita global population of ten million). I discuss this point at length in my book. This point is the principal reason for “The Omega Project.” Since I realize that global war will not reduce the human population to a long-term-sustainable level, the objective of The Omega Project is to encourage the survivors of global nuclear war to take advantage of the situation (after global war) and further reduce the population to a long-term-sustainable level by implementing the “minimal-regret” population proposed in Can America Survive? (i.e., a single industrial nation of five million and a globally distributed population of five million). If the survivors of global nuclear war do nothing different from present-day society (i.e., they simply rebuild another out-of-control industrial planet), then nothing positive will have been accomplished.
I spent a lot of pages in Can America Survive? explaining why I feel the way that I do about global population and industrialization, and it was not at all the purpose of the “On War and Peace” article to re-present those many arguments and the “documentation” that Alan faults the lack of.
You are certainly free to pass this e-mail along to Alan (or anyone else), if you wish. From time to time, people have commented (sometimes very positively, but more often very negatively) on my observations and proposals. Sometimes, the comments are in the nature of “ad hominem” attacks. A couple of years ago, I joined a couple of discussion groups (on population and energy), but I was “chastised” for “promoting my book,” whenever I referred to it to explain my reasoning or elaborate on my position. I soon came to realize that most people do not want to hear what I have to say, and there is little point in trying to argue with them. My approach today is simply to place my articles on my web site, for any and all to read—a “passive” rather than an “active” approach. (I have mixed feelings about this. Some time ago, for example, someone wrote an article dismissing my comments on fast-breeder reactors as “crackpot.” I characterized the large number of fast-breeder reactors required to replace the energy of fossil fuel as just so many “bomb factories,” since they produce plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear bombs. The critic’s comment was that just having the plutonium was not sufficient to produce a bomb, and so that my assertion was “crackpot.” The downside in not responding to such remarks is, of course, that someone might take the critic’s superficial comments or characterizations or implications seriously.)
Joseph George Caldwell