"When I Lost My Innocence" is the title given to a letter of May 9, 1980 responding to a request from Gunilla Boëthius of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet sent on April 25, which offered one thousand crowns for a short essay on the title subject.[1] It was republished in the collection Palm Sunday in March 1981.
Summary[]
Vonnegut Hardware Co.
Vonnegut's family religion was an "enthusiasm for technological cures for almost all forms of human discontent". Part of his family owned the largest hardware store in Indianapolis and he still finds comfort by meditating in hardware stores. However, he learned how vile his family religion could be the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Six months before as an American POW, he had witnessed the firebombing of Dresden. Nonetheless, Vonnegut remained innocent, since the technology used was so familiar—much of it available at any hardware store—and could clearly also be used to benefit humanity in other ways. The bombing of Hiroshima, however, showed that like all religions, trust in technology was really about the human soul.
Vonnegut wagers the thousand crowns he's been offered that every story of lost innocence the newspaper receives will involve the discovery how diseased the human soul can be. The atomic bomb was not merely the American soul, but that of every highly industrialized nation that has become "so sick that it did not want to live anymore". Only such a soul would produce a new physics that, in the hands of mere politicians, could easily result in the end of the world. Vonnegut's own novels seem to say that it is good to lose one's innocence, and now that he knows "what is really going on", he can plan for it without shock. However, it is nonetheless dispiriting to realize that most people, even with children, find living in the service of machines so unpleasant that they wouldn't mind much if all life were to end. Perhaps the film Dr. Strangelove was so popular because its ending was so happy.[2]
See Also[]
- "Address to the American Physical Society", a speech on scientists and weapons research
- "The Worst Addiction of Them All", an article about people in society addicted to war preparation
- "Lecture on Science and Technology", given at M.I.T. about the moral responsibility of scientists
- "The Scientific Goblins Are Gonna Git Us", review of Unless Peace Comes, a book of essays on weapons development