It wasn't just the Bomb that changed everything in '45

Everyone agrees our world changed fundamentally in 1945, but nobody is exactly sure why.

It should have been the apogee of that era of "pure is simple" modernity. But the 'triumph' of the atomic bomb and the defeat of the Axis felt like ashes in most mouths.
 The big problem was Germany. 

For the civilization supposedly at the very top of the Tree of Life had brought forth only the 'invasion ecology' of Auschwitz : an attempt to gas every last Jewish 'invasive fungus', all to protect the "human ecosystem".

Meanwhile (and ironic, given Hitler's antipathy to 'impure' Manhattan) there a tiny being from the very bottom of the Tree of Life (also a 'fungus') had just bested the top scientists in producing the vital lifesaving Penicillin.

With history's worst evil coming from the very top and history's greatest good from the very bottom, the war flipped the prewar description of the Tree of Life having a civilized top and savage bottom.

Among the baby boomer kids, it all worked to greatly discredited their elders' worldview.  

In 1965, the Boomers birthed a new era of respect for Life's true diversity and complexity. 

Today their "Evolution by Inclusion" joins a much more nuanced take on Darwin's original exclusionary vision of evolution.