The Search of Nuclear Man

INTRODUCTION

From time to time a man enters into your life who, by his appearance, his behavior and his words, intimates in a dramatic way the condition of modern man. Such a man was Peter for me. He came to ask for help, but at the same time he offered a new understanding of my own world! Peter is twenty-six years old. His body is fragile; his face, framed in long blond hair, is thin with a city pallor. His eyes are tender and radiate a longing melancholy. His lips are sensual, and his smile evokes an atmosphere of intimacy. When he shakes bands he breaks through the formal ritual in such a way that you feel his body as really present. When he speaks, his voice assumes tones that ask to be listened to with careful attention.

As we talk, it becomes clear that Peter feels as if the many boundaries that give structure to life are becoming increasingly vague. His life seems a drifting over which he has no control, a life determined by many known and unknown factors in his surroundings. The clear distinction between himself and his milieu is gone and he feels that his ideas and feelings are not really his; rather, they are brought upon him. Sometimes he wonders: "What is fantasy and what is reality?" Often he has the strange feeling that small devils enter his bond and create a painful and anxious confusion. He also does not know whom he can trust and whom not, what he shall do and what not, why to say "yes" to one and "no" to another. The many distinctions between good and bad, ugly and beautiful, attractive and repulsive, are losing meaning for him. Even to the most bizarre suggestions he says: "Why not? Why not try something I have never tried? "Why not have a new experience, good or bad?"

In the absence of clear boundaries between himself and his milieu, between fantasy and reality, between what to do and what to avoid, it seems that Peter has become a prisoner of the now, caught in the present without meaningful connections with his past or future. When he goes home he feels that he enters a world which has become alien to him. The words his parents use, their questions and concerns, their aspirations and worries, seem to belong to another world, with another language and another mood. When he looks into his future everything becomes one big blur, an impenetrable cloud. He finds no answers to questions about why he lives and where he is heading. Peter is not working hard to reach a goal, he does not look forward to the fulfillment of a great desire, nor does he expect that something great or important is going to happen. He looks into empty space and is sure of only one thing: If there is anything worthwhile in life it must be here and now.

I did not paint this portrait of Peter to show you a picture of a sick man in need of psychiatric help. No, I think Peter's situation is in many ways typical of the condition of modern men and women. Perhaps Peter needs help, but his experiences and feelings cannot be understood merely in terms of individual psychopathology. They are part of the historical context in which we all live, a context which makes it possible to see in Peter's life the signs of the times, which we too recognize in our own life experiences. What we see in Peter is a painful expression of the situation of what I call "nuclear man."

In this chapter I would like to arrive at a deeper understanding of our human predicament as it becomes visible through the many men and women who experience life as Peter does. And I hope to discover in the midst of our present ferment new ways to liberation and freedom.

I will therefore divide this chapter into two parts: the predicament of nuclear man, and nuclear man's way to liberation.

I. THE PREDICAMENT OF NUCLEAR MAN

Nuclear man is a man who has lost naive faith in the possibilities of technology and is painfully aware that the same powers that enable man to create new life styles carry the potential for self-destruction.

Let me tell you an old tale of ancient India which might help us to capture the situation of nuclear man:

Four royal sons were questioning what specialty they should master. They said to one another, "Let us search the earth and learn a special science." So they decided, and after they had agreed on a place where they would meet again, the four brothers started off, each in a different direction.

Time went by, and the brothers met again at the appointed meeting place, and they asked one an¬other what they had learned. "I have mastered a science," said the first, "which makes it possible for me, if I have nothing but a piece of bone of some creature, to create straightaway the flesh that goes with it." "I," said the second, "know how to grow that creature's skin and hair if there is flesh on its bones." The third said, "I am able to create its limbs if I have the flesh, the skin, and the hair." "And I," concluded the fourth, "know how to give life to that creature if its form is complete with limbs."

There upon the four brothers went into the jungle to find a piece of bone so that they could demonstrate their specialties. As fate would have it, the bone they found was a lion's, but they did not know that and picked up the bone. One added flesh to the bone, the second grew hide and hair, the third completed it with matching limbs, and the fourth gave the lion life. Shaking its heavy mane, the ferocious beast arose with its menacing mouth, sharp teeth, and merciless claws and jumped on his creators. He killed them all and vanished contentedly into the jungle.
From: Tales of Ancient India, translated from the Sanskrit by J. A. B. van Buitenen (New York: Bantam Books, 1961), pp. 50-51.>

Nuclear man is the man who realizes that his creative powers hold the potential for self-destruction. He sees that in this nuclear age vast new industrial complexes enable man to produce in one hour that which he labored over for years in the past, but he also realizes that these same industries have disturbed the ecological balance and, through air and noise pollution, have contaminated his own milieu. He drives in cars, listens to the radio and watches TV, but has lost his ability to understand the workings of the instruments he uses. He sees such an abundance of material commodities around him that scarcity no longer motivates his life, but at the same time he is groping for a direction and asking for meaning and purpose. In all this he suffers from the inevitable knowledge that his time is a time in which it has become possible for man to destroy not only life but also the possibility of rebirth., not only man but also mankind, not only periods of existence but also history itself. For nuclear man the future has become an option.

The prenuclear man might be aware of the real paradox of a world in which life and death touch each other in a morbid way and in which man finds himself on the thin rope which can break so easily, but he has adapted this knowledge to his previous optimistic outlook on life. For nuclear man, however, this new knowledge cannot be adapted to old insights, nor be channeled by traditional institutions; rather it radically and definitively disrupts all existing frames of human reference. For him, the problem is not that the future holds a new danger, such as a nuclear war, but that there might be no future at all.

Young people are not necessarily nuclear, and old people are not necessarily prenuclear. The difference is not in age but in consciousness and the related life style. The psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton has given us some excellent concepts to determine the nature of the quandaries of nuclear man. In Lifton's terms, nuclear man can be characterized by (1) a historical dislocation, (2) a fragmented ideology, and (3) a search for immortality. It might be useful to examine Peter's life In the light of these concepts.

1. Historical dislocation

When Peter's father asks him when he will take his final exam, and whether he has found a good girl to marry; and when his mother carefully inquires about confession and communion and his membership in a Catholic fraternity-they both suppose that Peter's expectations for the future are essentially the same as theirs. But Peter thinks of himself more as one of the "last ones in the experiment of living" than as a pioneer working for a new future. Therefore, symbols used by his parents cannot possibly have the unifying and integrating power for him which they have for people with a prenuclear mentality. This experience of Peter's we call "historical dislocation." It is a "break in the sense of connection, which men have long felt with the vital and nourishing symbol of their cultural tradition; symbols revolving around family, idea-systems, religion, and the life-cycle in general" (Lifton, History and Human Survival, New York: Random House, 1970, p. 318). Why should a man marry and have children, study and build a career; why should he invent new techniques, build new institutions, and develop new ideas-when he doubts if there will be a tomorrow which can guarantee the value of human effort?

Crucial here for nuclear man is the lack of a sense of continuity, which is so vital for a creative life. He finds himself part of a nonhistory in which only the sharp moment of the here and now is valuable. For nuclear man life easily becomes a bow whose string is broken and from which no arrow can fly. In his dislocated state he becomes paralyzed. His reactions are not anxiety and joy, which were so much a part of existential man, but apathy and boredom. Only when man feels himself responsible for the future can he have hope or despair, but when he thinks of himself as the passive victim of an extremely complex technological bureaucracy, his motivation falters and he starts drifting from one moment to the next, making life a long row of randomly chained incidents and accidents.

When we wonder why the language of traditional Christianity has lost its liberating power for nuclear man, we have to realize that most Christian preaching is still based on the presupposition that man sees him¬self as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when man's historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to a boy on an acid trip.

2. Fragmented ideology

One of the most surprising aspects of Peter's life is his fast-shifting value system. For many years he was a very strict and obedient seminarian. He went to daily Mass, took part in the many hours of community prayers, was active in a liturgical committee, and studied with great interest and even enthusiasm the many theological materials for his courses. But when he decided to leave the seminary and study at a secular university, it took him only a few months to shake off his old way of life. He quietly stopped going to Mass even on Sundays, spent long nights drinking and playing with other students, lived with a girlfriend, took up a field of study far removed from his theological interests, and seldom spoke about God or religion.

This is the more surprising since Peter shows absolutely no bitterness toward the old seminary. He even visits his friends there regularly and has good memories of his years as a religious man. But the idea that his two life styles are not very consistent hardly seems to hit him. Both experiences are valuable and have their good and bad sides, but why should life be lived in just one perspective, under the guidance of just one idea, and within one unchangeable frame of reference? Peter does not regret his seminary days nor glorify his present situation. Tomorrow it might be different again. Who knows? All depends on the people you meet, the experiences you have, and the ideas and desires which make sense to you at the moment.

Nuclear man, like Peter, does not live with an ideology. He has shifted from the fixed and total forms of an ideology to more fluid ideological fragments (Lifton, Boundaries, New York: Random House, 1970, p. 98). One of the most visible phenomena of our time is the tremendous exposure of man to diver¬gent and often contrasting ideas, traditions, religious convictions, and life styles. Through mass media he is confronted with the most paradoxical human experiences. He is confronted not only with the most elaborate and expensive attempts to save the life of one man by heart transplantation, but also with the powerlessness of the world to help when thousands of people die from lack of food. He is confronted not only with man's ability to travel rapidly to another planet, but also with his hopeless impotence to end a senseless war on this planet. He is confronted not only with high-level discussions about human rights and Christian morality, but also with torture chambers in Brazil, Greece, and Vietnam. He is confronted not only with incredible ingenuity that can build dams, change riverbeds and create fertile new lands, but also with earthquakes, floods and tornadoes that can ruin in one hour more than man can build in a generation. A man confronted with all this and trying to make sense of it cannot possibly deceive himself with one idea, concept, or thought system which could bring these contrasting images together into one consistent outlook on life.

"The extraordinary flow of post-modern cultural influences" (Lifton, Histfry and Human Survival, p. 318) asks a growing flexibility of the nuclear man, a willingness to remain open and live with the small fragments which at the moment seem to offer the best response to a given situation. Paradoxically, this can lead to moments of great exhilaration and exaltation in which man immerses himself totally in the flashing impressions of his immediate surroundings.

Nuclear man no longer believes in anything that is always and everywhere true and valid. He lives by the hour and creates his life on the spot. His art is a collage art, an art which, though a combination of divergent pieces, is a short impression of how man feels at the moment. His music is an improvisation which combines themes from various composers into something fresh as well as momentary. His life often looks like a playful expression of feelings and ideas that need to be communicated and responded to, but which do not attempt to oblige anyone else.

This fragmented ideology can prevent nuclear man from becoming a fanatic who is willing to die or to kill for an idea. He is primarily looking for experiences that give him a sense of value. Therefore he is very tolerant, since he does not regard a man with a different conviction as a threat but rather as an opportunity to discover new ideas and test his own. He might listen with great attention to a rabbi, a minister, a priest, without considering the acceptance of any system of thought, but quite willing to deepen his own under¬standing of what he experiences as partial and fragmentary.

When nuclear man feels himself unable to relate to the Christian message, we may wonder whether this is not due to the fact that, for many people, Christianity has become an ideology. Jesus, a Jew executed by the leaders of his time, is quite often transformed into a cultural hero reinforcing the most divergent and often destructive ideological points of view. When Christianity is reduced to an all-encompassing ideology, nuclear man is all too prone to be skeptical about its relevance to his life experience.

3. A search for new immortality

Why did Peter come for help? He himself did not know exactly what he was looking for, but he had a general, all-pervading feeling of confusion. He had lost unity and direction in his life. He had lost the boundaries which could keep him together, and he felt like a prisoner of the present, drifting from left to right, unable to decide on a definitive course. He kept studying with a sort of obedient routine to give himself the feeling of having something to do, but the long weekends and many holidays were mostly spent in sleeping, lovemaking, and just sitting around with his friends, gently distracted by music and the free-floating images of his fantasy.
Nothing seemed urgent or even important enough to become involved in. No projects or plans, no exciting goals to work for, no pressing tasks to fulfill. Peter was not torn apart by conflict, was not depressed, suicidal, or anxiety-ridden. He did not suffer from despair, but neither did he have anything to hope for. This paralysis made him suspicious about his own condition. He had discovered that even the satisfaction of his desire to embrace, to kiss and to hold in a surrendering act of love; had not created the freedom to move and to take new steps forward. He started to wonder whether love really is enough to keep a man alive in this world, and whether, to be creative, man does not need to find a way to transcend the limitations of being human.

Perhaps we can find in Peter's life history events or experiences that throw some light on his apathy, but it seems just as valid to view Peter's paralysis as the paralysis of nuclear man who has lost the source of his creativity, which is his sense of immortality. When man is no longer able to look beyond his own death and relate himself to what extends beyond the time and space of his life, he loses his desire to create and the excitement of being human. Therefore, I want to look at Peter's problem as that of nuclear man who is searching for new ways of being immortal.

Robert Lifton sees as the core problem of man in the nuclear age the threat to his sense of immortality. This sense of immortality "represents a compelling, universal urge to maintain an inner sense of continuity over time and space, with the various elements of life." It is "man's way of experiencing his connection with all human history" (Lifton, Boundaries, p. 22). But for nuclear man the traditional modes of immortality have lost their connective power. Often he says: "I do not want to bring children into this self-destructive world." This means that the desire to live on in his children extinguished in the face of the possible end of history. And why should he want to live on in the works of his hands when one atomic blitz may reduce them to ashes in a second? Could perhaps an animistic immortality make it possible for man to live on in nature? And how can a belief in a "hereafter" be an answer to the search for immortality when there is hardly any belief in the "here"? A life after death can only be thought of in terms of life before it, and nobody can dream of a new earth when there is no old earth to hold any promises.

No form of immortality-neither the immortality through children nor the immortality through works, neither the immortality through nature nor the immortality in heaven is able to help nuclear man project himself beyond the limitations of his human existence.

It is therefore certainly not surprising that nuclear man cannot find an adequate expression of his experience in symbols such as Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, Hereafter, Resurrection, Paradise, and the Kingdom of God.

A preaching and teaching still based on the assumption that man is on his way to a new land filled with promises, and that his creative activities in this world are the first signs of what he will see in the hereafter, cannot find a sounding board in a man whose mind is brooding on the suicidal potentials of his own world.

This brings us to the end of our description of nuclear man. Peter was our model. We saw his historical dislocation, his fragmented ideology, and his search for a new mode of immortality. Obviously, the level of awareness and visibility is different in different people, but I hope you will be able to recognize in your own experiences and the experiences of your friends some of the traits which are so visible in Peter's life style. And this recognition might also help you to realize that Christianity is not just challenged to adapt itself to a modern age, but is also challenged to ask itself whether its unarticulated suppositions can still form the basis for its redemptive pretensions

II. NUCLEAR MAN'S WAY TO LIBERATION

When you recognize nuclear man among your col¬leagues, friends, and family, and maybe even in your own self-reflections, you cannot avoid asking if there is not a way to liberation and freedom for this new type of man. More important than constructing untested answers which tend to create more irritation than comfort, we might be able to uncover, in the midst of the present confusion and stagnation, new trails that point in hopeful directions.

When we look around us we see man paralyzed by dislocation and fragmentation, caught in the prison of his own mortality. However, we also see exhilarating experiments of living by which he tries to free himself of the chains of his own predicament, transcend his mortal condition, reach beyond himself, and experience the source of a new creativity.

My own involvement in the spasms and pains of nuclear man makes me suspect that there are two main ways by which he tries to break out of his cocoon and fly: the mystical way and the revolutionary way. Both ways can be considered modes of "experiential transcendence" (Lifton, History and Human Survival, p. 330), and both ways seem to open new perspectives and suggest new life styles. Let me therefore try to describe these two ways, and then show how they are interrelated.

1. The mystical way

The mystical way is the inner way. Man tries to find in his inner life a connection with the "reality of the unseen," "the source of being," "the point of silence." There he discovers that what is most personal is most universal (cf. Rogers' On Becoming a Person. Houghton Mifflin, 1961, p. 26). Beyond the superficial layers of idiosyncrasies, psychological differences and characterological typologies, he finds a center from which he can embrace all other beings at once and experience meaningful connections with all that exists. Many people who have made risky trips on LSD and returned safely from them, have spoken about sensations during which they temporarily broke through their alienation, felt an intimate closeness to the mysterious power that brings men together, and came to a liberating insight into what lies beyond death. The increasing number of houses for meditation, concentration, and contemplation, and the many new Zen and Yoga centers show that nuclear man is trying to reach a moment, a point or a center, in which the distinction between life and death can be transcended and in which a deep connection with all of nature, as well as with all of history, can be experienced. In what¬ever way we try to define this mode of "experiential transcendence," it seems that in all its forms man tries to transcend his own worldly environment and move one, two, three or more levels away from the unreal ties of his daily existence to a more encompassing view which enables him to experience what is real. In this experience he can cut through his apathy and reach the deep currents of life in which he participates. There he feels that he belongs to a story of which he knows neither the beginning nor the end, but in which he has a unique place. By this creative distance from the unrealities of his own ambitions and urges, nuclear man breaks through the vicious circle of the self-fulfilling prophecy that makes him suffer from his own morbid predictions. There he comes into contact with the center of his own creativity and finds the strength to refuse to become the passive victim of his own futurology. There he experiences himself no longer as an isolated individual caught in the diabolic chain of cause and effect, but as a man able to transcend the fences of his own predicament and reach out far beyond the concerns of self. There he touches the place where all people are revealed to him as equal and where compassion becomes a human possibility. There he comes to the shocking, but at the same time self-evident, insight that prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

2. The revolutionary way

But there is a second way which is becoming visible in the present-day world of nuclear man. It is the revolutionary way of transcending our human predicament. Here man becomes aware that the choice is no longer between his world or a better world, but between no world or a new world. It is the way of the man who says: Revolution is better than suicide. This man is deeply convinced that our world is heading for the edge of the cliff, that Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Algeria, Biafra, My Lai, Attica, Bangladesh, and Northern Ire¬land are only a few of the many names that show how man kills himself with his own absurd technological inventions. For him no adaptation, restoration or addition can help any longer. For him the liberals and progressives are fooling themselves by trying to make an intolerable situation a little more tolerable. He is tired of pruning trees and clipping branches; he wants to pull out the roots of a sick society. He no longer believes that integration talks, corporate measures against air and noise pollution, peace corps, antipoverty programs and civil-rights legislation will save a world dominated by extortion, oppression, and exploitation. Only a total radical upheaval of the existing order, together with a drastic change of direction, can prevent the end of everything. But while aiming at a revolution, he is not just motivated by a desire to liberate the oppressed, alleviate the poor, and end war. While in the past scarcity led man to revolt, the present-day revolutionary sees the urgent and immediate needs of his suffering fellow man as part of a much greater apocalyptic scene in which the survival of humanity itself is at stake. His goal is not a better man, but a new man, a man who relates to himself and his world in ways which are still unexplored but which belong to his hidden potentials. The life of this man is not ruled by manipulation and supported by weapons, but is ruled by love and supported by new ways of interpersonal communication. This new man, however, does not develop from a self-guiding process of evolution. He might or might not come about. Perhaps it is already too late. Perhaps the suicidal tendencies, visible in the growing imbalance in culture as well as nature, have reached the point of no return. Still, the revolutionary believes that the situation is not irreversible and that a total reorientation of mankind is just as possible as is a total self-destruction. He does not think his goal will be reached in a few years or even in a few generations, but he bases his commitment on the conviction that it is better to give your life than to take it, and that the value of your actions does not depend on their immediate results. He lives by the vision of a new world and refuses to be sidetracked by trivial ambitions of the moment. Thus he transcends his present condition and moves from a passive fatalism to a radical activism.

3. The Christian way

Is there a third way, a Christian way? It is my growing conviction that in Jesus the mystical and the revolutionary ways are not opposites, but two sides of the same human mode of experiential transcendence. I am increasingly convinced that conversion is the individual equivalent of revolution. Therefore every real revolutionary is challenged to be a mystic at heart, and he who walks the mystical way is called to unmask the illusory quality of human society. Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring about radical change. No mystic can prevent himself from becoming a social critic, since in self-reflection he will discover the roots of a sick society. Similarly, no revolutionary can avoid facing his own human condition, since in the midst of his struggle for a new world he will find that he is also fighting his own reactionary fears and false ambitions.

The mystic as well as the revolutionary has to cut loose from his selfish needs for a safe and protected existence and has to face without fear the miserable condition of himself and his world. It is certainly not surprising that the great revolutionary leaders and the great contemplatives of our time meet in their common concern to liberate nuclear man from his paralysis. Their personalities might be quite different, but they show the same vision, which leads to a radical self-criticism as well as to a radical activism. This vision is able to restore the "broken connection" (Lifton) with past and future, bring unity to a fragmented ideology, and reach beyond the limits of the mortal self. This vision can offer a creative distance from ourselves and our world and help us transcend the limiting walls of our human predicament.

For the mystic as well as for the revolutionary, life means breaking through the veil covering our human existence and following the vision that has become manifest to us. Whatever we call this vision-"The Holy," "The Numinon," "The Spirit," or "Father"-we still believe that conversion and revolution alike derive their power from a source beyond the limitations of our own createdness.

For a Christian, Jesus is the man in whom it has indeed become manifest that revolution and conversion cannot be separated in man's search for experiential transcendence. His appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross.

Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel. In this sense he also remains for nu¬clear man the way to liberation and freedom.

CONCLUSION

We saw the predicament of nuclear man, characterized by historical dislocation, fragmented ideology and the search for immortality. We discovered the mystical as well as the revolutionary way by which nuclear man tries to reach beyond himself. And finally we saw that for a Christian, the man Jesus had made it manifest that these two ways do not constitute a contradiction but are in fact two sides of the same mode of experiential transcendence.

I suppose you will hesitate to consider yourself a mystic or a revolutionary, but when you have eyes to see and ears to hear you will recognize him in your midst. He is sometimes undeniably evident to the point of irritation, sometimes only partially visible. You will find him in the eyes of the guerrilla, the young radical or the boy with the picket sign. You will notice him in the quiet dreamer playing his guitar in the corner of a coffeehouse, in the soft voice of a friendly monk, in the melancholic smile of a student concentrating on his reading. You will see him in the mother who allows her son to go his own difficult way, in the father who reads to his child from a strange book, in the loud laughter of a young girl, in the indignation of a Young Lord, and in the determination of a Black Panther.

You will find him in your own town, in your own family, and even in the strivings of your own heart, be¬cause he is in every man who draws his strength from the vision that dawns on the skyline of his life and leads him to a new world.

It is this new world that fills our dreams, guides our actions and makes us go on, at great risk, with the increasing conviction that one day man will finally be free-free to love.

Extracted from Henri Nouwen's The Wounded Healer