Thots on the Doomsday Clock

I didn't have time to write an actual entry today, but I discovered a short text of mine that I hadn't yet shared here in this diary; so I'll copy it below. I wrote it on Blue Bird last month, on the day when the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that they were yet again going to re-adjust hands of their "Doomsday Clock" (now it reads 100 seconds to midnight). For some reason, this fired me up to say a couple words about the concept — I guess it just irks me that there's a clock that we humans control. Anyway, like I said, I never shared the thing here, until now. It's just a lightweight effort.

Obligatory image

And here's something entirely unrelated to the entry's text — it's the next page from my book of 296 Drawing Prompts. (The previous page got flipt way back in November.) The prompt for this present image was "Your zodiac sign".

THOTS

It’s called the Doomsday Clock, but is it really a clock? Does it truly measure time, or something like time? I see time as relentless: it doesn’t halt and hover at any single point; it keeps ticking at a steady pace, no matter what. You can’t push time forward or backward. It’s got a mind of its own. But the Doomsday Clock just stands there frozen, scaring everybody, until some humans come by and move its arms for it. They forcefully re-position it.

It seems to me that this Doomsday symbol is more of a marquee sign than a clock. It’s like those signs that appear above movie theaters, convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, or even churches; because its message can be changed at will. So the thing that makes the Doomsday Clock important is that its message is determined by some wise group of scientists. This lures me to invest more care in what the Doomsday Clock is saying than what the sign above a given diner sez (“2 FOR $2 FISH”), because the latter’s message is determined by the owners of the diner. But what determines the message that appears on a regular clock face? Reality itself, or physics or something? Some sort of force beyond our control is what makes normal seconds tick by. And when the clock that measures time strikes noon or midnight, it just continues on its way as if nothing special happened: it doesn’t make the whole world explode or destroy all living creatures; it just proceeds from the number twelve to the number one, and then eventually two, three, four, etc…

So I’d like to see what happens if the scientists set the Doomsday Clock to, say, 5:00 pm, because that’s what time most people get done slaving at their workplace (hence the phrase “Nine-to-Five job”), and a lot of folks even stop at the bar and order a drink sometime around that happy hour. Seriously: what might happen, if the scientists took my advice about this? I bet nothing at all. I bet the Doomsday clock would just sit there, proclaiming “5:00” until the next time that you nudged its arms. Then the populace would lose faith in the illusion: they’d realize that this device is only a silly piece of art, almost like a billboard advertisement. It’s not measuring anything genuinely spatiotemporal. Then hardworking people everywhere would be able to breathe a sigh of relief, and enjoy their beverage, and go home & hug their spouse & pet their children. And the leaders of the nations could blow this world up with impunity.