Nuclear Weapons

There is a dual nature to nuclear weapons; they are new and different from all other

weapons, but also are instruments of annihilation/genocide. At the same time they are seen as part

of our every day life and seen by leaders as not so different from conventional weapons.

I’ve written about the imagery of extinction, that we could extinguish ourselves as a

species by our own hand. our own technology and for no purpose. What is new is the imagery has

been taken into religious hands. The very threat is the fear of human futurelessness. This affects

for and against our policies toward nuclear weapons. We can see the government becoming more

belligerent or aggressive in order to deny that threat.

Nuclearism is the exaggerated embrace of the weapons – the weapons become near

deities.

In outlining their developmental, or “life course,” approach, Sampson and Laub critique

sociological criminology’s research tradition of privileging the adolescent and adult

experiences of their subjects arguing

“ that antisocial and delinquent behavior in childhood – measured by both official and

unofficial sources – is linked to later adult deviance. And criminality in a variety of

settings (for example, family violence, military offences, “street crime,” and alcohol

abuse). Moreover, we argue that these outcomes occur independent of traditional

sociological and psychological variables such as class background, ethnicity, and IQ.”

Consequently they argue for a methodological approach that assesses the individual’s

experiences and quality of “informal social ties and bonds to society at all ages across

the life course.” The life course perspective attempts to assess the patterns of “change

and continuity between childhood behavior and later adulthood outcomes.” This

approach is also interested in studying the “intergenerational transmission of social

patterns” and the “effects of macro-level events … on individual life histories.”

Researchers of criminal and delinquent behavior that advocate the life course approach

(Sampson and Laub, Elder) attempt to “link social history and social structure to the

unfolding of human lives. To address these themes individual lives are studied through

time, with particular attention devoted to aging, historical context, and the social

influence