Mao on the atom bomb, accepting terror
example · Mao Zedong 1955 text ·
retold in 6 talks
Mao argued the atom bomb doesn't matter because even if it blew up the earth that would be a 'minor event for the solar system.' Žižek cites this as the logic of accepting terror (groundlessness) required for authentic emancipatory commitment.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 5
“Even if the United States atom bombs... blow it the earth up, that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole, though it might be a minor event for the solar system.”
“even if the United States atom bombs were so powerful that when dropped on China they would make a hole right through the earth or even blow the earth up that would hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole”
“half a half a billion Chinese may die so what another half a billion or the numbers were a little bit lower that time will survive”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Saint Maximus the Confessor2Saint Athanasius of Alexandria2Isaac Asimov2Hubert Dreyfus2Peter Wessel Zapffe2Thomas Müntzer2Ariel Sharon1Paul Auster1
alongside works
Every retelling 5
Mao argued the atom bomb doesn't matter because even if it blew up the earth that would be a 'minor event for the solar system.' Žižek cites this as the logic of accepting terror (groundlessness) required for authentic emancipatory commitment., illustrating fear vs. terror,emancipatory politics
Mao argued in 1955 that even if US atom bombs blew up the earth, it would be 'hardly anything for the universe as a whole', a position Žižek reads as the only genuinely radical atheist-materialist stance, willing to put everything at risk., illustrating radical political position,ecology / atheism,universality
Žižek cites Mao Zedong's calm calculation that 'half a billion Chinese may die' and that an atomic war ruining the earth is 'just a tiny explosion in a vast universe' as an example of the 'inhuman view' practiced in politics., illustrating inhuman view
Mao argued that even if US atom bombs blew up China, it would 'hardly mean anything to the universe as a whole', Žižek uses this as a case of pseudo-Kantian Olympian objectivism that requires speaking from an impossible divine standpoint., illustrating inhuman gaze,the paradox of taking a cosmological view,limits of objectivism
Mao Zedong claimed US atomic bombs blowing a hole through Earth mean nothing to the universe; Žižek critiques this as a pseudo-Kantian, divine external view that ignores the subjective ethical weight of the event., illustrating extreme ethnocentrism,retroactive fate