@EdFromNY, maybe in time I'll turn more jaded, but for now I'll keep going at those windmills, bashing my head against their walls with a grin on my face.
↑ i came to the same conclusion about the human race decades before i got old, kids... and bringing down a few windmills of the too many to count wouldn't bring about any more change for the better in the species than the old don himself was able to do... like the dragon-seeded skeletons in that classic sinbad flick, dozens would pop up for every one you could mow down...
I'd go to the medieval ages (before gunpowder was invented) with gun and quite big supply of bullets, just to see how they treat would gods if they "met one". That's one thing I would do just for the hell of it. Then there's quite a few other things, I suppose...
That would change the whole history, so it might happen that you would never be born later on. And if you wouldn't been born later on, there would be no one to stop the genocide. Quite a paradox.
Since you've lost hope for things ever changing for the better, I'm just glad you don't have a time machine, Dictator Maia.
I'ld go back in time and draw Alexander the Great's eye from Hephaestion and instead to me. I've no wish to have the accountability of a conquerer of worlds, but to be his tent-mate and paramour wouldn't be a bad thing at all.
Go back to find Homer, find out who he was, what kind of person he was, and if he even existed at all. Other than that, I think I'd go back to the age of the Enlightenment and just live there.
I've always wondered what it'd be like to live in the 1960s, the age of the sexual revolution, LSD, free love and all that. You read books about people banging on about how great the 60s were. I reckon it would've been a naive but optimistic and amazing time to be 18-25...The music that was produced, the parties that were had It would also be interesting to go as far back and check out the dinosaurs
The way Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it, it sounds too heady to have had sensible feet firmly planted on solid ground. And then of course, there's Pynchon's take on the decade, as basically a decade of betrayal and missed opportunities. That's the impression the introduction to Slow Learner gave me anyway.
I have this sterotypical image of the 60s in my head a la the Electric Kool-Aid Acid test, of touring around in a mini van taking LSD and watching the sun go down It's completely silly I know, but I think it would have been an exhilarating time for a writer to live in...It's probably nonsense of course, because as much as it was a misty-eyed period it was also a turbulent time with the vietnam war, civil rights protests and so on Ed, if you had to summarise, what did you busy yourself with in the 60s?
Having sat and thought about this for quite a while, I can honestly say that I have no idea what I would do! My first thought would be to take all the current research data regarding Cancer back to the sixties in the hope that by now, a cure (or a more effective treatment) would be available as I seem to be watching so many personal friends suffer. But then, back in the sixties, they probably wouldn't even understand today's data - and they certainly wouldn't be able to access the flash drives containing the data. Then I thought, how about going back 25ish years and writing my book when I first thought of the idea. Then I remembered that I recently came across the first draft, which by first draft, I mean first scribbled 50 page story that has the bare bones of my fiction - that was only intended for my eyes and which, going by the fact I was 15 at the time, is an absolute embarrassing rib tickler. Then I thought, how about going back to the 80's so that I could re-do the whole school thing and come out with better grades so I could get a better job with more money to support my family but if I did that, by now I would probably be more engrossed in the job and have no time to even think about writing let alone publish a book and be onto the next one. Then I realised, my life is far from perfect, my family are very far from perfect and if I had the chance to go back and change something then I might just change the wrong thing and end up not being a writer at all and that, would absolutely kill me! So, if I had a time machine, I would sell it on eBay!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Bright young men were rounded up to fight and die in Southeast Asia, in a war that had more to do with the pride and philosophies of the superpowers than with the best interests of the people who lived in the embattled country. Elsewhere, an entire generation was rejecting traditional values in favor of recreational drug use, anarchy, and hedonism. On the other hand, it was a time of racial revolution and breaking the bonds of bigotry. It was a time when separate school, buses, and churches for minorities were abolished - not wholly, but it began then - and women began to break free of the roles of Hausfrau and decoration. It was the time when the word gay took on a whole new meaning, and alternative religions began to gain respectability. It was a time of sexual freedom as well as widespread sexual irresponsibility. It was a time of contemplation and self-awaeness, and a time to retreat into chemical oblivion. It was a time of great achievements in science and technology, and a time when the people began taking all that for granted, and slacked off on their efforts to achieve more and better. It was a time to question everything, and a time when the appearance of eccentricity was more important than the enlightenment gained through a different perspective. No, the sixties weren't that great, except when they were.
Go back in time to the 23rd of November, 1962, and meet with Sydney Newman at the BBC offices to prove to him that Time Travel can work, and that a person calling themselves The Doctor can live on in imaginations for more than 50 years, so get off the pot and make it happen. Then hop forward to 1981, grab Sarah Sutton, introduce myself as The Doctor, and have some adventures with my own favorite companion. Heck, if we're talking time travel, we have to have some fun in something like the TARDIS.
The best thing about the 60s—for me anyway (I was 14 in 1963)—was the feeling that the world was on the cusp of change for the better. And in many ways it was. Some changes proved ephemeral, some maybe weren't such a good idea after all, but many things did evolve into something better. While nothing is ever perfect, when I compare the state of racism and sexism in the 1950s to what we have now, I think most people would agree it's better now. And those kinds of changes got a huge boost in the 60s. I feel very fortunate to have grown up at that time, and in the place I did. And damn. The music was FANTASTIC.
Personally: find the man responsible for World War Two, sabotage his election so that he never took control of Germany in the first place, and make sure that some schmuck painter named Adolf is put in charge instead. …OK, I'm back. Did it work?
Actually, what most people think of when they say "the sixties" is really late '60s - early '70s. 1960-63 was really the '50s in overtime. 1964-66 was a transition time, and 1967 - 1974 was...well, the sixties. There were some serious folks around who wanted to make the world a better place, but the ones who grabbed the attention were, by and large, good only for grabbing attention. I knew a lot of smart kids, my age or a little older, who were either killed by drugs or rendered useless by them. Arguably the best, most persuasive and most compelling speaker of a generation, spoke only of peace, respect and mutual acceptance, was assassinated. So was my senator. More than 50,000 lives were lost in a war that we never wanted to win and that was predicated on a lie. Those who fought and survived came home and got spat on and called "baby killers". The president resigned after having declared he was not a crook, because it turned out that he was (years later, a comedian would get lots of laughs with the line, "every week they caught him, and every week somebody else went to jail"). @jannert is right - some of the music was incredible. Some of the musicians who brought it to us managed to survive - the ones who managed not to choke to death on their own vomit in a drug-induced stupor. What did I busy myself with? Trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.
Oh, I agree with pretty much everything Ed says here—including the stretch into the early 70s. I didn't mean to imply that everything was hunky-dory during the 60s. It's just that for some of us, the feeling that we COULD effect change for the future was one of the driving forces of that period. Of course, in many ways, it turned out we couldn't, or didn't. But it was a great feeling to have as a teenager and young adult—the feeling that we were on the right track. Disillusion set in later on, though... one of the reasons The Big Chill is one of my favourite movies. Pretty much summed it up for me.
Very true and a thing Ed and I have spoken of before. Paradigmatic decades and actual decades don't really line up. Like "The 80's" didn't really start happening until '84 - '85ish and stretched into the mid 90's. When I see pictures of myself from the early 80's, it's totally That 70's Show. Anywho... I would go back to about 40,000 years ago and try to discover what really happened to the last of the Neanderthal people. I've a soft spot in heart for them. Something tells me they were the victims of a prehistoric "gentrification" project. Not really inferior, just unfashionable.
