The Time Traveler's Dilemma

[Mythsaje]

I was just listening to the audio book of Spider Robinson's classic "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" (which is a collection of short stories put into novel form detailing the lives and experiences of a group of people who gather in a rather unique tavern run by an Irish gentleman of mysterious origins) and I was struck by a realization.

The story itself is that of a man who was imprisoned for 10 years between 1963 and 1973, cut off from all accounts of the outside world. He is a time-traveler of sorts, who has been left adrift in a world he does not quite understand, a world that saw the horror of the Vietnam war, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the moon landing, and Watergate.

I was left wondering...how WOULD a time-traveler fare going from 1963 to 2006? Would anything be comprehensible to such a person? Nearly half of Americans who have lived through the past several years and decades don't 'get it.' Imagine if you somehow missed everything that had occured in the past four decades. Would you understand ANYTHING of what's going on now, or would it just seem like an alien world.

Future Shock, they call it.

We are a product of our times--not only us, but the Neocons. They act, in part, in retribution to what was "done to" Nixon. An amusing line out of the story talks about how this man, this missionary who'd been jailed, being taken to meet the President after his release and being surprised to find Nixon--especially considering the last HE'D heard of the man, he'd just lost the Governor's race for California and had petulantly told the Press they'd "no longer have Dick Nixon to kick around."

This all brought me to the revelation of how little sense any of what's happened would make to someone who hadn't been brought up in it. Imagine. The Beattles, the sexual revolution, the Civil Rights movement, the "Me" generation, the Reagan Years, the 1st Gulf War, The Clinton Years, The Contract (on) with America, the "Revenge of Bush."

Wow.

What a ride these four decades have been.

[hedgehog]

1. I ran into this a few weeks ago

I took a look at the movie 9 to 5 and was stunned to see how many notions that were radical proposals in that movie are taken for granted now. At the same time, there were customs in that movie that would never happen now. For example, the Jane Fonda character had married and automatically left the work force. That just doesn't happen anymore, but that movie is only 20 or 25 years old.

[Mythsaje]

2. We tend to forget how radical some of the changes are...

because we lived through them. That was one of the messages of the story, and quite striking when taken in perspective.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. A joke I posted a few months ago

A patient who has been in a coma since 1985 awakens and asks the doctor:

P: "And how is President Reagan?"
Dr.: "I'm sorry to tell you that Ronald Reagan is dead."
P: "Oh my God! That means Bush is President!"

---

I once heard about a science fiction story in which a person is revived from suspended animation in the distant future. He asks if there was still poverty, disease, hunger, wars or crime and is told that no, those problems were solved long ago. Then he asks, then why doess everybody seem so nervous?

"Well, you see - we have REAL problems."


I think a citizen from 1963 would have a similar experience. They would be surprised and relieved that there was no nuclear war, no Cold War, no Soviet Union, no Iron Curtain, but would wonder why everybody seemed to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

[Iniquitous Bunny]

4. Fear is the tool.

Of control.

Otherwise we'd be living in a horrible world of plentiful jobs, affordable housing, (oh, and lower rates of abortion) like in the dark era known as the Clintonian 90's. Perhaps we'd be even... gasp.... further along in our development of alternative energy sources. :scared:

It'd put a big dash in Petrol profits though. Can't have that.

:sarcasm:

[mark11727]

5. I think Washington Irving did it first and best...

...when after twenty years, Rip Van Winkle goes to the tavern, yakking about "Good King George", and somebody wants to pop him one.

Damn, missed the whole revolution. :evilgrin:

[Mythsaje]

6. First, maybe, but not necessarily best.

Spider Robinson is one of the greats, and this series is a truly remarkable insight into the hearts and minds of human beings.

[mark11727]

14. I'm intrigued --- please tell me more...

[Mythsaje]

16. Callahan's Place is a stopping point for a lot of people

at the end of their rope, those who have lost any sense of place, of hope. The misfits who make up the regular crowd are always willing to listen to someone's story, even though they make it a point of honor not to pry.

Spider is known among fans and other authors alike as the Empath, because he's a master at putting a human face on any trial or tragedy. The Callahan books are sci-fi, but sometimes in the subtlest of fashion. "The Time Traveler's Dilemma" was published in Analog science fiction magazine, but, it is not really science fiction at all. But it was written by a man then editor Ben Bova considered to end up as one of the greats.

I have laughed and cried my way through this series more than once. And, believe me, anyone with heart will do both.

Spider Robinson is a heck of a guy by all accounts. I sent him an e-mail once through his webmaster, mentioning that I too was an author and it was my hope that someday I could evoke emotions the way he could, and he sent a personal note in response that said something to the effect that he thanked me from the bottom of the internal organ of my choice and that I had his deepest sympathies as a fellow sufferer of the disease of writing.

[mark11727]

20. Thanks a bunch --- noted for future reference (no pun intended)

:hi:

[Mythsaje]

21. Did I forget to mention pun night?

LOL. It's a contest they run at the bar, the winner of which gets his drinks for the night paid for.

[ThoughtCriminal]

13. Some real life "Rip Van Winkles"

Chronology Japanese Holdouts in the Pacific
http://www.wanpela.com/holdouts/list.html

[enigma000]

7. Easier than 1890 to 1933

43 years from 1890 to 1933: think of the inventions
typewriter
planes
automobiles
gas stations, traffic lights, etc.
blimps & dirigibles
radio
phones
movies (with sound)
Television (primitive, of course)
early versions of rockets
skyscrapers

Not to mention new styles of music, fall of autocratic regimes in Europe: German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian Monarchies. It was a massive shift.

1963 to 2006: better cars, cell phones, taller buildings, flat screen TV - big deal
O.K., O.K. computers yes, but what else? The European Empires were almost gone in 1963. I guess, the fall of the USSR and discrediting of socialism. What a ride? I'm not so sure.......

[hedgehog]

8. The gadgets changed, but did the customs change as much?

My daughters have very different expectations of life than I did, and they don't even realize it. I went to an all girls high school just when these changes were coming in. At a recent reunion, I was amazed at the anger from my fellow alumnae as we took a school tour and remembered all the limitations placed on us compared to the freedoms our daughters have today. These are women with very successful careers, many of them doctors or lawyers, but they were angry at how hard they had to work just to be treated like a human being. That's a big change.

[enigma000]

10. I'm not enough of a historian to say

But compare late Victorian North America and Europe with the 1930s. I think there was a large shift in cultural norms. It some ways, it created a workplace that woman could enter. The step for women to enter the business workforce at the lowest level is more of a change than rising to the top level.

A shift happened in the 1960s and 1970s as well, but was it as intense? We think so because we lived through it. But that's just my thoughts.....

[pitohui]

15. reminds me of doris lessing's rant in one of her books

rant might be the wrong term but it wasn't really an essay as it was imbedded somewhere in the martha quest series (set in the ww 2 and post-war era)

it was abt how martha was an honorary member of the 1920s/jazz/"free love" revolution and it reminded us that, er, sex wasn't actually invented in 1964 but probably more around about 1924

:-)

the decades between 1900 and 1940 were prob. the biggest decades there ever were as far as cultural change

[Mythsaje]

9. If you set aside the technological changes

and concentrate on the cultural changes, they are astounding. Not only for us, but for the rest of the world. The European Union (such as it is), China's entrance into the world market as a capitalist player, the fall and disintegration of the Soviet Union, the bloody battle of words happening here in the United States.

All of these things, taken in one swallow, would be hard to digest.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. Up to a point.

I think that a traveller from 1966 to 2006 would be considerably les astounded than one from 1926 to 1966 or one from 1886 to 1926. The big change would have been the fall of the Soviet empire, I think, and that was, if not predictable, at least unsurprising. But we've seen relatively little compared with the World Wars, women's suffrage, the birth of the civil rights movement (or am I wrong about that being well under way by 1966?), the Russian revolution and the like.

Query: over which 40-year periods has the world changed the most, and over which recent 40-year period has it changed the least?

My immediate answers would be either 1930-1970 or 1913-1953; and 1966-2006; respectively, but I'd be interested to here arguments for other periods.

On Edit: Damn, I forgot the internet. Possibly 1950-1990, then.

[ThoughtCriminal]

12. The technical advances are significant but not "Magic"

Even the internet would be comprehensible to someone from 1963. Very cool many would say, but where are the Lunar cities, sub-orbital airlines, rocket belts and flying cars?

Well, at least I have a "Roomba" cleaning the living room floor, but it's not exactly what I saw on the "Jetsons".



"The future ain't what it used to be"

[Mythsaje]

18. On the other hand you have my father...

grew up reading science fiction and is totally baffled by a computer. He's WATCHED all this happen and is still unable to catch up.

[ThoughtCriminal]

24. Same here - interesting isn't it?

My dad was a sci-fi reader since the 1930's, designed instrumentation for NASA, but has trouble with even basic Windows operations.

And ME. I've been a programmer since the early 80's, but struggle with any advanced features of my cell phone.

[0rganism]

17. (animated) 'Boondocks' had an episode like that a few weeks ago

The premise was, MLK didn't die when he got shot, he went into a coma. Then he wakes up in 2001, and the episode takes off from there -- as much about how today's world reacts to him, as how he reacts to a changed world.

[tkmorris]

19. It does seem that way doesn't it?

But, as others have said, I think it seems that way to each generation. To wit, the changes we have witnessed seem greater than any equivalent period of time before. Of course, there is some truth to that in a general way. What after all changed from say, 1050-1090? The advent of the English Longbow?

I have nothing to add really, but you started a thread refencing Spider Robinson and Callahan's therefore I simply HAVE to respond. It's kind of a law, for me at least. You ever stop by the sci-fi board at DU? If not please do, we seem to have similar tastes.

[Mythsaje]

22. I have on occasion

stopped by the sci fi board. But rarely. I may stop in again, having been specifically invited.

[IdaBriggs]

23. Fabulous thread. Callahans, Spider, Roombas -- thank you for

starting this one. :kick: