War is murder. And the military preparations now being made for a potential major confrontation are aimed at collective murder. In a nuclear age the victims would be numbered by the millions. This naked truth must be faced.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the brutality of war and warns about the catastrophic consequences of military conflict in the nuclear age.
Alva Myrdal's quote confronts the grim reality of war, equating it to murder on a massive scale. She argues that military preparations not only threaten lives but could lead to unimaginable casualties, particularly in an age where nuclear weapons exist. By calling for acknowledgment of this truth, Myrdal seeks to provoke deeper consideration of the moral implications of war and the potential for widespread destruction.
In practice
During a peace rally, this quote could highlight the moral implications of military conflict.
Because war and preparations for war have acquired legitimacy, and because of the tremendous proliferation of arms through production and export, so that they are now available more or less to all and sundry, right down to handguns and stilettos, the cult of violence has by now so permeated relations between people that we are compelled to witness as well an increase in everyday violence.
There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media.
The longing for peace is rooted in the hearts of all men. But the striving, which at present has become so insistent, cannot lay claim to such an ambition as leading the way to eternal peace, or solving all disputes among nations.
There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sprouting of the second group and transforming the first group.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?" "Stories. And they give me hope.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a hallucinating idiot...for he sees what no one else does: things that, to everyone else, are not there.
About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.
All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.
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