J. Robert Oppenheimer and Style

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klk

Trad climber

cali

Jun 18, 2009 - 04:44pm PT

"How did so many smart guys come out of Hungary during the pre war period?"

Austro-Hungary was one of the great cultural centers of Europe. The capitol, Vienna, was at least as important as Paris and more culturally important than Berlin or Rome or any other European city. Capital, culture, multi-ethnic intellectual and artistic life, and good universities. Plus a fairly large population with some opportunities for upward mobility based on merit.

We think of Hungary today as isolated or poor largely because of what happened to the place during and after the war.

Jaybro

Social climber

Wolf City, Wyoming

Jun 18, 2009 - 05:43pm PT

Kisinger = Dr strangelove!

Have no doubt, Oppie was a 6'3" baldy that weighed 130lbs!

Jennie

Trad climber

Idaho Falls

Jun 18, 2009 - 05:47pm PT

Dr. Oppenheimer, if we believe the biographers, showed the earmarks of social and moral confusion in his early and middle years.... ie; lacing apples with injurious chemicals and belligerence toward teachers during class discussions. His alleged attempt at seducing friend and colleague Linus Pauling's wife was monumental bad judgement and hardly elegant form or "style."(...if true)

Foolishness can be the flip side of genius.

Moral leadership? Perhaps....but more by situation than talent or design.
Was he that assured in his own moral leadership or were his admirers and zealots just fascinated and endeared by a post-Trinity JRO consumed in striving and struggling with his own angst ?

Fortunately we have video/audio from that era that lend context and ambiance difficult to extract from books. In my opinion, he conveyed humility, soberness and lack of pretention in the post WWII video I've seen. Such conduct doesn't certify moral legitimacy but it impresses more favorably than the arrogance and bombast of many modern activists, critics and advocates.

Mighty Hiker

Social climber

Vancouver, B.C.

Jun 18, 2009 - 06:03pm PT

Oppenheimer seems to have been a somewhat complex and Faustian character, whom it is easy to caricature and criticize. But at least he knew there was a moral dimension to what he and the other Manhattan Project scientists were unleashing, and was troubled by it.

The excesses of the notorious Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s are a blot on US history. The US seems to go through a xenophobic paranoid phase every 30 or 40 years - after World War I, in the 1950s, and again in the early part of the 21st century. It often seems based on reaction to real but much exaggerated and misunderstood threats.

The German speaking universities produced and employed most of the world's leading scientists, particularly physicists, from the late 19th century through to the 1930s. Just look at the nationality of the Nobel Prize winners from that era. US universities were then of no great stature in international terms - Harvard really just a club for rich peoples' children.

One of the bigger mistakes of Nazi Germany was to force out so many leading scientists, some but not all of whom were Jewish. Few of them were angels - geniuses rarely are. Some had naturally gravitated toward social democracy or communism, as the only apparently viable antidote to fascism. Some (e.g. Teller) reacted to their experience in a way that ended up promoting an ideology that wasn't far from fascist.

My father was slated to be in the invasion of Japan in 1946, which seemed a very real likelihood until atomic weapons were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Steve Grossman

Trad climber

Seattle, WA

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2009 - 06:59pm PT

Jennie- Read Ed's citation from post #11. Very illuminating, very vedic.

klk

Trad climber

cali

Jun 18, 2009 - 07:18pm PT

"The US seems to go through a xenophobic paranoid phase every 30 or 40 years."

ST goes through one every three or four minutes, hehe.

stevep

Boulder climber

Salt Lake, UT

Jun 18, 2009 - 09:00pm PT

Kissinger had little national profile in 1964 when Strangelove came out. Not too likely he was the model for the character.

Slightly more likely he decided to model himself after the character.

Mighty Hiker

Social climber

Vancouver, B.C.

Jun 18, 2009 - 09:10pm PT

The character of Strangelove may have been an amalgam of the various German scientists, engineers and academics who came to the US, and who were often outspoken. Wernher von Braun was another of them, although he wasn't an escapee. He and the other V2 scientists and technicians from Peenemunde were scooped by the US at the end of the war, with their active cooperation. The US was only too quick to overlook their pasts, or at least not ask awkward questions - and many, including von Braun, had been aware of if not complicit in war crimes.

von Braun, Arthur Rudolph and the other Operation Paper Clip people did fulfill their end of their Faustian bargain - they gave the US its arsenal of military rockets, and human landings on the Moon with the Saturn 5.

cintune

climber

the Moon and Antarctica

Jun 18, 2009 - 09:18pm PT

John von Neumann was the most likely model for Dr. Strangelove, according to most accounts.
There was also a European physicist whose name escapes just now, but who burned his hand handling too much uranium and wore the trademark leather glove to hide the disfigurement.

WBraun

climber

Jun 18, 2009 - 09:48pm PT

Oppenheimer, the principle developer of the atomic bomb, stated that "The Vedas are the greatest privilege of this century."

When Oppenheimer was asked if this is the first nuclear explosion, he significantly replied: "Yes, in modern times," implying that ancient nuclear explosions may have previously occurred.

He was ousted by all those screwballs who wanted nukes, because they knew he knew the real truth.

Nukes are no good especially in the hands of the "modern thought" idiots of today.

Kissinger was/is a total idiot and fool number one.

aguacaliente

climber

Jun 19, 2009 - 01:37am PT

Unfortunately, such a bomb was going to be built eventually, by someone.

The only thing worse than Oppenheimer being in charge of building that bomb, might have been anyone other than Oppenheimer being in charge of building that bomb.

A combination of technical skill, organizational ability, and some sense of moral responsibility is not always common in people we regard as geniuses. Maybe even rare. (I also say this with personal experience with many scientists, some wonderful people, some highly competent, and some who would frighten me given such power.)

He was deeply flawed. Who is not?

Curt

Boulder climber

Gilbert, AZ

Jun 19, 2009 - 01:45am PT

"...History has not been kind to Edward Teller, who appears to have been an exceptionally nasty person in addition to his other qualities..."

Nor should it, as Teller was obviously implicit in torpedo-ing Oppenheimer for his own personal benefit.

Curt

Jaybro

Social climber

Wolf City, Wyoming

Jun 19, 2009 - 02:45am PT

"Sellers said, "Strangelove was never modeled after Kissinger, that's popular misconception."

I call bullshit on that as have others, Sellers didn't want to be sued, I'm judgement proof.

Obviously there were other influences, but is there any chance that that the voice, at least, started out from anyone else? Those movies guys always want to use something that isn't quite breaking in the public eye yet, to show how smart they are, in the near future...

Steve Grossman

Trad climber

Seattle, WA

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 19, 2009 - 11:47am PT

I think this distillation is closer the mark.

The problem of doing justice to the implicit, the imponderable, and the unknown... is always with us in science..., writing and all forms of art… It is with us in the most trivial of personal affairs... The means by which it is solved is sometimes called style.
It is style which complements affirmation with limitation and with humility... It is above all style through which power defers to reason.

The quote heads a chapter on style and defining it right away in the broadest terms allows an immediate narrowing to the particulars of climbing and Tom's life.

Style is so central to many of us that it is the elephant in the waiting room of the psyche, the creative unconscious.

One of my favorite examples comes from an article that Bob Kamps wrote about bolting ethics. At the end of his argument he admonishes climbers to think beyond themselves and "do what is best for climbing".

Peter Haan

Trad climber

San Francisco, CA

Jun 19, 2009 - 12:05pm PT

Stevie, enough of this!

Tarbaby has spoken; he eschews your "style" thingie. He maintains it's all about "Fashion".

Steve Grossman

Trad climber

Seattle, WA

Topic Author's Reply - Jun 19, 2009 - 12:14pm PT

Perhaps I am simply a lone ascetic atop a column of my own desire and construction...That too is a style! LOL

But then, should I become i, or less, then the style and the stylist are the same!

Much like being one with the cowboy hat...

jstan

climber

Jun 19, 2009 - 12:29pm PT

We are talking about Tarbuster right?

Since when did that hat come back into fashion - if it ever was south of Wyoming?

Fashion is following the herd.

That hat is style.

Tarby following the herd? That's a rail shot at best.

A comment.

The "fashion" in the US is not to consider long term consequences but only to look at the quarter's result.

Looking long term in the US has therefore become "style".

I leave it to the reader to decide which gives the best results - on the ground. That is a question actually much more important than style or fashion.

When you ask "where's the beef?" you are talking something real.

Peter Haan

Trad climber

San Francisco, CA

Jun 19, 2009 - 04:40pm PT

((another fun diatribe))

Sometimes Johno Stannard you simply floor me. I can’t believe you pharmacists or whatever lowly thing it is that you and Ed do...Gee! “Rail shot”: puleeze!

Okay, let me explain: The Hat (note the caps here) is MORE than style. It in fact TRUMPS style (and don’t you be trying Euler’s circles on me Buddy cuz my circle is bigger than your circle here)...It---by your own words----IS fashion because---why?---”fashion is following the herd” as you say just above in a rather demeaning manner. But here the True Meaning escaped you, Sir!

The express use of The Cowboy Hat---Roy's too certainly---was that of that greatest of all paradigms, The Cowboy Following The Herd. Jungian even, pilgrims! Watching out for strays, and valiantly---nobly, actually----keeping Everycow on task. Far Far beyond style, up, up, UP to the acme of Western Civilization: Fashion. I humbly refer you to the film “The Devil Wears Prada”, Meryl Streep starring, with especial note to her discourse on the color blue. Seriously, you have no time to waste, may I say! In sum, Fashion, though entirely temporal is eternal! You see? It really is rather simple.

Roy would be in on this and be rototilling ion your newly blooming begonias right now and in a heartbeat I might add if he weren’t so sore from yesterday’s command slab performance here and is also still busy ironing and preparing for another long starchy storage, those three lonely “ample woman” dresses of his performance group. He is noting that slabs can really dirty up a hem quickly, even granite ones.

So if you would only wait a minute, Johno, Everycow shall be to market soon enough when The Cowboy is done over at the Cleaners!