One week before his death, John Mack was in Manchester New Hampshire in advance of the US Presidential election. In this letter, originally composed to his sons, he shares his experience as a volunteer in “getting out the vote.”
“Because the terrorist danger is real, it is especially important that our capacity to assess the risk we face not be distorted for political gain.” Dr Mack’s final essay. Sept 2004.
Dr Mack contrasts the leadership qualities of T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) with those of the American president George W Bush. A Boston Globe editorial, June 2004, written during Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
“Without understanding what breeds these acts and drives the terrorists to do what they do … we have little chance of preventing further such actions, let alone of ‘eradicating terrorism.’” Harvard psychiatrist John Mack identifies three levels of causes: immediate, proximate, and deeper. Focusing on deeper causes, he shows how they are rooted in the nature of our minds, of consciousness itself. James O’Dea, president of IONS, notes “In this courageous and insightful article, Mack quotes former Governor Cuomo: ‘The only way to solve the terrorist problem is to change the minds of those who practice terrorism.’”
A New York Times editorial by Dr. John Mack published November 30 2000. The editorial considers the “tied” Presidential election of 2000 from the perspective of the trickster archetype.
The need for a sense of personal power is one of the primary motivating forces in human life. Conversely, the feeling of powerlessness or helplessness is perhaps the most disturbing of human emotions, one to be avoided at all costs. But what is power?
The threat of nuclear annihilation has stimulated us to try to understand what it is about mankind that has led to such self-destroying behavior. Central to this inquiry is an exploration of the adversarial relationships between ethnic or national groups.
Lawrence (unlike the pro-Arab Gertrude Bell or the pro-Zionist Richard Meinertzhagen) was one of the few and one of the last people in his own time and ours to achieve true sympathy for both national movements. His references to both movements in Seven Pillars are positive. He actually believed that they could be reconciled, and, although subsequent events have seemed to prove him wrong at least to date, this belief only rebounds to his credit.
A New York Times op/ed by Dr. John Mack recounting his family’s protest at a nuclear test site in Nevada during the height of the nuclear arms race.
Long before the nuclear superpowers began to extend their competition into space Bertrand Russell (1959) wrote, “When I read of plans to defile the heavens…I cannot but feel that the men who make these plans are guilty of a kind of impiety”.
A New York Times editorial in which the authors note that “habits of power are closely linked to a network of bureaucratic interests [that] form an institutional system that will be difficult to divert to nonmilitary purposes, even should we gain the will to do so.”
A tour-de-force lecture by John E. Mack, who was invited to speak on the subject of the nuclear arms race, and physicians’ social responsibility. One of Dr. Mack’s most acclaimed presentations, and a precursor to the awarding in 1985 of the Nobel Peace Prize to Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR, then directed by Dr. Mack) and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) “for spreading authoritative information and by creating an awareness of the catastrophic consequences of atomic warfare.”
