Article September 3, 1990 Issue

Redesigning for peace

If our goal is to build peace, we need to start on a foundation stronger than human agreements —as important as they are.

Nordfrid Moersberger

A law in Sweden, where I live, stipulates that certain buildings have to be provided with protective shelters. When designing such buildings, architects and builders have to take into account every kind of situation that could come up during a disaster. This kind of reasoning can seem necessary, but it can also make a designer stand in horror before the consequences that bombing or a nuclear-power plant accident could produce.

To avoid becoming paralyzed by such a state of thought, perhaps we need to examine fearlessly the process that would result in such disaster.

Wouldn't such a result supposedly be the outcome of a long series of events? Many things have gone before—all of them produced by thought. No bomb, of course, is designed by itself. No bomb is assembled by itself. No bomb is activated by itself. At each step human thinking would have come first. Prejudice between two nations, for example, can produce suspicion, born of ignorance. Next may come hate and fear. Intimidation, tyranny, greed, selfishness, and pride may also be links in this chain of thought.

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