Thoughts on empathy and nuclear weapons

About 100 years ago, chemists and physicists began developing models of atomic structure that have remained largely unchanged through today.  At that time, the idea that negatively charged electrons orbit around a positively charged and far more massive nucleus was a novel idea.  Some experts greeted it with skepticism.  However, after careful experimentation using new techniques, it became clear that previous models of atomic structure simply did not hold up.

About 300 years ago, Isaac Newton developed calculus while applying mathematical models to the motion of physical objects.  That area of study, now covered in high school and freshmen level college physics courses, is referred to as Newtonian Mechanics.

Newton was a very clever guy, maybe one of the most brilliant scientists of all time.  Why then, did he not discover the structure of the atom?  He certainly had the requisite mental capacities; curiosity, ingenuity, conceptual creativity, logic, and deductive reasoning.  I hypothesize that what he lacked was the technology, the new techniques that were made available in the early 20th century, that enabled other scientists to understand the atom 200 years later.

What does this have to do with sensitivity and safe spaces?

A number of friends and acquaintances have expressed varying degrees of concern about the results of the US elections last month.  It took me some time to understand how it could be there was so much fear and apprehension about the incoming president when I felt so little.

Part of the reason is that I am an able-bodied, straight, white, educated, land-owning, employed, male.  With the exceptions of having a famous family name or overwhelming wealth, I grew up with every advantage.  I've never felt like I was treated differently in any way because of some aspect of who I was.

I am normal.  I am, in some ways, like Isaac Newton.  We both are curious, able-bodied, white, educated, employed men.  He and I also don't come pre-configured with sufficiently sensitive technologies to understand everything going on around us.

While it took 200 years for scientific measurement technology to align with physical reality and concepts that experts in the field could understand, a person today can practice empathy with minimal effort and essentially no cost.

I set out writing this post with a hope of using an analogy to describe a situation in a very non-threatening way.  It's not clear to me if it has translated as well from my brain to the computer as I had hoped.  It certainly turned out longer.  At any rate, I hope it might lead to some useful discussion or prompt a thought or two.

If you made it this far, you deserve a funny picture as a reward.  Here is a photo of the cat telling me to hush.

Muenster says I'm rambling and need to stop.