Never forget the awe

Obsessing over something like nuclear power or atomic energy as it was initially occurred, over time you become blasé. Over the last half decade, a group of friends and I have worked through the epic 3,600-page six-book My Struggle series of novels by Norway’s Karl Ove Knausgaard. In the final book, listen:

To split the atom is no minor matter. It is to exceed a boundary never before exceeded, it is to intervene in the very constituents of life, though we are ignorant of its origins and have always through all time considered it to be a gift and a mystery, something inviolable.

Archives