Should I hurt many people I don’t know to save someone I do?
“Signs point to yes.”
That doesn’t sound right, but I think it is. It makes me think about what was going through the minds of all those scientists building the A-bomb. I ask myself, would I have worked on the Manhattan Project? Probably. Like, yeah. Unfortunately I find nukes are cool and interesting. And you know, WWII was a bummer in a lot of ways, but if the Nazis got one of them suckers: oof. But what about the H-bomb? That was, like, excessive, right?
This might turn into a bit of a history lesson, which may be annoying, but it’s a story that’s always stuck with me. This question makes me think of John Archibald Wheeler for an obvious reason. He was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, turning ordinary uranium into weapons-grade uranium in the middle of Washington. He knew of the potential to build a bomb in the 1930s before the Manhattan Project really got going. He could have lobbied to get the project started a few months before it did. JAW also had a brother who had a PhD in history. It turns out the government doesn’t give a shit about history, so he got sent to the front line in Italy. His name was Joe. Now Joe was a smart guy. He guessed what his brother was working on could end the war in a literal flash. So he sent Wheeler a post card in June 1945 (I think) that just said Hurry up. A few days later, Joe was killed and his body laid in a foxhole for months. If John Archibald Wheeler had started the Manhattan Project a few months before, his brother would have lived. He never forgave himself for waiting. So when the government asked John Archibald Wheeler to work on the H-bomb, I can’t really say I blame him for saying yes.
Should I undermine my beliefs for a good cause?
“Without a doubt.”
The other day I applied to be a math teacher at a private school in a tiny Oregon town. It was a Christian school, and I’m very much not one. I thought I could deal with it for a year, and just like let the students lead the prayer thing before class. I thought it might be fun to teach calculus because my calculus teacher had such an impact on my life before trying the grad. school thing, which in some ways is really just an excuse to reset my life trajectory. It turned out that the school was a lot too gay hate-y for me, so I never applied. But I think I would have if it wasn’t for the gay thing.