Pugwash Estate

Today, as General Motors dies, one can look to the future by looking at the past.

In the early 1900’s, the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, became friends with a street minister named Dr. Charles Aubrey Eaton.  In addition to his street ministry, Dr. Eaton also served as the pastor of Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio.  The church catered to the inhabitants of “millionaire’s row”, a string of luxurious mansions on Euclid Avenue, owned by some of North America’s wealthiest leaders in finance and industry.

Rockefeller lived most of the year in New York City, but in the summers he returned to his country estate, Forest Hill, just outside of Cleveland.  It was here that Dr. Eaton brought his young nephew, Cyrus Eaton, to meet Rockefeller.  Although Cyrus was just a young university student from the small hamlet of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, he somehow managed to impress the wealthy industrialist.  Rockefeller took Cyrus under his wing and Cyrus was to become a successful businessman and investment banker.  Capitalizing on the growth of the automobile industry, Cyrus himself, was to become a steel magnate and philanthropist.  By the late 1950’s, Eaton was looking to use his fortune to save mankind from nuclear destruction.

On July 9th, 1955, the mathematician-philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Einstein issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.  In it, the two giants of intellectual thought, appealed to humanity to step back from a path of nuclear destruction.

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

After reading the manifesto, Cyrus Eaton, sent a letter to Russell offering his estate in Pugwash as a meeting place for scientists to develop plans to resist nuclear warfare.  In 1957, 22 eminent scientists from around the world attended the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs.  Unfortunately, Einstein had died a few days after signing the manifesto and Russell was too ill to attend.  Since then, there have been hundreds of workshops and conferences held at locations all around the world.  The 58th annual main conference is being held this year in The Hague, Netherlands.  In 1995, Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their “efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and in the long run, to eliminate such arms”.  The Chair of the Executive Committee of the Pugwash Council, John Holdren, accepted the prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conference.

John Holdren

Fast forward to 2009.  John Holdren is now Obama’s Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  Over the last number of years, Holdren has shifted much of his focus from nuclear warfare to climate change, but he sees both as being paramount threats to humanity.  In a 1995 article he co-wrote with Paul Ehrlich, Holdren described the ills that development must address.  In terms of human frailties, Holder listed “greed, selfishness, intolerance, and shortsightedness”.  Surely, these are the same human frailties that are at the heart of the current world financial crisis and our indifference to climate change and the plight of the developing world.  But what role will science ultimately play in overcoming our human frailties?

Obama has initiated a paradigm shift.  We are in the midst of a “violent intellectual revolution”, that will rely on science to set the course for the future.  It is ironical that Cyrus Eaton, the man who built his fortune on supplying the light steel of the American automobile industry, and was instrumental in establishing the Pugwash Conferences around which John Holdren built his reputation, may ultimately be a force in ending the automobile industry as we know it. 

 On May 19th, 2009, in front of executives of 10 of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers, Obama announced his nation-wide plan to increase automobile fuel efficiency and reduce green house gas emissions. 

The new fuel efficiency standards, covering model years 2012-2016, ultimately require an average fuel economy standard of 35.5 mpg in 2016. They are projected to save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce 900 million metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions, the White House said.

“In the past, an agreement such as this would have been considered impossible,” Obama said. “That is why this announcement is so important, for it represents not only a change in policy in Washington, but the harbinger of a change in the way business is done in Washington.”

John Holder, the Pugwashite instrumental in the policy formulation, was in attendance.

Albert Einstein

Hate pervades our culture.  Anne Coulter’s book, Guilty, is on the New York Times best seller list; Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck reap high viewership ratings on the Fox News Channel; Michelle Malkin is a popular blogger; Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh do well on radio, and TMZ brings its mean-spirited tabloid journalism to television and the internet.  When tempted to confront, return in kind, or “sit and stew” over this hate, I turn to a quote by the 17th century Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Baruch Spinoza

Einstein, when asked if he believed in God, replied, “I believe in Spinoza’s God”.  But Spinoza was a rationalist whose philosophy planted him firmly in the camp of the atheists, so just who was the God of Spinoza and Einstein?

Spinoza took the view that “God is nature”.  Not that God was in everything, and everything was of God, like a pantheist might believe, but rather that the universe played out according to the laws of nature.  Spinoza’s God was not a “personal God”, and he did not believe in the supernatural aspects of religion.  To Spinoza, the “passions and emotions” that played out in Christianity and Judaism, did not provide an individual with true freedom.  Real freedom came from revealing and understanding the laws of nature, and removing the hopes and fears associated with being a slave to the belief in an omnipotent and judgmental God.  To Spinoza, knowledge not only unlocked the mysteries of the universe, but it served to guide one’s morality.  Virtue was something a person desired, not so much as a prerequisite for a blissful hereafter, but to ensure that life here on earth was enhanced through the mutual respect of men.

Baruch Spinoza

I love the way Spinoza argues against traditional religion while leaving the door open to the possibility that the Bible and religion do hold some truths.  While this diplomacy didn’t seem serve him very well during his lifetime, as he was excommunicated by his synagog and ostracized by his community, it does serve as an example as to how we can tolerate and learn from different opinions and actions.  I can embrace parts of Spinoza’s thinking without feeling like my entire belief system is under attack.

Unfortunately this tolerance of ideas is missing in much of  the world today.  Rather, ideas are treated as George W. Bush saw the larger world; “You are either with us, or against us”.  Ideas falling outside of our narrow belief systems are treated as something that must be destroyed.  Hate is the result.  We can choose to understand it like Spinoza, or we can let it seep into our psyche and allow it to diminish us.

Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.

Baruch Spinoza