---
After the thing went off, there was a tremendous excitement at Los Alamos. Everybody had parties, we all ran around. I sat on the end of a jeep and beat drums and so on. But one man, I remember, Bob Wilson, was just sitting there moping.
I said, "What are you moping about?"
He said, "It's a terrible thing that we made."
I said, "But you started. You got us into it."
You see, what happened to me--what happened to the rest of us--is we STARTED for a good reason, then you're working very hard to accomplish something and it's a pleasure, it's excitement. And you stop thinking, you know; you just STOP. Bob Wilson was the only one who was still thinking about it, at that moment.
I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth... How far from here was 34th street?... All those buildings, all smashed--and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're CRAZY, they just don't understand, they don't UNDERSTAND. Why are they making new things? It's so useless.
But fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead.
I said, "What are you moping about?"
He said, "It's a terrible thing that we made."
I said, "But you started. You got us into it."
You see, what happened to me--what happened to the rest of us--is we STARTED for a good reason, then you're working very hard to accomplish something and it's a pleasure, it's excitement. And you stop thinking, you know; you just STOP. Bob Wilson was the only one who was still thinking about it, at that moment.
I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth... How far from here was 34th street?... All those buildings, all smashed--and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're CRAZY, they just don't understand, they don't UNDERSTAND. Why are they making new things? It's so useless.
But fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead.
---
...I feel both your apathy and passion, and I'm glad you had the sense to study ridiculous physics if only for self amusement.
No comments:
Post a Comment