Messin' with time...writerly...kinda

[amicus]

Rewatching DeJa Vu, with Denzel Washington and got off on a line of thought, came here and found a very learned and esoteric discussion concerning time, space, gravity, all those good things to argue about the mean absolutely nothing in practical terms. Nor does my little offering here, but, such as it is...

In addition to DeJa Vu, another recent film, "Next". with Nicolas Cage...preceded by "12 Monkeys" with that action guy and "Millenium", with Kris Kristofferson and of course a library of science fiction dating from the late 30's and 40's when the Asimov's & Heinleins were running amuck...

...led me to think that a new age of writing has ripened, that of time travel and transcending various event horizons of fiction and the future of which we know naught.

There is no question herein, no controversy and barely even a statement...just a musing by one also familiar with the hard sciences as introduced by the Gauche one, but reluctant to engage in speculation about the origins or workings of the universe searching for meaning in life.

I would like to state a premise and run it up the pole...that being that the time we live in, is unique in all of human history as we now have answers to most of the questions that man has ever asked before.

Ain't it wunnerful?

Amicus...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AMICUS

Yep, we have plentiful answers, and in a century (or a month) people will laugh their asses off at our answers and us. Every generation has its hubris and arrogance.

 

[amicus]

Happy New Year JBJ, may the gods look upon you with favor.

There was a time when plague, pestilence, famine, fire, etcetera, were all viewed as punishments from an angry God or Gods. Lo and behold, once free of the constrictions of theology, the fertile mind of man discover the true causes, or so he thought, of these many calamities.

Faith rather lost favor among the literati.

But then, alas, along came Jones, with the perception of recurring glaciation, the existence and extinction of millions of species of life and a hoard of nodding scientists chanting, 't'is not if but when, for it will happen again...', and so on and so forth concerning supervolcanoes, tidal waves, solar radiation, cosmic radiation, earth's magnetic field reversals and a whole host of disasters as much out of the control of man as God was in the good ole days.

Never mind that the earth has been cooling for the past six years....doesn't slow down the global warming addicts in the least.

No, JBJ, you are in error this time, the hard science we have learned in the past half century will never be viewed with humor by future generations. I state again, we live in an unique period of human history, with more knowledge about the Universe we live in than ever before. This is irrefutable observation of fact and will remain as valid as the laws of hydrodynamics, the theorems of geometry of the constant of light speed.

Happy New Year to all.

Amicus...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AMICUS

Maybe I'm wrong, but the 'science' I read in the magazines and papers is better than The 3 Stooges. Scientists are no different from anyone else, they know who butters their bread, and they hop aboard whatever theory is annointed and ordained. And the next generation laughs at them and think theyre asses.

 

[amicus]

Not to be argumentative, JBJ, or just because you are the lone soul to respond to this thread, but I maintain that we live in an unique age, different from any that has passed before and, in addition, that it impacts the thought processes of those who are aware or at least cognizant of the revolutionary changes that have impacted our society during the past half century or so.

There is also the concept, that I personally have long lived with, of Space travel by humans. I expected and early exploration of the moon and bases there and more so of the planet Mars. As it is at this time, humankind does not have the technology to enable a human to survive the length of time to travel back and forth to Mars. It seems that both Solar and Cosmic Radiation would accumulate to lethal doses and that proper shielding would be too heavy to consider.

Further, it seems that colonization is out of the question, even for the Moon, other than brief periods of time as the human body cannot withstand being subjected to zero or minimal gravity. Reproduction is said to be fraught with dangers, with conception and mutations both predicted.

Thus, for the next several hundred years perhaps, man is earthbound.

Once man offered up prayers and sacrifices to the Gods to allay the plagues that visit man...we may as well do the same today as the promise of life is just that, a promise, with a supernova in our region possible and fatal, a shrinking magnetospere weakening, and the recent predictions of an inevitable super volcano eruption that would decimate mankind.

My point is a cloudy one I suppose, in that the continued existence of man really does not depend on our generosity towards each other or our concerns for the environment, rather on the workings of the natural forces that have previously brought extinction level events to planet earth and, as the scientists say, again and again, the next calamity is a certainty, we just don't know when.

Neither did the early Christians.

Amicus...

 

[tickledkitty]

Amicus,

I've been pondering the concept of time myself lately, so this thread is timely for me, to say the least. My mind does not seem to work well in a mathematical or scientific way, so please excuse me for going in another direction. Rather, my motivations are fueled by feelings, emotion, intuition.

It seems that I've been struck with the idea of "messin' with time" for a couple of months--books and movies mostly. But they got me thinking about how time is our enemy a lot of the time. I think there's something I need to say about it, something I'm still putting together in my head, something I need to write. Not sure what it is yet. It's still fuddled. I know that it has to do with life and love and longing. Waiting. Just how long a person will wait for love. Love versus time. There's a story there, for sure, and I believe time is the antagonist. Not a new idea. Just new to me.

I'm bothered that I don't know what I want to say or how to say it. Good to know I'm not alone though.

Happy new year.

 

[gauchecritic]

I'm not sure that it makes all that much difference really MiAmico. As many scientists have stated, the more you find out, the less you know.

You're quite right, we do live in an amazing, unparalleled age, this interface (in my view) being probably the summit so far. But realistically it's not the answers to questions that matter, it's the further questions that those answers bring up.

12 Monkeys is an excellent film.

I'll just mention, for devilment, that I had quite a time in that other thread when I mentioned the absolute of lightspeed. I thought long and hard before leaving out reference to you with regard to absolutes.

But I'm afraid that once again I'll have to disagree, this time about how much further man can advance particularly since you imply that past generations were foolish to suppose exactly the same thing.

I'll admit that it may be (like E=MC squared) that progress takes a hell of a lot more power the closer it gets to the absolute. But if you view the power as everything that has gone before rather than a push from a single theory then lightspeed really is the only limit on how fast we can proceed.

A bit of a convoluted analogy perhaps but that's the sort of state I'm in at the moment. (more so than usual)

 

[amicus]

Hello Humbug and thank you....Far be it from me to offer even the glimpse of a personal answer, I could not and would not even if so.

I will no doubt display that I am as befuddled as most when it comes to separating 'time', as seen by the literati, simply a tool to measure events and then question even the methodology; that, now, seems like such a waste of 'time'.

But, 'time' on a personal level, is a far different thing. If it is possible to encapsulate what I think you said, in a word, 'fulfillment', human fulfillment of our possibilities as a living being within the parameters of human life.

We each have our own laughter and tears, as do those around us, and, perhaps more fortunate than most, or more unfortunate, I have a large number of children, eight, and grandchildren, twenty=two and at least one more baking, that I know of, with whom I share their laughter and tears, and, as with others I suppose, a handful or so of others, 'friends', that I also share a portion of their lives.

It begins before birth, they say, that the genes and chromosomes of the parent egg and sperm pass on characteristics that can determine or influence that new life. An amazing series recently on television, "In the Womb", with three dimensional computer enhanced ultra sound video's, just blew me away.

Then, of course, childhood. Not just nature and environment, adequate food, nominal exposure to stimuli, but nurturing too, contributes to the definition of what the 'fulfillment', of love, laughter, time and tears, varies with each individual based on those things and more.

Strange coincidence I relate here: my sister, the youngest daughter in the family and my daughter, the youngest of four, both chose not to have children.

A muddled affair when some think a woman can only be fulfilled by procreation and those that, because of a natural, biological inadequacy, cannot procreate; leaves one to wonder at nature's function, or concern, beyond the border of survival of species.

I am going to introduce a political element here, because it belongs in this conversation...that of allowing or choosing to structure one's lifestyle around an ideology.

That ideology could be a theology, like Catholicism, which opposes any interference in natural procreative activities. The ideology could be that of ZPG. zero population growth wherein many women, couples indeed, chose not to create another life on what they perceive to be an over populated planet.

It could be the size of the family you were born into, perhaps coming from a large family dictates that 'fulfillment', can only come if one creates a large family and the reverse applies as well.

It could be, partly, the time we live in. where, on one hand affluency abounds and yet on the other, poverty, starvation and hopelessness. Still yet, we are just two generations past the most horrific human conflict of all times with constant reminders from the Berlin Wall, Korea, right up to the current crisis in Israel and the Gaza, it seems conflict has always been a part of human history.

About the only benefit of age seems to be the matter of perspective.

There is a limited time for a female to safely conceive and even those limits have been challenged. but it is a relatively narrow window somewhere around twenty-five years, give or take.

Too early has risk, as does too late. The Down's Syndrome baby of Governor Palin, could have almost been predicted because of the age she was at conception. At the opposite end, most premature babies are born to girls under the age of eighteen with the percentage increasing the younger the mother.

There appear to me to be two choices, within which exist many choices. One, adopt an ideology or a theology that yiou can live with and live your life according to that set of rules.

The alternative is to be an 'egoist', in one or more senses of the word, perhaps a 'hedonist', or pleasure seeker; live the life that pleases you and your own personal, individual nature and nurture.

Since I seem to have said enough to confuse myself, perhaps here is a good place to stop?

Thanks again...

amicus...

 

[amicus]

Hello, Gauche, good to see you again...and a convoluted state of mind is not your turf exclusively.

I just watched, "Five Years on Mars", the account of Spirit and Opportunity, the two mechanical, robot, Rovers, who have far outlived their predicted ninety days longevity and seem to be still kicking.

The end of the program was a note that the Rover's did not have an, 'off' switch, thus they will wake up each Mars morning and phone home, whether anyone is listening or not, perhaps for the next thousand years. Further, said the narrator, those solar cells and aluminum parts might possibly still be on the surface of the red planet long after man has gone extinct or moved to another section in the galaxy.

Thank you for the consideration of not drawing attention to the 'absolute', stance I hold on many subjects, very kind of you.

That stance places me on the horns of a dilemma here: on one hand I am comfortable with the speed of light being a constant, an absolute; on the other I am perplexed because it, by definition, limits the ability of man to explore the Universe, thus, I myself, explore the harmonic qualities of magnetic waves in hopes of discovering an equasion that permits the speed of light to be doubled or quadrupled without end.

I have been attempting to condense to poetry, over the past several months, the import of this, 'summit', as you describe the age, of knowledge and awareness that has only recently befallen upon mankind.

My sense of it all, in a way, is that the progressive liberal attitude of the population will turn away from explorations of the, 'outer', and concentrate on inner discoveries and creature comfort, perhaps for a generation or two.

I suspect the progressives will find a willing audience as the wealth of new gadgets has become almost overwhelming and a new generation will have soon had enough of, 'new', things, and look to rediscover the quietude of more pastoral times with little change.

A perhaps unexpected and unpredicted result of doomsday scenario's, the accumulation of which leaves even the most optimistic to question the bright light in the sky or the tremble underfoot, as the beginning of the end, be it asteroid, ice age, global warming, cosmic/solar radiation, reversal of the magnetosphere, all combining to turn people more to faith than to understanding as a way to combat, as did early man, predictions of his early demise.

Now that is a lonnnnng...sentence....I should edit, eh?

Amicus...

 

[Boota]

I would agree that we have more answers than ever before, but now there are whole new sets of different questions.


"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899