75 Years After the Trinity Test: Finding Our Way to “We”
My grandfather’s trail
Crystal clear,
Sharp and bright,
The sacred sword
Allows no opening
For evil to roost.
— Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969), founder of Aikido, (the Way of Harmony), in The Art of Peace, translated by John Stevens
Seventy-five years ago today, Robert Oppenheimer, with my maternal grandfather, Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), and their team assembled in a remote desert south of Alamogordo, NM, USA, for a test code-named Trinity. You could say the successful detonation of Gadget, the first atomic bomb, was a key milestone on the trail my grandfather started to follow as a boy, when his love and genius for physics ignited. Mussolini’s fascism and alliance with Hitler, that my grandfather was contributing mightily to the birth of 20th-century physics, and that my grandmother, Enrico’s wife, Laura, was Jewish, formed the terrain of a metaphorical trail that pushed Enrico to take his family from Rome, Italy, to the United States, in search of a home friendly to democracy.
On that fateful morning of July 16, 1945, Enrico Fermi, physicist, was one of a handful of men tasked with ensuring the atomic bomb would detonate. (Unbeknownst to the scientists, radioactive fallout from their secret test accidentally landed on innocent civilians, their crops, livestock, and water supply in the neighboring Tularosa Basin.) Three weeks later, the US government dropped one atomic bomb each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, destroying homes, shrines, and wreaking mass destruction in an instant never before seen. The fearsome power of those bombs ended World War II.
History of science and technology has consistently taught us that scientific advances . . . have sooner or later led to technical and industrial applications that have revolutionized our way of life. It seems to me improbable that this effort to get at the structure of matter should be an exception . . . . What is less certain, and what we all fervently hope, is that man will soon grow sufficiently adult to make good use of the powers that he acquires over nature.
— Enrico Fermi, Enrico Fermi Collection, [Box 53, Folder 12], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library; notes for a lecture on “The Future of Nuclear Physics” for the American Physical Society meeting in Rochester, NY, January 10, 1952
Because my grandfather was one of the leaders of the US government’s Manhattan Project, the secret project to develop the first atomic weapons, I know firsthand that people’s individual choices add up to the making of history. Born in the late 1950s, I grew up with the sadness, regret, and fear so many of us felt in response to the use of the atomic bomb and the specter of future nuclear annihilation. The record shows my grandfather argued against the development and use of the nuclear weapons, as did many of the Manhattan Project scientists. His life left me with the questions of how we might change and become more human, and how to find ways for humanity to learn to live together on our little planet Earth.
Truth about past events evolves with time to reveal perspective and understanding relevant to now. My grandfather showed me how powerful it can be to follow a trail. His life, his choices set me on a continuing path of learning about the transformational power of humanity.
What victories were we celebrating at the end of World War II with the fall of Nazi Germany and its allies, including the Japanese? Was the Trinity test, 75 years ago today, a technological marvel or an evil act? Was it proof we could conquer the enemy? Was it a reinforcement of the belief that one group can, in fact, should claim superiority and dominance over another?
If you know or study history, you may find the choices in that time made a kind of sense within that zeitgeist. The main players of WW II all resorted to cruel and massive scale attacks on one another. The Nazis exterminated millions of people whom they saw as “other”— Jews, Poles, Russians, and homosexuals. The Japanese raped and slaughtered millions of Chinese and Southeast Asians. The US firebombed 67 Japanese cities before dropping atomic bombs on two more. It was an “us and them” world.
How to question everything
I went everywhere with longing
in my eyes, until here
in my own houseI felt truth
filling my sight.— Lalla (1320–1392), North Indian mystic, in Naked Song, translations by Coleman Barks
People in my family loved questions, intellectual banter, and sparring. We weren’t adept at emotions, especially not wounds and losses. We pushed aside anything vulnerable, as brusquely as we would a bad idea. The intellectual power in my family hid something missing and, for me, that missing part magnified. I longed to find a place where I could heal and find intimacy in community, to discover more of the potentials and the heart of being human.
As a young adult, I began to follow my own path, a path that would come to include mind, body, and heart. I took Hatha Yoga classes, practiced aikido, partook in and taught peer counseling, got Rolfed, learned shiatsu, and studied body awareness and healing with Moshe Feldenkrais.
I even gave away all of my material possessions to join a spiritual, utopian commune in 1981. When that dream fell apart after a few years, I was bereft. I’d had a taste of living from the heart, in community and I wanted more. In 1989, one of my aikido teachers told me about the Diamond Approach, a spiritual path.
The central practice of the Diamond Approach is inquiry. While the intellectual power of a good idea can delight the mind, I discovered the power of this all-encompassing inquiry to enliven and transform my heart, mind, and soul. In our Diamond Approach inquiry, we welcome all experience — shadow and light, mystical and mundane.
From the Diamond Approach (and other teachings), I’ve learned how the soul can transform and saw that we could ignite each other’s transformation. This power of the heart to amplify what is good when we connect in community is a special kind of transformational power we would do well to foster.
The Neutron Trail — an inquiry of heart and mind
And so I view myself as on kind of a mission to change the country, the world, one heart at a time. . . . I feel as if the heart is the last frontier because we have tried so many other things.
— Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, from the “This History is Long, This History is Deep” episode of the On Being podcast hosted by Krista Tippett, in the context of the continuing struggle to end white racism against African-Americans.
Coming back to the questions my grandfather left us with: “How do we mature as a species?” and “How do we learn to live together on our little planet?”, I asked myself, “What would happen if I took the spirit of inquiry of the Diamond Approach out into the world to look into the nuclear legacy of weapons, waste, and energy — the legacy that holds so much toxicity, both radioactive and emotional, as well as promise?”
Just as we failed to recognize the shadow in my family growing up, it seems to me we continue to fail to see and respond to the shadow in our society. I wanted to have personal, not philosophical, conversations about social questions. What do we need to do individually and collectively to find heart and mature as a species? How can we evolve our cultural beliefs to live in harmony with the natural world? How might we learn to respect ourselves and our environment in ways that support all life?
Inspired by the potential of open-ended inquiry, the Neutron Trail appeared to me at the intersection of the personal and the universal, as a new kind of trail I could follow.
Neutrons are the neutrally charged particles my grandfather Enrico isolated, slowed down, and used to split the atom. The Neutron Trail invites us to slow down and use potent, inclusive neutrality to penetrate the pressing problems putting our future in peril. The Neutron Trail asks us to be open to unexpected developments of our hearts and minds, like my grandfather was open to crafting new theories, in response to startling discoveries in physics.
A trail moves through uncharted and ever-changing spaces that don’t exist on a normal map. Sometimes spotting the trail is easy. Often the way is not clear. On the Neutron Trail, we can travel back in time to make sense of and heal past wrongs, and find new ways forward.
My Neutron Trail project led me to visit key Manhattan Project sites, CERN, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Along the way, I met with survivors, artists, historians, activists, scientists, and students. I shared my enthusiasm for exploration and my family story. I was including personal shadow alongside cultural shadow and showing how our individual stories contribute to the collective story. Through it all, people were telling me I was inspiring them. Their responses ignited me to open my heart even more.
From “Us and Them” to “We”
Dignity for all.
Seventy-five years ago, “us and them” was the prevailing belief. How else could the governments developing nuclear weapons think such weapons were going to be usable to stop “them” — without destroying “us”?
Today, it seems we’re in a painful, perilous transition from “us and them” to “we”. Humans are squeezing out other life-forms and ecosystems. Our survival, not as nations, but as an entire species is under threat. Global existential threats, like nuclear war and COVID-19 challenge us to work together across national divides. International commerce, social media, and other webs of connection transcend national boundaries and show us we have the potential to learn to live together.
I feel grateful to Greta Thunberg for demonstrating how individual actions, with our hearts together, can be incredibly transformative. She stepped onto her trail alone and stood outside Sweden’s parliament, with a climate protest sign. Within weeks, young Thunberg ignited massive climate protests around the world. Greta’s path has been rapid and clear, because she brings herself, her personal climate story, and our shared climate story together in her fight for climate action. She models dignity for all, a “we” kind of stance, as do so many trail walkers today.
So many causes are calling us. It can be overwhelming to read my Facebook feed. Walking the Neutron Trail helped me to focus and connect beyond myself in community. Now I help others to find and walk the trails calling them.
If you look back on the trail(s), you’ve followed — or led — in your life, what tugs at your heart now? What kinds of transformational power might you have that you could use for the benefit of our world?
Are you and yours feeling a new wave of energy to look at racial bias and entrenched patterns of violence against Indigenous, Black, and other peoples of color? Are you someone who fosters empathy in our society — as empathy seems to plummet yet we need it more than ever? Are you called to reimagine the whole way we live on Earth, in this moment of slowing down everything, amid COVID-19 restrictions?
Are you called to act on climate change? Are you part of a community working on local or international environmental issues? Global nuclear disarmament? New kinds of governance? Converting the economy to one based on human and earth balance? Social justice? Raising healthy, vibrant, resilient children? Family care and healing?
Where do your gifts, no matter how humble or multi-dimensional, meet what the world needs most? How do you want to help us transform from “us and them” to “we”?
On the 75th anniversary of the Trinity test and the end of World War II, it’s time to reframe what victory means. It’s time to aim for dignity for all. It’s time to aim for the victory of “we”.
