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Show 225: George Victor – The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable

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December 7th, 2007 marks the 66th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. As recent as 2006, on official government websites including WhiteHouse.gov., some historians and patriots still talk about the events of December 7th 1941 as a surprise attack by the Japanese. Reading from the White House website, “65 years ago, more than 2400 Americans lost their lives in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. On that peaceful Sunday morning, the country suffered a vicious, unprovoked attack that changed the course of history.” Last year, when this passage was written, President George Bush proclaimed December 7th 2006 as National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. And, on another government website, it is written, “many Americans, including some military commanders had come to see U.S. lands immune from enemy invasion. That feeling of immunity ended forever on the morning of December 7th, 1941.” If sentiments of an event 66 years old sound familiar, it of course won’t surprise you that the government takes exactly the same position, regarding September 11th, 2001.
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Show 174a: “The Science of Peace”

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First of Three Parts!

Is it within human nature to be aggressive, or is aggression the result of environmental circumstances? Is war inevitable because humans have a natural tendency to inter-societal violence, or is there something unique in modern culture which brings out the soldier in many of us, particularly our males?

What if Hobbes got it wrong?

What if women were in charge instead of men?

What if peace was closer to the “natural state” of human nature, and we have lived though an aberration of violence over the last few centuries?

And if cooperation and beneficence is prevalent in Homo Sapien Sapiens, how can we cultivate the human potential for peace … particularly when many people, even some scientists, are so pessimistic about our fate?

On Sunday, July 30th; Sunday, August 6th; & Sunday, August 13th, we will be talking with anthropologist Douglas Fry, author of Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace, and biologist Judith Hand, author of Women, Power, and the Science of Peace. Humanity’s history is not so “primitive” as some might argue, and our present day situation may not be as dire as it sometimes seems.