A STOPPED CLOCK IS ALMOST ALWAYS WRONG.

Once upon a time, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was, well, a publication written by atomic scientists.  They understood that in nuclear fission they had released great destructive power, as well as, if properly managed, an energy source of great potential.  To call attention to the consequences of misusing the destructive power, in 1947 their bulletin introduced the notorious Doomsday Clock.  "The scientists created the clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the Earth."  After the Soviet Union closed up shop, the people who set the clock turned it back to a quarter before midnight.  (And the self-styled progressives who always made "turning the clock back" into a pejorative wet themselves, but I digress.)  The problem, though, with setting the clock in such a way as to suggest the Threat Level is Way Down, is that people will go about their lives without being afraid, and that way lies organizational extinction.  Thus, in the same way that the Southern Poverty Law Center no longer has anything to do with Southern Poverty, and the March of Dimes shifted focus from a polio vaccine to prenatal health generally, the people who set the clock set their sights on new ways to frighten people and keep the fundraising going.

These days, the committee (because a doomsday clock has in common with a camel a forgotten origin story) that sets the clock has precious few atomic scientists, but a lot of Democrat operatives.

USA TODAY asked Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, about the factors that will affect the clock's timing this year: "Climate change and nuclear risk continue to play very large factors in setting the timing of the Doomsday Clock," she said, "as the effects of the climate crisis become more felt and the threats of nuclear escalation in Ukraine and nuclear arms racing globally continue to loom large."

"For many years we have also considered various disruptive technologies from online misinformation to new bioresearch," she said. "This year the technology conversation must also include the recent rapid advancements in AI."

Two years ago, I quoted David French on the drama of setting the clock, which was at two minutes to midnight when Ronald Reagan correctly called the Soviet Union an "evil empire." "We’ve taken them seriously for far too long. Now, it’s time to laugh."  That year, despite the responsible adults managing the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Congress implementing the Green New Deal, the clock was set to a hundred seconds to midnight.  Now?  "It is still 90 seconds to midnight."  The problem with setting your clock so close to doomsday is that if things get slightly scarier, you start running out of meaningful settings that remain short of doomsday.

Not surprisingly for a bunch of self-styled progressives, the only way to turn back the clock is ... collective action.  No, not returning the Bolsheviks to power in Moscow!

Everyone on Earth has an interest in reducing the likelihood of global catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, advances in the life sciences, disruptive technologies, and the widespread corruption of the world’s information ecosystem. These threats, singularly and as they interact, are of such a character and magnitude that no one nation or leader can bring them under control. That is the task of leaders and nations working together in the shared belief that common threats demand common action. As the first step, and despite their profound disagreements, three of the world’s leading powers—the United States, China, and Russia—should commence serious dialogue about each of the global threats outlined here. At the highest levels, these three countries need to take responsibility for the existential danger the world now faces. They have the capacity to pull the world back from the brink of catastrophe. They should do so, with clarity and courage, and without delay.

And don't you dare laugh at them!  If you do, Common Dreams contributor Robert Koehler will scold you!  He endorses the same quixotic quest for consensus the timing committee endorses.  "The very essence of evolution is the expansion of our thinking to embrace ever-larger realities of cooperation, connection, and understanding."  No, Bobby, sometimes the best thing for some institutions, possibly including the stopped clock, is for them to go away.

Has Mr Koehler considered the possibility that the politics he appeals to divides, and that politics, and collective action structured by vanguards, whether revolutionary cadre or atomic scientists, ultimately fails?

The problem, according to centrist analysis, is that the country is getting more and more polarized, both politically and culturally. On one side you’ve got Trump and the MAGA Republicans. On the other side, you’ve got Bernie Sanders supporters. Pretty scary! The USA has never been this divided, the story notes, apparently failing to remember slavery, Jim Crow lynchings, race-separated bathrooms, and such.

What was most unsettling to me about the story, however, was its pulling in several social scientists who explained the nature of evolution to us. While, yes, human beings learned to work together over the millennia and created self-sustaining communities, aka, tribes, the “evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred,” according to a Yale sociologist. In other words, there could be no “us” without a “them” lurking just around the bend—not simply different from us but scary, threatening, and no doubt evil.

While the Post story had no connection whatsoever to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and its 90-seconds-to-midnight global prognosis, I felt a shrug of indifference toward it nonetheless, in that it remained quietly caged in the us-vs.-them mindset that makes human collective thinking and, oh my God, geopolitical cooperation a cynical joke. That ain’t gonna happen. War is inevitable. So is our trillion-dollar military budget. Any questions?

My primary question is this: How dare you shrug at the Doomsday Clock, at the looming inevitability of climate collapse, at the ongoing expansion of nukes, and the ultimate certainty of nuclear war... if nothing changes?

We are capable of larger thinking than this!

Indeed we are.  Striking the balance between being wary of strangers and being receptive to strangers is the quintessence of civilizational growth.

Humanity did “evolve with habits of cooperation and altruism,” and in so doing created communities of connection and trans-individual support. And yes, any community has an edge, beyond which looms the unknown. But as we encounter the unknown, we needn’t see it, simplistically, as “the enemy,” but rather as part of a larger community, which requires larger understanding. Our need to understand never stops.

That, though, is a bet on emergence.