The Doomsday Clock

In 1947, an obscure publication serving scientists seeking to understand the nature of the atom, placed a clock on its cover. This clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight.

The publication was the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" paradigmclock.com... and the clock was called the "The clock of Doom" and later the "Doomsday clock". The concept was quite simple: midnight on the Doomsday Clock meant that nuclear was had begun. Over the years the clock was moved close to or further from midnight based on world events.

The Doomsday Clock was a paradigm clock as well. The creation of weapons capable of mass destruction, even to the extent of destroying all of civilization, marked the true beginning of the "planetary world view". For thousands of years the human race had thought and acted in terms of the family, the clan, the tribe, the city-state, the race, the religion, the nation. With the detonation of two atomic bombs over Japanese cities and rapid development of ballistic missiles, humans, willingly or forced by necessity, began to view thenselves in terms of the "planet".

This was a paradigm change of great significance. From that time forward, all pollitical action and thought took into account this new essential element: the ultimate human, territorial allegiance was to the planet which had given birth to life in all its diverse forms.

Midnight on the Doomsday clock meant massive destruction and a grotesque step backward into anarchy, misery and untimely death. There is a developing view that midnight on the paradigm Clock entails just the oppsite: ascent to a place in a galactic culture which embraces all life in its diversity and extends to humans the solutions to thier most vexing dilemmas.

There are other views. While humans are children in an ancient cosmos, it would be naive to assume the truths of the post-paradigm world to come will be delivered up like presents from loving, benevolent parents. Thanks to a 50-year, entrenched government policy of sercery and paternalism, extraterrestial presence, what has the government done in its citizens name?

Actions and choices will affect the outcome and tenor of the coming post-paradigm world. Is the paradigm clock a new version of the Doomsday Clock? Will midnight denote the beginning of another period of destruction or a most profound new understanding of the universe and humans place in it?

In a book by Mike Moore's "Midnight Never Came" is a brief history of a previous paradigmatic transition marked by triumph and tragedy. This is valuable information, because the histories of this and other transitions, however lesser in scope, are reference templates until such times as a fully developed body of thought is formed as a guide into a new world............




blackwidow

funny that happened in 1947 at the same year when the roswell crash happened

I love the concept of the doomsday clock. it's so dramatic, encapululating the entire fate of a civilization in one picture. (I'm sure it does wonders for the circulation of the journal, too! )