From a series of lectures given by Philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1953 and broadcast by both The BBC and ABC here in the U.S. – this one, from May 19, 1953 entitle Obsolete ideas we came to accept as the norm in an age that was rapidly turning everything we knew upside down.
We were right in the middle of a virulent tug-of-war between Communism and Capitalism – dictatorships and democratically elected governments. Of staunch resistance and violent overthrows. We were at the cusp of a post-war revolution where what had been a largely colonial world was gradually losing influence of those nations under control by others to futures based on the concept of right of self-determination.
Couple all that with a pending sense of doom brought on by the introduction of the Atomic Bomb, and later the Hydrogen Bomb and the very real possibility of mass annihilation – an undercurrent of fear and anxiety was gripping, not only America, but the rest of the world in general.
It was time for the level heads of reason to show up – the ones who were capable of talking us off ledges, who were grounding influences – the ones who instilled in us a courage to face those fears, many of them baseless, and not jump to dire conclusions.
It was a time where a whole panorama of opinions and messages were being given. We had the religious community from where Reverend Billy Graham delivered sermon after sermon and secured millions of followers that faith in God, and namely Jesus Christ was the way to go if we were to survive. And you had the alarmists, in the form of Senator Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society who drove home the notion that Communists were everywhere and we were headed on a crash-course with our demise or forced slavery by the Communist zealots waiting for the right moment.
And then you had Bertrand Russell, who quietly yet determinedly explained that many of our fears were unfounded that, in fact, no nation in its right mind would risk atomic obliteration just to prove a point. There were cooler heads prevailing and they were in the room.
This is the second of six lectures Bertrand Russell gave in conjunction with the BBC and ABC Radio on May 19, 1953.
