Home > Information > Louis J. Halle
Louis J. Halle (1910–1998) was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.
For the feature that distinguished the Third World War from the other two would be that, although it began with conventional arms, its conclusion would be determined by the outcome of a race between the two sides to be the first to rebuild their nuclear arsenals. After all, the knowledge and technology on which the manufacture of nuclear weapons is based would not have been abolished with the weapons themselves.
Louis J. Halle, “A Hopeful Future for Mankind,” Foreign Affairs 58, no. 5 (Summer 1980): 1132. Also available online at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19800601faessay8146/louis-j-halle/a-hopeful-future-for-mankind.html.
I am driven to the conclusion that the problem of mankind, today and for an indefinite future, is not that of how to abolish nuclear armaments but that of how to live with them.
Ibid., 1132.
However, even if the chance of disaster were only one in a hundred, so much is at stake that the question of what might be done about it would still have to be taken seriously.
Ibid., 1133.
Let us suppose, what still seems fantastic to most of us, that humankind had established permanent, thriving and proliferating colonies in outer space, detached from the earth although in its vicinity to begin with.
Ibid., 1133.
Indeed, human civilization would have become essentially unextinguishable.
Ibid., 1133.
Up to 350 million years ago, after 3 billion years of evolution, life was still entirely confined to the waters of the earth, which constituted its only natural habitat. But those waters were becoming increasingly crowded. Looking back from our present vantage point we can see that the spreading life of this time was destined to emerge into the “unnatural” environment of what was, for it, the equivalent of outer space, the dry land and aerial atmosphere that stretched above them.
Ibid., 1135.
One can imagine an intelligent fish of the time revolting at the thought of abandoning its familiar water for the “unnatural” and hostile environment of outer space. But it would have been wrong; for the emergence of life from the water, which we may now regard as destined, added immeasurably to its potentiality for further expansion and development. Indeed, as hindsight now enables us to see, all the hopefulness of life turned on this emergence from a traditional confinement. I surmise that all the hopefulness of life now turns on its emergence from its earthly envelope.
Ibid., 1135.
Unlike the amniotic egg, produced by genetic evolution, the amniotic spaceship and the amniotic spacesuit, packaging the environment needed by earthly space travelers, are the technological products of such cultural evolution as can occur in a single generation. So the urgency of the present crisis is matched by the speed with which progress can now be made.
Ibid., 1135–1136.
Although, having regard for what is at stake, we take the view that the highest wisdom would favor top priority for the colonization of outer space, in operative terms we are faced with the immediate competition among rival claims on NASA’s shrunken budget.
Ibid., 1136.
The immediate problem is to make a start, and for this one must look first of all to the American nation, with its latent idealism, with its pioneering tradition, with its combined resources of skill, of energy, and of material means.
Ibid., 1136.
Today we appear to be approaching the end of an era in which technology has been leading toward disaster. But technology can be used to save as well as to destroy.
Ibid., 1136.
And, as Freeman Dyson has put it, in words that should appeal particularly to Americans, with their history: “The expansion of life over the universe is a beginning, not an end.”
Ibid., 1136.
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