I couldn't agree with this more.
Over the decades I’ve noticed a disconnect that so many people have from actions and their consequences. I have to wonder if this is a coping mechanism: If you are forced to realize that your own actions and relationships are causing destruction and suffering then you either have to do something to change them or you have to face your guilt and remorse. Giving up a good paying job is too much to sacrifice for doing the right thing, so denial comes in quite handy to soothe the conscience.
Pharmaceuticals cause untold deaths and suffering each year, but in speaking with chemists in that industry I have found mostly denial as their response to the problems they contribute to. We can find this same response in people engaged in the oil and gas industry, in industrial/commercial farmers, in pesticide manufacturers, in nuclear energy employees and administrators, and all sorts of trades and professions whose jobs directly or indirectly injure or kill other people or living beings, including the planet. Adolf Eichmann may be ultimate the icon of the human being who is able to dismiss the atrocities he has caused with the excuse that he was just following orders. So we have doctors, lawyers, engineers, politicians, and others who have separated themselves from their actions. What seems like psychopathy is no more than a prevailing trait of human nature in people who cannot reconcile their intentions and behaviors with their conscience and supposed ideals.
People are in denial, leading to your next proposition: “As a physical object, a gun is neither good nor bad. It’s not even a useful tool but is just a system of measurable causes and effects.” This is the prevailing excuse for mass murder and gun violence: And gun ownership. Guns don’t kill people, people do. It is so very easy to dismiss one’s responsibility in favor of one’s desires, but there is no denying the statistics and suffering. What greater example is this than Oppenheimer’s role in creating the worst weapon in history?
Regarding physicists: There are many physicists who embrace the holistic paradigm that people like David Bohm have forwarded, while others (maybe most) either will not or cannot make the connection between the practice of physics and its relationship to the whole.
Ignoring the holistic principle is the root of all our problems. Scientists can try to hide behind their scientism, but it will eventually come to pass that their ignorance, indifference, and denial has led to disaster and that they have contributed to untold suffering and destruction.
