Richard Feynman - The Meaning of It All

I went still further into the thing and found out what the study group was about, and if you don’t mind I’ll tell you what that was about. They gave me some papers. There were a lot of chairs, you see, in the room, and they explained to me, yes, that evening they had a study group, and they gave me a thing which described what they were going to study. And I made some notes from it. It had to do with the S.P.X.R.A. In 1943 the S.P.X. research associates—which turns out to be the … well, I’ll tell you what it turns out to be—came into being through the professional interest of intelligence officers then on active duty in the armed forces of the United States concerning the Soviet revival of a long dormant tenth principle of warfare. Paralysis. See the evil. Dormant. Mysterious. Frightening. The mystic people of the military orders have had principles of warfare since the Roman legions. Number one. Number two. Number three. This is number ten. We don’t have to know what number seven is. The whole idea that there are long dormant principles of warfare, much less that there is a tenth principle of warfare, is an absurdity. And then what is this principle of paralysis? How are they going to use the idea? The boogie man is now generated. How do you use the boogie man? You use the boogie man as follows: This educational program concerns itself with all the areas where Soviet pressure can be used to paralyze the American will to resist. Agriculture, arts, and cultural exchange. Science, education, information media, finance, economics, government, labor, law, medicine, and our armed forces, and religion, that most sensitive of areas. In other words, we now have an open machine for pointing out that everybody who says something that you don’t agree with has been paralyzed by the mystic force of the tenth principle of warfare.

This is a phenomenon analogous to paranoia. It is impossible to disprove the tenth principle. It’s only possible if you have a certain balance, a certain understanding of the world to appreciate that it’s out of balance, to think that the Supreme Court—which turns out to be an “instrument of global conquest”—has been paralyzed. Everything is paralyzed. You see how fearful it becomes, the terrible power which is demonstrated again and again by one example after the other of this fearful force which is made up.

This describes what a paranoia is like. A woman gets nervous. She begins to suspect that her husband is trying to make trouble for her. She doesn’t like to let him into the house. He tries to get into the house, proves that he’s trying to make trouble for her. He gets a friend to try to talk to her. She knows that its a friend, and she knows in her mind, which is going to one side, that this is only further evidence of the terrible fright and the fear that she’s building up in her mind. Her neighbors come over to console her for a while. It works fairly well, for a while. They go back to their houses. The friend of the husband goes to visit them. They are spoiled now, and they are going to tell her husband all the terrible things she said. Oh dear, what did she say? And he’s going to be able to use them against her. She calls up the police department. She says, “I’m afraid.” She’s locked in her house now. She says, “I’m afraid.” Somebody’s trying to get into the house. They come, they try to talk to her, they realize that there is nobody trying to get into the house. They have to go away. She remembers that her husband was important in the city. She remembers that he had a friend in the police department. The police department is only part of the scheme. It only proves it once again. She looks through the window of the house, and she sees across the way someone stopping at a neighbor’s house. What are they talking about? In the backyard, she sees something coming up over a bush. They’re watching her with a telescope! It turns out later to be some children playing in the back with a stick. A continuous and perpetual buildup, until the entire population is involved. The lawyer that she called, she remembers, was the lawyer once for a friend of her husband’s. The doctor who has been trying to get her to the hospital is now obviously on the side of the husband.

The only way out is to have some balance, to think that it’s impossible that the whole city is against her, that everybody is going to pay attention to this husband of mine who’s such a dope, that everybody’s going to do all these things, that there’s a complete accumulation. All the neighbors, everybody’s against her. It’s out of proportion. It’s only out of proportion. How can you explain to somebody who hasn’t got a sense of proportion?

And so it is with these people. They don’t have a sense of proportion. And so they will believe in such a possibility as the Soviet tenth principle of warfare. The only way that I can think to beat the game is to point the following out. They’re right. And like my friend with the bottle with the label, the Soviets are very, very ingenious and clever indeed. They even tell us what they’re doing to us. You see, these people, these research associates are really in the hire of the Soviets who are using this method of paralysis. And what they want us to do is to lose faith in the Supreme Court, to lose faith in the Agriculture Department, to lose faith in the scientists and all the people who help us in all kinds of ways and so on and so on, and lose faith in all sorts of ways, and it’s a way that they have entered into this movement of freedom that everybody wanted, this thing with all the flags and the Constitution, and they’ve gotten in on it, and they’re getting in there, and they’re going to paralyze it. Proof. In their own words. S.P.X.R.A. has qualified, under oath, in the United States court as the leading, American authority on the tenth principle. Where did they get the information? There’s only one place. From the Soviet Union.

This paranoia, this phenomenon—I shouldn’t call it a paranoia, I’m not a doctor, I don’t know—but this phenomenon is a terrible one, and it has caused mankind and individuals a terrible unhappiness.

And another example of the same thing is the famous Protocol of the Elders of Zion, which was a fake document. It was supposed to be a meeting of the old Jews and the leaders of Zion in which they had gotten together and cooked up a scheme for the domination of the world. International bankers, international, you know… a great big marvelous machine! Just out of proportion. But it wasn’t so far out of proportion that people didn’t believe it; and it was one of the strongest forces in the development of anti-Semitism.

What I am asking for in many directions is an abject honesty. I think that we should have a more abject honesty in political matters. And I think we’ll be freer that way.

I would like to point out that people are not honest. Scientists are not honest at all, either. It’s useless. Nobody’s honest. Scientists are not honest. And people usually believe that they are. That makes it worse. By honest I don’t mean that you only tell what’s true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind.

For example, in connection with nuclear testing, I don’t know myself whether I am for nuclear testing or against nuclear testing. There are reasons on both sides. It makes radioactivity, and it’s dangerous, and it’s also very bad to have a war. But whether it’s going to be more likely to have a war or less likely to have a war because you test, I don’t know. Whether preparation will stop the war, or lack of preparation, I don’t know. So I’m not trying to say I’m on either side. That’s why I can be abjectly honest on this one.

The big question comes, of course, whether there’s a danger from radioactivity. In my opinion the greatest danger and the greatest question on nuclear testing is the question of its future effects. The deaths and the radioactivity which would be caused by the war would be so many times more than the nuclear testing that the effects that it would have in the future are far more important than the infinitesimal amount of radioactivity produced now. How infinitesimal is the amount, however? Radioactivity is bad. Nobody knows a good effect of general radioactivity. So if you increase the general amount of radioactivity in the air, you are producing something not good. Therefore nuclear testing in this respect produces something not good. If you are a scientist, then, you have the right and should point out this fact.