Quest for Peace and Security in the 20th and 21st Centuries

The Quest for Peace series of interviews began on August 9, 1983.  It focused initially on Insights from the Helping Professions followed by the beginning of Insights from Religion.  An opportunity to interview humanist Norman Cousins broadened the concept for the initiative with his observation that: “There is no national anthem for the Planet.”

 

The next opportunity to expand the initiative was provided by the Coast Community College District and the Public Broadcasting Service to create an introductory telecourse accompanied by a Book of Readings and a Study Guide.  By 1991 elements of the series had been broadcast on 400 cable and PBS stations in 47 states.

 

The diversity of thinking by 1986 is reflected in the following quotations:

Jessie Bernard, Sociologist

“One impediment to achieving peace is that the quests for power, intimidation, winning, climbing, and achieving are such prime values of the male ethos.  We have now arrived at a moment when the male ethos has become maladaptive, anti – rather than pro-survival in its impact.”

 

Paul Ehrlich, Biologist

“We can create six Hiroshimas a second for 48 hours in the northern hemisphere.  That means you can take care of the United States in less than 4 seconds and you’ve got 48 hours to go.”

 

Karl Menninger, Psychiatrist

“Human nature can improve.  Human nature can grow.  Human nature can be educated.  It can also be contaminated by selfishness, aggressiveness, and by revenge…”

 

Julian Bond, Government Service

“Government is a force for all of us regardless of our points of view or the amount or depth of this involvement.  So the peace seeker ought to find a way to make this government reflect his or her peace view.”

 

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist

“Not even the most accomplished ideologue will be able to tell the difference between the ashes of capitalism and the ashes of communism.”

 

James Schlesinger, Government Official

“I think it is most unlikely that the Soviets might seriously contemplate a first strike against the United States.  Most unlikely to the point of being misleading.”

 

Helen Caldicott, Pediatrician

“This country is run by old rich white men on the whole.  You have to ask:  How many of those people have ever witnessed the explosion of a hydrogen bomb…or the birth of a baby?”

 

Noel Gayler, Admiral, United States Navy (Retired)

“The United States and the Soviets need the vision to see that continuing to struggle for advantage in nuclear arms is futile and increasingly dangerous.”

 

B.F. Skinner, Psychologist

“I’d like to believe that it is possible at long last to change the ways in which people treat each other so that they behave peacefully rather than through the threat of force.”

 

The fundamental changes which were occurring in the former Soviet Union beginning in 1985 associated with Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power made it possible to incorporate diverse voices from many segments of changing Soviet society.

 

To reflect the continuing opportunities and challenges the series had been retitled as “The Quest for Peace and Security in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”  In so many ways the world is a much more dangerous place than it was in the bipolar Superpower competition between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective spheres of influence.  For example, there is a greater risk now that a third nuclear weapon will be used in anger than existed during the Cold War.

 

The narrative will now shift to a characterization of the individual constellations of series in order to guide the reader to program interviews of greatest interest.  All of the individual programs contain biographical sketches of the participants which were current for the year of recording.  With passage of time it is recommended that a Google search be conducted for more current information.

 

Quest for Peace: An Introduction (1983-1986)

All of the interviews for this series were conducted between 1983 and 1985.  Some of the interviews are timeless for their insights into the human condition. Others addressed specifics of the dynamics of the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, or weapons systems which have long since been superseded.

 

Now more important than ever are the moral challenges raise by some contributors, and the goal of getting the U.S. government to reflect the peace views of citizens.

 

Insights from the Helping Professions with John M. Whiteley

The contributors were from psychology, psychiatry, and social work.  They are notable for their differences within the context that the helping professions contain insights which are very relevant to achieving a more peaceful world.

 

An important question I posed to legendary psychiatrist Karl Menninger in his 92nd year was: “Can people change?”  His answer was iconic:

“John, I so take it for granted that I hardly understand your question!”

 

Insights from Religion

The interviewees included a broad diversity of what they chose to emphasize.  Cardinal Bernardin thought “peace is possible but not inevitable.”  Father Hesburgh thought “nuclear weapons pose the greatest moral challenge ever to face humankind.”  Father Berrigan so opposed U.S. government policy on nuclear weapons that he was willing to so defy prescribed restraints on protest that a sentence to a term in Federal prison was the result.  Pulitzer Prize recipient and MacArthur “Genius” Jack Miles characterized the role of religion in the world as that of “a wild card in a 52 card deck of cards.”  Pastor William Sloane Coffin of the Yale Chapel and Riverside Church told an anecdote of why people do not build more Cathedrals today: “It takes convictions to build a Cathedral and people today only have opinions.”

Pathways to Peace with John M. Whiteley

The origins of this collection are to be found in the necessity to include perspectives from the obligation of government to preserve freedom while pursuing a more peaceful world.  This determination led to including Secretaries of Defense, CIA Directors, Arms Control negotiators, creators of nuclear weapons, and major critics of the approach governments were taking to secure liberty and pursue peace.

Insights on the Human Condition with John M. Whiteley

This series was planned with three inclusions in mind:  contributions from academic disciplines beyond the helping professions and religions such as anthropology, sociology, economics, and history; participants in the key formative and stabilizing institutions of society such as government, business, education (and of course religion); and individual distinctive voices from the broader non-governmental civil society.

Depending on the content, some of the interviews in this collection actually have appeared in the other interview collections already described above, particularly in Quest for Peace:  An Introduction 1983-1985.

 

 

Distinctive Voices for Peace

From the time when this series began in 1983, never in my wildest imagination did I think that this series of interviews would have been possible let alone the breadth and depth of participation.

 

There was at time when I thought that General Secretary Gorbachev had changed my life more than he was changing the lives of the Soviet people.  That thought has proven to be totally wrong.

 

Some of the interviews which could fit thematically into this collection actually appeared in Pathways to Peace as they related to security.  The interviews which appear in this category are either from trips to Moscow to record on site or from citizen summits in the United States.  There are often English translation sound tracks as well as the original Russian language of the interviewee.