"It does not just happen. It is disclosed by science that practically one-half of trained intellectual resources are being mobilized for murderous purposes"
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Nothing about mass violence is accidental in Myrdal's formulation. "It does not just happen" is a rebuke to the comforting story that war is a tragic eruption of ancient hatreds or inevitable geopolitical weather. She insists on agency: decisions are made, budgets approved, laboratories staffed, careers built. The line is structured like an indictment, and its most cutting move is to recruit "science" as the witness. Not poetry, not moral outrage, but disclosed by science: the same modern authority that promises progress is forced to testify against modernity's most organized crime.
The chilling math - "practically one-half" of trained intellectual resources - does two things at once. It scales the problem beyond a few bad actors, and it implicates the professional class. This isn't just generals and politicians; it's engineers, chemists, statisticians, administrators. "Trained" is the tell: education is presented not as an inoculation against barbarism, but as the mechanism that makes barbarism efficient. The word "mobilized" borrows the language of wartime logistics, suggesting that intellect itself has been drafted, conscripted into systems where the end product is "murderous purposes."
As a diplomat writing in the long shadow of World War II and the accelerating nuclear arms race, Myrdal is diagnosing a cold-war pathology: security states converting human capital into deterrence, and deterrence into permanent preparedness for annihilation. The subtext is an ethical audit. If half our brightest minds are tasked with perfecting death, the scandal isn't merely political; it's civilizational.
The chilling math - "practically one-half" of trained intellectual resources - does two things at once. It scales the problem beyond a few bad actors, and it implicates the professional class. This isn't just generals and politicians; it's engineers, chemists, statisticians, administrators. "Trained" is the tell: education is presented not as an inoculation against barbarism, but as the mechanism that makes barbarism efficient. The word "mobilized" borrows the language of wartime logistics, suggesting that intellect itself has been drafted, conscripted into systems where the end product is "murderous purposes."
As a diplomat writing in the long shadow of World War II and the accelerating nuclear arms race, Myrdal is diagnosing a cold-war pathology: security states converting human capital into deterrence, and deterrence into permanent preparedness for annihilation. The subtext is an ethical audit. If half our brightest minds are tasked with perfecting death, the scandal isn't merely political; it's civilizational.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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