The New Documentary “An Ordinary Insanity”

Only when such sanity becomes ordinary will we have a chance of surviving the nuclear era.

By Robert Ellsberg

This film presents a synthesis of my father’s book The Doomsday Machine. His book depicts the evil murderousness of nuclear war plans, and the particular dangers posed by ICBMs, with their first strike capability, intended to be launched on warning.

He believed that with these weapons both the U.S. and the USSR/now Russia had constructed Doomsday Machines, capable of destroying most life on earth — machines that are particularly dangerous because neither side acknowledges this reality but continue to proceed as if there were some circumstances in which it was possible to win a nuclear war.

The epigraph from Dad’s book is from Nietzsche: “Madness in individuals is something rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

And I am very glad that this film expands on that particular theme with the title: “Ordinary Insanity” — ordinary, as he says, because it is so widely shared.

And that points to a theme that underlies his most recent, posthumous book, Truth and Consequence: Reflections on Catastrophe, Civil Resistance, and Hope. These reflections, drawn from notes he wrote for himself over fifty years, reflect his deep meditation on what kind of flaw in the human species makes us vulnerable to this kind of insanity.

In other words, we have to face, on the one hand, the particular danger posed by the weapons we have created and the strategies that dictate their function and use. But we also have to contend with the kind of danger posed by human beings — all of us capable of participating in projects that are evil, participating in the widest sense through our silence.

If we are to dismantle the Doomsday Machine, it will require widespread and concerted efforts to awaken from the spell of this ordinary insanity. In other words, we need to cultivate an ordinary sanity.

One of the ways of promoting that is through educational efforts such as this film, which may alert the public to the dangers we are facing. But it will also require widespread conscientious action, a kind of pandemic of courage, wisdom, enlightenment, and dedication to the survival of our planet.

Only when such sanity becomes ordinary will we have a chance of surviving the nuclear era.

My dad said that until his last breath he would continue to do everything he could to avert this peril. I am happy that through this film, even after his last breath, he may continue to plant seeds of sanity and hope.

      An Ordinary Insanity is free for viewing on the film’s website or on YouTube.

Robert Ellsberg is editor-in-chief of Orbis Books. He is the author of several books, many of which have received awards; his Blessed Among All Women tied a Catholic Press Association record by winning awards for Gender, Spirituality, and Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith. He is the editor of the published diaries and letters of Dorothy Day.