Faces of Mars and Shiva in the Crisis of Human Survival
Edited by Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough
Current Affairs | $12.95 trade paper | 978-0-938190-49-3 | 300 pp.
North Atlantic Books, 1984

In this historic collection of writings, writers Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger put out a Call for Submissions in 1983 for work about the archetypal aspects of war and the role of the shadow in human conduct around war. Their poet friend Gary Snyder indicated that he was interested in the topic but wary of contributing to “yet another” nuclear anthology that might add to the level of misunderstanding about the relationship between pacifism and atomic weapons. He was not opposed to war per se and did not want to join an anthology with an un-examined anti-war premise. Hough suggested the issue might be explored in an open forum with internal martial artists, and Snyder accepted the invitation. An after-dinner discussion was held the last day of March, 1984, at the offices of North Atlantic Books in Berkeley.

This round-table, titled “The Warrior and the Militarist: A Discussion” is the centerpiece of the anthology which grew around it. The martial artists present were Bira Almeida (capoeira), Richard Heckler (aikido), Martin Inn (t’ai chi and chi gung) and Krin Epperlein (t’ai chi chuan teacher, dancer, and choreographer), and Hough and Grossinger. The anthology contained pieces by two major writers on nuclear weapons and disarmament, Thomas Powers and Freeman Dyson. Noted feminist and ecological writer Charlene Spretnak described the psychological aspects of war and diplomacy in “Naming The Cultural Forces That Push Us Toward War.” Jungians Charles Ponce and James Hillman analyzed the drive towards the love of war. Spiritual leaders Sri Chinmoy and Da Free John gave a metaphysical context. Hough’s “Misslemen,” reflected her western roots in Denver as the daughter of a journalist father involved in oil and uranium, in an area of boom and bust dominated by natural resources. Many others wrote about growing up in the Age of the Bomb, with an excerpt of the third act of Arch Oboler’s radio play, “Night of the Auk.”

The goal of Nuclear Strategy was to publish incisive writing from a different constituency than usually weigh in on arms control issues, to try to get to the bottom of our obsession with—or heritage of nuclear weapons. Martial artists could attest that there was nothing un-natural about fighting, but there were more and less honorable ways to dominate the military might of a country. Artists, dancers, poets, martial artists, psychologists (especially Jungian), feminists, spiritual leaders, and writers would go beyond the current fixation of arms-control agendas emphasizing détente and missile-counting to discover assumptions and inherited wisdom from many quarters about the conduct of war and war-making.

What would be an alternative future to having the planet in perpetual thrall to nuclear warfare? What constitutes honorable warfare? Why is diplomacy not tried enough? The pieces seek to uncover, as Gordon Feller wrote, the “hidden drives that cause us to make war –the unconscious myths and belief systems that prevent us from becoming a planetary community.”

In the twenty-six years since this anthology was published, this subject has not improved. If anything, the terms have simply changed to so many nuclear weapons, and the fear that rouge nations will develop nuclear capacity.

The Christian Fundamentalists Richard Geven more rossinger mentioned in the last page of his introduction, have turned into a deep and wide even more conservative streak dominating the Republican party. They “are simply wrong,” Grossinger wrote, “in expecting they can play Armageddon and then ride happily beside God into the Kingdom of Heaven. Nothing in nature works this way. There was work to do before the bomb, there is work to do to prevent the bomb, and there will be work to do after the bomb, whether we fire it or bury it.”

As I go about the garden and house doing the routine tasks any women does, I don’t regret my compulsive almost mantric-like visions and thought about nuclear war. In such thoughts are a first awareness about it as a real possibility. In such terror is probably embedded conscience and an awareness of responsibility: I, like so many others, entrusted our safety to others, who did what they thought was correct. Maybe they weren’t right. When one takes on one’s own heritage and connection to a collective guilt, admits one has had a hand in creating the problem, a massive amount of internal, personal energy is mobilized to help solve the problem. The problem is solvable (although perhaps not in time) if enough people become involved in thinking through our posture. Leaving such matters to “specialists” has resulted in technology in a moral vacuum. It is very much our business.

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Embedded in the sheer terror one first experiences upon becoming fully aware of nuclear peril lies a modesty which may be the beginning of constructing a new order of self-honesty free of some of the arrogance and deceit we’ve wound ourselves up in, tight as a ball. We need to be able to tell our children that there is a way to deal with an enemy without destroying ourselves and them and the whole planet. The children who can be reassured about nuclear holocaust are not those whose parents will not speak of it, but those whose parents have made it a central issue to solve in their lifetimes.

from “Missilemen”