I said:
In The Twilight Zone: The Movie, the last story was about a group of old people in a home who are offered youth again. Almost all of them accept it – but one doesn't, on the grounds that she didn’t want to have to go through the experience of growing up again.
I also remembered that because it seemed a strange decision – at least, in my teens. Now I'm older I wonder which decision I'd actually take.
After all, on the one hand, it was be great to be able to return to our lives with the wisdom we have already acquired from it. But isn't that all part of growing up anyway?
But isn’t there also the danger of repeating past "mistakes", on the ground that the lessons learned no longer seemed so relevant in a second lifetime?
I'm sure even the younger among us have considered the advantages of rewinding life's clock - if only by a couple of years.
Anyway, what would you do if offered the chance?
Hmmm, Brian. What a conundrum you present, and what a group of altruistic people we have here (I'm very pleased to observe). If we ever develop the means of going back in linear time, all y'all should be the first cadre of "Time Cops", as an example for future time cops to emmulate.
I personally would not change the status quo, but I would go back to stop the status quo from being changed by other, less honorable, or more desperate people, using the technology.
If on the other hand, I found myself in my younger body, with the current knowledge I have, still intact, I would be the most potentially powerful and conversely the most vulnerable child on earth. Can you imagine trying to act like a child of 10, with the mind, future memories and experiences of a 45 year old, who has already lived the future? If you slipped up on what you already know, you might be institutionalized, hunted down, or confiscated for the "good of the state" (read that as being used for the wants of the powerful in positions of athority).
Even if you did nothing, but live as a 10 year old, your very behavior would modify events yet to be. Knowing what you know, you'd avoid turning right on such and such street instead of going straight, or stopping, in order to avoid being hit by a car and getting a leg broken that had happened in the past, and was about to happen again...unless you have a very strong will, that overrides self preservation. If you never got hit, then the driver never got caught for being drunk, that time, and never decided to change his ways, and now a new accident occurs with someone else at a later time, that should not have happened...and that "victim" dies, which means she doesn't become Governor of a state, and later the president, like she was supposed to.
If on the other hand you become a child of 10 with no memory of the fact that you are from the future, I think the complexities of the human mind and spirit would haunt you with "visions" of things you can't explain, but it would drive you crazy none the less. Your "insight" might be considered phenominal, or mirraculus, and again you might find yourself fighting for sanity and safety from a hungry, desperate world.
If you changed one little thing about your life, you would forever change the entire world. Of course no one else would know the differences, but you would. And your future/past would be altered as well.
I know for fact that If I was back in time, I would hold my tongue, or speak a kind word instead of a harsh one, and that would change everthing, and not necessarrily for the better (though I might believe so at the moment).
Then again, maybe my idea of better, is wrong.
A world with no borders, and a government body that is benign and benifical to its citizens...no nationalism, proud to be human, as opposed to being from this country or that. No need for guns except for hunting (which would work dillegently with groups for animal husbandry).
Or, the opposite. Fortress America (for example), Japan is gone, Russia is gone, China is in the fight of it's life, Bill of rights shredded, martial law prevails world wide. Common law a pipe dream, and dope pipes are as common as pocket combs.
Maybe because we can't go back, there is a balance (tenious at times), that is maintained in this existance. I would not want to go back and upset that balance, simply because I don't think I could handle (personally) the outcome.
Then, add other people going back in time to your own...oh my!
Now, going into the future might be cool, except for one small detail, we'd be meddling in some one else's past...like our children's, and their children...
I think the only way that would be acceptable for a person to time travel, would be to go forward...by way of cryogenics. Go to sleep young, wake up young, but be the oldest person on earth, with no concept of what has happened while you were "asleep". You'd be a great history buff, and could clear up fuzzy details from your era, but you would not screw up the time/space continuim.
Brian, I wouldn't want to revisit even yesterday. But I wouldn't mind going back within a twenty four hour period. But even that causes potential problems. What a "causal loop" that could invoke! Imagine 6,000,000,000 people going back within twenty four hours to "change things". And then keep going back, in order to get the outcome they want...
We'd never see tomorrow!
v/r
Q
