Beloved Child,. If You Had The Power To Go Back In Time,

Beloved Child, If you had the power to go back in time, would you? How much more good can you do, with the power of hindsight? How many lives might you save, how much wealth can you effortlessly accumulate? What you consider now merely mundane would allow you to stand among the geniuses and history-makers of the past. All you would have to do is to give up the conveniences you modern humans take for granted. Have you heard of the story of the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court? Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) wrote it as a parody of this tendency of the modern to think of the past as dirty and ignorant. For it is the way of all modern civilizations to consider themselves superior to all that had gone before. From Romans to the†¦show more content†¦No J. Random High Schooler (or a college graduate, or even most people with doctorates) is ever really going to pull off a Connecticut Yankee in a parallel world. There is too much to remember. Even the Hang This in Your Time Travel Machine poster is of limited usefulness. It is a tools to make the tools problem. For example, pasteurization. Heat milk to below the boiling point with what thermometer are you using to measure heat so that it does not begin to affect the taste? Vaccination? With what steel needles and glass plungers in an iron age society? Annoyed with the inability to work well after dark? Run electricity through a tungsten wire what does tungsten even look like? A carbon arc lamp might be easier to make but how do I make batteries to store electricity for mobile light and firestarting? Toilet paper? Turning paper into wood pulp involves heavy machinery and/or chemicals. What chemicals? Grow potatoes to alleviate food shortages? Potatoes are over there in the New World, what do I even have a ship through the Atlantic? The cosmopolitan man, in any era, possesses an approximate knowledge of many things. For in-depth knowledge of anything outside of individual special skillsets, there came to be a generation that sees fit to offload thinking skills to the Web. For whatever question? Just [Googol] it. It makes sense, for in the distant future of 2015 there is far too much to know, and even more being discovered, or commented upon, orShow MoreRelatedConfronting the Past, Living the Present, and Enjoying the Future in Toni Morrisons Beloved1342 Words   |  6 Pagesthe old adage, History always repeats itself, rings true due to a failure to truly confront the past, especially when the memory of a period of time sparks profoundly negative emotions ranging from anguish to anger. However, danger lies in failing to recognize history or in the inability to reconcile the mistakes of the past. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the relationship between the past, present and future. 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