The keepers of the “Doomsday Clock” plan to move its hands forward Wednesday to reflect what they call worsening nuclear and climate threats to the world.
The symbolic clock, maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, currently is set at seven minutes to midnight, with midnight marking global catastrophe.
The group did not explicitly say in which direction the hands would move. But in a news release previewing an event next Wednesday, they said the change was based on “worsening nuclear, climate threats” to the world...
When it was created by the magazine’s staff in 1947, it was initially set at seven minutes to midnight and has moved 17 times since then.
Seven minutes to midnight! If they would just settle down and drink in the wisdom of Duckian friend Oroborous, a.k.a. Michael Herdegen, they would know that it isn't even twenty to one in the morning yet.
How, why and when did progressive politics became marked by medieval gloom and the conviction the end of the world is nigh? It certainly wasn’t always thus. Reading old socialist tracts and novels like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, one marvels at the passionate belief that man’s compassion, labour and ingenuity could and soon would build a New Jerusalem in which a well-fed, fulfilled people would banish want and oppression. It was dangerous and ultimately murderous rot, of course, but it is not hard to see how the dream captured the fervent loyalty of so many, particularly the young.
Today, the left (and the scientific establishment) resembles more the old-style hopeless old conservative toadies who saw hell in a handcart in the slightest social change. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to swirl around them and, as I discovered last year when I tried to help my son inject less alarmist perspectives on climate change into his school debate, they become mighty upset and disoriented by encouraging news. They seem to hold as self-evident that one unspeakable horror after another is on the horizon unless we–-well, it’s always very vague what exactly it is we are supposed to do but it seems yelling at Americans and flushing less frequently are key.
And we wonder why today’s youth has a hard time getting excited about the prospects of career and family.
9 comments:
And why is it that we turn to scientists to judge how close or far away we are to nuclear armageddon? They know how to build the devices, but have no better clue of how to read the tea-leaves of history, politics and culture than anyone else. I'd argue that they are probably less equipped to do so, given that they live their lives studying the behavior of atoms and microbes, which are way more predictable than people.
I like science, I think scientists are valuable contributors to our civilization, but I value their political opinions about as much as I do those of twentysomething bimbo starlets.
This is a subject I post on now and then. My view is that the change was due to two things — the implementation of much of their platform and its manifest failure. The hopefulness doesn't sell anymore, so the only lash is that of "doom! doom! doom!". This is reenforced by the need to protect what has been implemented to avoid the manifest repudiation of the ideology.
Both the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and I were housed at the University of Chicago during the Reagan years. None of you will be surprised that, with each Reagan victory, the "time" got closer to midnight. As it turned out, the clock wasn't counting down to nuclear Armageddon. It was measuring the remaining life the Soviet Union.
That clock is almost as old as I am and has been stopped pretty close to midnight the whole time.
It turns out it's not true that a stopped clock is right twice a day.
It is difficult to distinguish between David's and Harry's line as to which is the most plagiarism worthy.
Well it's good to know that the concerned scientists are still around. I hadn't heard from them in 15 or so years. Didn't thier clock make it to 11:58 during the Reagan years?
If they would just settle down and drink in the wisdom of Duckian friend Oroborous, a.k.a. Michael Herdegen, they would know that it isn't even twenty to one in the morning yet.
Thank you.
Yes, if only they would, they could relax and do something more useful, like gardening. A realistic appraisal of the "Doomsday Clock" would put the time at 12:01 AM, not 11:53 PM. That's just silly.
There have been many times in the past when the future of the entire human race was in doubt, but there are so many of us now, and we're so widely-spread, that nothing we could presently do to ourselves could wipe us out, including global warming, nuclear war, or global pandemic. (Which is not to say that we couldn't very, very badly damage ourselves).
We need only fear the killer asteroid that will inevitably come, and the emergence of "planetbuster" munitions - which are also probably inevitable. But the former might be a million years in coming, and the latter, while not so far off, might never get used on Earth, just as we've avoided total nuclear war for fifty years and counting.
("Need only fear", above, is from the perspective of the entire human race. There are plenty of things that might happen short of human extinction that will cause billions of people to have Very Bad Days).
Reading old socialist tracts and novels like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, one marvels at the passionate belief that man’s compassion, labour and ingenuity could and soon would build a New Jerusalem in which a well-fed, fulfilled people would banish want and oppression. It was dangerous and ultimately murderous rot, of course...
Well, except that human compassion, labor, and ingenuity quickly DID build a New Jerusalem in which well-fed, somewhat-fulfilled people banished want and oppression.
At least in the West.
It didn't happen due to socialism, of course, but one could make a good argument that American socialists were change agents that helped bring about a greater good, although the shape of the good that emerged irritated the livin' blazes out of socialists, then and now. (Which pleases and amuses me endlessly).
From the Guardian link:
"Within 10 years Britain will be facing the problem of disposing of its waste mountain. [...] Without new means of rubbish disposal, poor "waste nations" paid to import and bury other countries' detritus may arise."
What's wrong with poor peoples & nations getting a piece of the pie ?
So what if they do so by burying garbage for rich people? Objecting to that is as silly as objecting to people in rich countries accepting payments to collect and bury waste. Arranging for just that to be done is one of the PRIMARY FUNCTIONS of local governments.
Once again, Leftists fail to analyse their own rhetoric for internal consistency, or check it against history.
Well, except that human compassion, labor, and ingenuity quickly DID build a New Jerusalem in which well-fed, somewhat-fulfilled people banished want and oppression.
And yet we still find reasons to be unhappy. Freedom from want isn't paradise, but it's better than the alternative.
Oro:
Well, except that human compassion, labor, and ingenuity quickly DID build a New Jerusalem in which well-fed, somewhat-fulfilled people banished want and oppression.
Ah, but surely the point is they didn't consciously set out to do any such thing in any collective sense. They just worked hard to take care of themselves and their families and favoured poltical arrangements that would make that a priority.
Another example of why I think the profoundest story in the Bible is the Tower of Babel.
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