#322: Aftershock: the Exercise of Wisdom

EXCERPT:
Longtime CrossCurrents readers know my shorthand summary of the Church-renewal agenda of Vatican Council II (1962-1965) is: “Bringing Wisdom to Power.” … The exercise of power is all around us, but the exercise of wisdom can only come from within.

The last two weeks since the tragedy in Japan show how difficult the exercise of wisdom can sometimes be. The parade of awful headlines can be numbing even from a safe distance, so the effort to make sense and filter through to the essential values can become not only a mental but even an emotional burden.

My own reflections have followed a twisted path as the news from Japan has emerged…
But suddenly the media coverage was overtaken by the nuclear crisis. After three or four days, the quake and the tsunami were nearly gone from CNN’s screens and from most newspaper pages. Both were filled with the latest breaking news from the power plants--explosion, fire, water-bombs, spreading radiation, and endless descriptions of nuclear reactors—and the experts’ assessments of the potential dangers. The fate of the whole towns and thousands of victims was shelved to focus instead on six buildings.

Within a week, reports emerged of a shortage of potassium iodide needed to protect the local populations from radiation. And I also heard reports of similar shortages in the United States (including Massachusetts) where people panicked about the effect of their own nuclear plants despite being told that stocking potassium iodide against future risk only meant it would lose its effectiveness. The risk in this over-reaction was that supplies needed in Japan would be uselessly consumed in the U.S.
…
I began to feel that U.S. paranoia about nuclear energy and radiation was beginning to overshadow the real suffering in Japan. If 20,000 Japanese have died and millions are left with nothing, why obsess about a threat that remains less than ordinary x-ray?…

Over the next few days however, even though the nuclear crisis continued to generate news, the media regained its balance and began to cover the disaster’s aftermath more broadly.…

What I first took as overreaction, national nuclear navel- gazing, and paranoia now seems to be yielding a calmer, wiser view of the need to learn from our mistakes.
By now I have two main reflections about the events and their coverage.

First, what awful tragic irony it is that Japan of all places has become, yet again, the place where the awesome challenge of nuclear power confronts the world. The very nation that remains the only victim of nuclear weaponry (from U.S. attacks that cost more than 150,000 Japanese their lives) has now become our real-life model for the inadequacy of nuclear plant designs that are commonplace even in the United States. Once again, Japan unwillingly provides the world its much-needed cautionary tale—its next nuclear wake-up call.

Second, I cannot help but recall that when Vatican Council II spoke on the need to harness power with wisdom, it especially targeted nuclear energy. Indeed, its only condemnation was reserved for the construction, threat, and use of nuclear weapons. Clearly, the Council Fathers recognized the new phenomenon of energy from fission and fusion as the prime modern example of a power which, unguided by wisdom, could destroy our dreams and haunt our hopes.

Nearly 50 years later, nuclear devices (both weapons and plants) continue to test the ability of the human race to harness its newfound powers with wisdom--and, at the same time, they confirm the importance of Vatican II’s vision, not just for Catholics, but for the whole world.