Alvin M. Weinberg - Age of Anxiety @ Oak Ridge Community Television

The Age of Anxiety - Why are people skeptical of advanced technologies? Why are people particularly skeptical of technologies which they view as being intrusive on the environment? I'd like to share with you a few of my own ideas, and ideas of others in the nuclear establishment, about how to make nuclear energy an acceptable energy choice.

We have entered into what I like to call an "Age of Anxiety". Some of you may recall Leonard Bernstein's second symphony is entitled "The Age of Anxiety."

Our life expectancy has increased (particular in the United States) by about 20 years since the turn of the century. Despite the fact that we're all living longer, we seem to fear death more than ever before.

Indeed, we have given up the notion that there's such a thing as a natural death.

Every death must now be attributed to some very specific cause. An identifiable or presumed cause. In this we seem to be going back to a kind of primitivism.

A very famous of French anthropologist, his name is Levy Bruhl. He pointed out that one of the primary characteristics of primitive society is that in a primitive society, the notion of natural death was never accepted.

If you died, it is because your enemy had poisoned you or if he hadn't poisoned you, he had uttered some terrible impartation and the gods somehow were not friendly to you, they're friends of your enemy. And so, you die.

The public's perception is: Dying "earlier" can be attributable to technology.

It is not we technologists who are going to decide how safe a technology has to be. It is the public that makes that decision. If the public's estimate of how safe is "safe enough" differs from the estimate of a technologist, then the technologist has no choice but to conform to public opinion.

Delivered on April 1990, the occasion of a conference of The Women's League for Conservative Judaism, sponsored by the Beth El Congregation of Oak Ridge. Produced by TAKE 1 VIDEO. Alan Manning was camera operator. Joan-Ellen Zucker was editor.

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