The Moral Revolution Chapter 4. The Time Machine, a flash visit to Wells. Does such a thing as coincidence exist? You know my mind is set on time travels these days. Yesterday I switched on the television, a bit tired of a rare sunny day in october, that started with swimming in a rather agitated ocean. A handsome man was just taking place in a funny kind of sledge adorned with switches and clocks. He first clumsily fiddled a little bit with it. Somehow his eyes seemed to be set on a window with a female mannequin in it, and you could see how fashion marked times. Apparently director George Pals impression of a time machine. He adapted H.G.Wells same titled book from ….to a (as it turned out Oscar winning) film in 1960. But it even this Hollywood interpretation is not a totally superficial tale. The hero, an inventive scientist, aka the handsome man (Rod Taylor), sees, just sitting in his upholstered chair long dark ages of the past switch by. Then, prudently moving forward, he steps out right in World War I, only seventeen years after embarking, and witnesses terror and grieve about men lost and notices the restraint. Then he pushes the trottle forwards and lands in 8000 something ( okay: 802.701), when a residual civilization after a nuclear war has divided its society in an upper world of rather empty day to day based leisure and play and a drugged consumptive state. They seem to be synchronized by a stupid systems of time slots. These people, the Eloi, do not care for anything other than themselves, let alone each other and equally lack interest in values, knowledge, art, inspiration or spiritual development. One of them, beautiful Weena (Yvette Mimieux) almost drowns by a current in the gardens of their paradise and nobody does even try to save her. Except of course the handsome man. And when he asks her what it is all about in their life, he gets to know, it is about nothing. There is no future, there is no past, no creation either, books of the past are simply forgotten and turned into dust. It takes a while to find out, that the upper world is fed by an ugly pitch dark underground world, in which invisibility slaves work, drag and suffer and where machines drone on to provide energy, food, and service. And this underworld devours the upper world: When upper world people get ugly, old or sick; they are seized to join that slave army. The handsome man finally succeeds to wake up the beautiful illiterate zombies and leads them into rebellion, to earn an existence of solidarity where they together can be truly alive, with values to live for to the cost of having to provide for themselves. Of course I would die to meet H.G. Wells myself. And why not. It was he who proved phantasy to be a perfect vehicle. I know he was born in Britains Bromley in 1866 and that he loved reading in health and sickness in an environment of lower middle class in Kent; his father had an unsuccessful hardware store, that eventually went broke. The discovery of an elaborate library in one of the houses where his mother cleaned, equalled discovering a treasure, the books being a rich source of inspiration. Luckily Herbert, who himself failed as a drapers assistant, could get a grant to study physics and biology and learn from professor Thomas Huxley (grandfather of Aldous, whom I also would like to visit by the way). I now aim for 1902, just 36 years after the publication of a first writing experiment on the subject of time-traveling The Chronic Argonauts, when Herbert Wells is still in college. He is young then, full of ideas and ideals. I would like to ask him, what his feelings, his sentiments, were at that time. Industrial;isolation started, he was suspicious of that, as I sometimes am of de Informatica, and its impact on peoples psychology. And what about how he feels now, after the successful publication of his first full novel The time Machine? How did he get the idea of the fourth dimension as being a breakthrough for shooting through ages? I wonder also how he would react if I told him that his phantasy about a seemingly paradisaical society with zombie-like, frugivorous illiterate smoothie-sucking consumers already came true in de turning of the 21 century. Creatures, obsessed by spending wealth or the ambition to get rich, who are drugged by games and chemicals, terrorized by fear of growing old , tamed by codes of fashion, design, digital devices and organized by worldwide synchronized time slots. That the ugly work of scraping rare earth out of the ground, the fabrication of clothes, the growing of food has been hidden away in dark parts of the world where children and poor people work as slaves, just like the Morlocks of this book. Would he be shocked or would he just nod? I realize that just a year before my arrival Wells published Anticipations, a non fiction book about the future. He foresaw economic globalization and military conflicts. He predicted the growth of cities and suburbs and the immigrating waves of people there. He predicted a rising disparity of people, a growing gap between the poor and the rich. Would he be pleased by having been so accurate? I wonder if that news would make him unbearably sad. But then maybe I could also tell him of the signs of a transition, that I perceive. If society would be a bowl of water, that you could heat, the water would change. That metaphor would hopefully appeal to him, being a physicist and biologist. Probably he would correct me at some point since obviously I am not. Anyhow, in my metaphor, the heat would be caused by several factors: the threat of violent fanatics who want to destroy the culture of christian capitalism. The economically ruinous effects of practice of the financial markets who abused the ignorance of big and small clients and called them muppets. The lying and cheating of politicians. The boredom and loathing caused by ruthless and tasteless entertainment offered by mass media and and the inclination towards unlimited consumption by individuals. Things like that. In the bowl a column of bubbles would rise up, and then another one, and again another one. The columns are alternative initiatives of individuals, becoming communities. Unselfies, Norm core, communities who trade without money, who devote their time to doing good for others, principles about fare trade and saving the planet, rich people who want to give something back to society, communities to fund art and educational projects, to plea for solidarity and empathy. The columns in the water would mingle to a surface full of bells and finally all the water bubbles and boils. That is a transition and it would represent a new area as I foresee it in the nearer future. I would like to share these thoughts with him. What would he say? (to be continued)
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 14:15:54 +0000
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