TIME MACHINE

Time machines make for good science fiction material, but in the real world they would be a disaster.  Time travel into the future?  Could be exciting, informative, even specatcular, but the chances are it would be worse than depressing.  Want to see yourself old? Dead? Want to see your grandkids old and dead?  Want to see a world at war, or mired in deep depression with millions of starving people?  Maybe you'd want to go backward in time, say for instance take a look at what the world was like when the pyramids were being built, or when Rome was at its zenith.  Speak of depressing, that would sure be it.

Look, we've come a long way in the world as a race, we humans, and an up close look at ourselves several centuries ago would not benefit us.  But history should tell us that the movement of time doesn't always bring about progress.  Sometimes we regress, take giants steps backward, as can be seen in the Dark Ages.  Besides, if you could go forward or backward, what would you see?  Would you really know what's going on?  My guess is, you wouldn't . . . unless, of course, you could hop around to a number of places, and even then, you might not see much.  You'd be there, but there's no guarantee you'd learn anything of value. 

Here's how it works and why time travel is of no use.  If you went back in time to when the Constitution of the U.S. was being written, and could sit in on the discussions of men who eventually crafted that basic law, you'd be taking with you a mind already preset in the year 2014.  You'd be able to understand just what that preset brain would allow, and what you'd see and hear would be tainted by that.  Watching them at work might infuriate you, make you want to step forward and say, "Hey, that won't work!"  And if you moved forward in time and watched the U.S. Congress in session a century from now, the same would apply.  Your 2014 brain couldn't make the adjustment to understanding what they were doing.  You'd see some things, of course, but you might come back to the present thinking, "Well, Congress damn sure hasn't changed much.  Same bunch of dumbasses."

I don't want that.  There's no time in my life I'd like to see again, don't have any desire to see myself as a younger man.  I don't want to know what happens to people I know after I'm dead and gone, and I sure as hell don't want a peek at the far off future.  With me, it's the mystery of life that makes it challenging and worthwhile, or perhaps not so worthwhile.  Quite often we're not even capable of seeing the right now, and we're living it, being part of it.  What's behind us is dead ground, a graveyard where lots of yesterdays are buried.  What's ahead of us is a big question mark, a vast expanse like an enormous blackboard waiting on us to fill it in.  The big question is:  Are we taking advantage of the right now, that chance to write our own history?