Past or Future?
Has anyone ever asked you what era you would choose to
live in? Most people might say that they want to return to Roman times, the
Renaissance, or even the Medieval times. I am usually confused by these ideas.
Yes, there were some geniuses during these eras and we tend to learn about the
wealthy who seemed to live wonderful lives, but what about the common folk? If
you choose an era but not what social
class you would belong to, the most likely scenario is that of a poor farmer or
even a slave. These people were plagued by disease, there were no sanitation
facilities let alone a sewage system, and the average life expectancy was less
than 30 years. Many people say they want to go back in time because they don’t
appreciate how technology has affected our lives. But the question should be,
how has technology improved our lives? Antibiotics did not exist until 1928 and
although vaccines were created in 1796, they did not become popular until much
later.
In high school, we might encounter problems like
homework, an upcoming test, problems with fellow classmates, or forgetting to
bring a lunch to school. Going back in time would cause day to day problems to rise exponentially. Even as a middle-class worker, just being able to provide
food for a family could be a never-ending struggle. Of course, we have larger
problems today but most of these don’t involve life or death situations. As
technology increases so does the problem
of military equipment being made accessible to the public. We have governmental
problems and recently many natural disasters have occurred. Looking back
through the eras, however, shows that
every era had its own specific problems and that these problems could vary
dramatically.
I think that going backwards
in time would also limit our rights as citizens. The right to vote and the
right to free speech did not exist. Instead of going backwards what about traveling forwards in time? Would this be beneficial?
One problem with traveling to the future is that we don’t have any information
about the eras to come. What if we have another devastating world war? We could
destroy the world with all the technology we have discovered. Personally, I
would give a bland response to the question of which era would you prefer to
live in. I think that now is the best time to live because we can’t know what’s
coming but that makes life interesting. Even if we did travel back in time
there are always problems and at least we can have an impact on solving our
problems now.
I think if I could travel back in time I would go back to when I was in kindergarten or middle school, since in kindergarten you're on the cusp of going into first grade and actually learning things, but in middle school you're on the cusp of going into high school and actually learning really hard things. Both periods are pretty carefree with the least responsibilities. I don't think I'd wanna go back to any time I didn't live in. And I think going into the future and seeing crazy things would make me even more curious as to how that crazy thing appeared. So I would go back into the past, but only back into specific times of my youth. Good post, and I agree with your final sentence.
ReplyDeleteYour sobering final paragraph calls to mind an observation from Louis CK: time travel is an exclusively white privilege, as white people can theoretically imagine themselves back in any historical time period and they'd be treated pretty well (which maybe oversimplifies the lot in life of peasants and indentured servants, but the point stands). Black people wouldn't want to travel back 10 years, let alone 50 or 100, because indeed they would face even more virulent racism and institutional segregation. Women might have qualms about traveling back to the Mad Men era--not all that long ago--when sexual harassment wasn't even a term, and it was considered everyday behavior at the workplace. This is, strangely, a positive and encouraging angle to take on the age-old time-travel question: our society must have made incremental and significant progress if the present is the best place to be, for all its horrors and shortcomings.
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