Part 1: How to change the world

#45—The author and the New World Order.

Dear readers,

I’ve been thinking about catalysts for change and while current world events have caused those thoughts to land on such things as power and money, I’ve deliberately turned my attention to the arts as instigating forces. Inspiring the direction of these thoughts has been the book I’m currently reading, Richard Flannagan’s Question 7, which among the filaments of its themes is a story about HG Wells that I’ve captured and run with tonight. Add to that a soundtrack of protest music that took control of my Spotify account after listening to Cat Steven’s/Yusuf Islam’s 1971 song Peace Train and some research I’ve been doing on the root cause of prejudice, and this three-part series about the ability of the arts to create change took form. I hope by the end of it, it may have helped to inspire you in your next endeavours. Part 1 takes us into the darkness, but we’ll resurface for Part 2, I promise. So let’s begin by exploring the power of an idea…

---

Welcome to Mind Flexing, your fortnightly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.  

---

There is power in ideas—a sneaking power, one not obvious to the passing eye but nevertheless potent enough to set off a chain reaction; the finger that flicks the domino, the seed, the butterfly. It’s an ephemeral power in which the creator—the artist, the writer, the musician—wields no control over where the pieces fall or the branches grow. And so, when the famous science-fiction writer HG Wells was asked for his thoughts on the atomic bomb that took just seconds to obliterate perhaps 140,000 living beings and all other forms of life it touched in the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, he replied:

“This can wipe out everything bad—or good—in this world. It is up to the people to decide which.”¹

Wells died one year later, too early to fully understand the full effects of the chain reaction he had set off in 1914 with the publication of his novel The World Set Free, a novel in which he created a revolutionary new weapon, a weapon that radiated energy, a weapon that could melt the earth with fire, a weapon that’s powerful effect could last for years, and a weapon that would “give the ‘decisive touch’ to war”. He called this weapon the atomic bomb.

The novel was a flop—a passing eye would have shrugged it off. But what the literary critics thought was inconsequential. All that mattered was the next step in the chain reaction: the moment physicist Leo Szilard—a former student and contemporary of Albert Einstein—sat down and, opening the cover, began to read.

Fear is crippling. Fear, on any level will cause humans to lash out in monstrous defence. Most disturbingly, fear needs no basis. It needs only a spark to ignite and spread so wildly that, too often, it can’t be contained. And it was fear that drove the Hungarian-born physicist to grow tormented by the possibility of an atomic bomb.

In the World War I reality of Szilard’s existence, what he read in Wells’ novel horrified him. Wells, himself a scientist, had created his bomb based on a scientific understanding of the extraordinary amount of energy found in the nucleus of an atom. In the non-fiction world, that energy couldn’t be harnessed—yet—and many scientists were unconvinced it could. But Szilard was adamant it was possible. He knew that physicists involved in atomic research did so in an innocent search for a new industrial power source, but Szilard was terrified that a breakthrough would inevitably bring Wells’ vision to life, bestowing its beholder with a power of a different kind.

If fear was a driving force, the mental torment of solving the riddle must have been another. Szilard seemed driven to prove that nuclear power was possible, if but for himself. In 1933, the same year the Nazis came to power, Szilard created the hypothesis of a nuclear chain reaction and patented the idea in 1936, taking care to keep his theory a secret from other scientists lest the Nazis were to discover it.

His fears of an atomic bomb gnashing its teeth at the world compounded as World War II drew near and the Nazis began stockpiling uranium—the vital element needed to create nuclear energy. And in a great paradox, Szilard set in motion the creation of the very thing he was fearful of. Ultimately, the fear of the enemy creating the bomb first loomed larger. He believed the situation was now urgent. Szilard drafted a letter to President Roosevelt, signed by his contemporary Albert Einstein, warning of the threat of nuclear warfare. The domino fell and the Manhattan Project was formed under the direction of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Szilard took a job creating the bomb of his nightmares.

One could only imagine how Szilard felt those August days when atomic bombs incinerated Hiroshima then Nagasaki and the life within them. Countless, innocent lives. Japan hadn’t always been the target. When it was discovered the Nazis had failed to create nuclear energy, heads turned to Japan and Szilard frantically compiled a petition to President Truman signed by 70 scientists pleading for him to refrain from using the bomb. Demonstrate its power first, they urged. But not everyone appreciated such intervention and Truman never received the petition.

And so, the science fiction of HG Wells had become reality. If ever there were a piece of literature to have had such a profound impact on humanity, the critically panned The World Set Free would have to be it. The bombs fell on Japan and unleashed an absolute horror that caused the world to fall silent and lay down its arms.

“Such was the crowning triumph of military science, the ultimate explosive that was to give the ‘decisive touch’ to war…” (The World Set Free, HG Wells).

Never again, the world said. But fear is a contagious beast and the seed planted within the book’s pages had grown into a tangled, thorny mess that maintains a stranglehold over the world to this day, a stranglehold that is tightening as global tensions rise. The nuclear race had begun and with it arose a New World Order, a phrase also coincidentally penned by Wells, although with very different intentions.

There are now nine countries with nuclear weaponry leering over global relations like a dark cloud threatening the ultimate storm. They are: Russia (with 5,889 warheads as of June 2023), United States (5,224), China (410), France (290), United Kingdom (225), Pakistan (170), India (164), Israel (90), and North Korea (30). And a further six nations host nuclear weaponry, with Italy (35), Turkey (20), Belgium (15), Germany (15) and The Netherlands (15) hosting weapons for the US, and Belarus hosting an unknown number for Russia.²

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) says just one nuclear strike on New York City would end the lives of about 583,160 people. There are now 12,612 nuclear warheads in the world. And the threat of nuclear warfare is ever present. Just this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold needed for his country to respond to a conventional attack with a nuclear strike. The announcement came two days after inside sources confirmed the US had allowed Ukraine to use US-made weapons to strike deep into Russia. The warning is clear: if Ukraine makes further attacks on Russian soil, it paves the way for Russia to end the war and take command of Ukraine territory in the most devastatingly inhumane way possible.

Would the atomic bomb have been created had HG Wells not penned those words over 110 years ago? Most certainly, the penny would have dropped at some point. But without those visions of nuclear warfare that so haunted Szilard, without that literary seed so vividly created and planted in his mind, triggering his worst fears, would he have instigated the Manhattan Project? Would Hiroshima and Nagasaki have happened? Possibly not, though we’ll never know.

The question now is, will it happen again?

As countries, one by one began to build their nuclear arsenal in the aftermath of World War II, protestors took to the streets in 1958 calling for disarmament. In Britain, artist Gerald Holtom designed a symbol for the campaign. It was a circle with a line down the middle representing the semaphore signal for the letter ‘D’. In the circle’s lower quadrant, two downward lines, outstretched like arms in despair, signalled the letter ‘N’. Nuclear Disarmament. The symbol flooded the streets and became the motif of a generation, a work of art that remains one of the most recognisable symbols in the world today—the antithesis of war. A symbol for Peace.

Peace Man, water colour by Alia Parker.

Next up, I explore how the arts, and one poet in particular, inspired the greatest anti-war movement of our time. Read Part 2: How to change the world.

---

Things I’ve enjoyed on Substack this week

• The Disorderly Sentence—by

  Nina Schuyler

  Following Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize win, Nina dissects one of her ‘disorderly’ sentences.

• Lizzy May – Chapter 7—by

  Steve Fendt

  Old Lizzy May is quite the storyteller. Here, she recounts memories of WWI.

• Nine Things I've Had On My Mind, Including Amsterdam—by

  Tom Cox

  A lovely read, after which you will pack your bags and fly to Amsterdam too.

Etymology Monday

For those who missed it, the word is:

music

---

Thank you for Mind Flexing with me. If you enjoyed this essay, please subscribe, comment, click the ❤️ button, or share it with someone who would appreciate it. I’ll be back in a fortnight. Until then, keep 💪.

1. New York Times, 19 August 1946

2. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)