Notes from my Knapsack 3-21-24

Notes from my Knapsack 3-21-24
Jeff Gill

Who will watch the guardians?
___


There's an old Latin tag that traces back to Juvenal: "quis custodiet ipsos custodes."

You can translate it "who will guard the guardians" or in more contemporary terms, who will watch the watchers? "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" however you put it today is an enduring question.

With the Oscars behind us, I've had some thoughts about the vast and somewhat unwieldy film "Oppenheimer." It tells a story from our history, which a passing few can still remember, and there's new information revealed out of the archives, but the personalities at the center of the creation of the atomic bomb are certainly compelling and that's what the cinematic version of J. Robert Oppenheimer's life was trying to capture.

There was attention to the ethical issues around whether we should have developed nuclear physics to create the weapons we did, and when humanity should use them. "Never" is one answer, but it's been negated by the fact that it has been done, twice directly on human targets, more often if you count the human cost of nuclear testing which killed downwinders, movie actors (ironically, John Wayne may have been one of them, caught in swirling irradiated dust filming a movie and dying later of lung cancer), and even some of the technicians at work in places like Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.

Alfred Nobel was so struck by the destructive power of dynamite he'd helped bring into the world he created a prize to develop peace. Oppenheimer had his own hopes for what the world would do with the inventions he helped bring into being, and that to me is where the movie recently honored both revealed and obscured at the same time.

Robert Downey, Jr. justly earned a great deal of praise for his portrayal of a governmental official, Lewis Strauss, who had come into conflict with Oppenheimer in the post-war era, and ultimately helped see to it that the views of scientists were not, in fact, the ones that made the final decisions about weapons development, let alone deployment.

There's a further story beyond the simple rise and fall of one brilliant physicist which perhaps another filmmaker will take on. That's the tension, left unresolved at the end of "Oppenheimer," around "who will watch the guardians?" The genius of Los Alamos seems to have thought that scientific elites would have a key voice at the table, if not the deciding presence. Downey offered up a Strauss whose bitter and somewhat ominous presence shadowed the realization that politicians would be making the decisions from then on, about new bombs and future command and control protocols for nuclear weapon deployment.

Yet, perhaps unintentionally, the story in the film makes it clear that there is no such thing as a purely rational scientist, either. They are driven by urges and impulses they're not always entirely aware of, and need some balance brought into their lives and work. Gen. Leslie Groves is almost a moral center, and certainly the calming presence, in the story on screen and perhaps in actuality. So did Nolan mean to imply military control is our best course?

I kind of doubt that. But the question, left unresolved, is one we still have: in science, in weapons, in vaccines, in space. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We're still working on finding an answer we're comfortable with.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he does not have a final answer on this one, either. Tell him how you'd manage such matters at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Twitter.