Traveling in space and time

H.G. Wells wrote his classic "The Time Machine" at the turn of the 20th century, and it immediately became a household name, popularizing the idea of time travel by mechanical means - by means of the proverbial time machine. While physicists theorize whether or not it may actually be possible to travel in time, most people rightly regard it as an impossible fiction.

I find the point of time travel, at least in one direction - the past - a rather moot point. In more ways than one we do not need a time machine to travel to the past - at least the past that is inhabited by rational human beings like ourselves. We have so much that allows one to engage in this kind of travel NOW, the real question is - are we really as curious as we claim to be if, in point of fact, we disregard the tools and the opportunities that are right there at our fingertips?

Any time I get down to studying (I emphasize the word to set it apart from a mere cursory perusal) a piece of ancient literature, I find myself transported in time. Far from observing the mere externals of that time - ancient landscapes or artifacts, I get to visualize and feel the past from the viewpoint of my guides - the ancient authors who are speaking to me through the characters in their time-honored tales - Gilgamesh or King David, Oedipus, Odysseus, and countless others - each one revealing the author's (and more significantly, the larger cultural) mores and biases.

The past comes alive in the speeches of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and Plutarch's arguments in Moralia, the enchantment of Homer's mythology and beliefs held by the personae from other ancient scrolls, their aspirations and ideals. How is this in any way inferior to a physical time travel? A little imagination, a curiosity about the past and a motivation to turn it into a personal time tour will get you on your way to visiting the ancient empires of Mesopotamia or exploring the ancient world with Herodotus and Strabo.

Excerpt from the Egyptian Book of the Dead

Moreover, I have a similar conviction about physical travel in the present. Whenever you ask someone what they would wish for, if they had unlimited time and money, the answer seems to be "I would travel more". But what is modern day travel? Humiliating airport "security" routines, rushing from one pre-packaged stale route to another, being isolated and insulated in a protective tour group setting or even individual hotel-hopping? I have had my share of travel around the world, and I am getting more and more weary of this kind of thing. It is fake, it is not the kind of experience that is transformative or in any way eye-opening. It is kitsch, a cheap substitute for a real exploration.

Recently I chanced upon a saying attributed to one of the great pre-Socratic philosophers - Heraclitus, who I think said it best:

Κακοί μάρτυρες άνθρωποισι οφθαλμοί και ώτα, βαρβάρους ψυχάς εχόντων -

"Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men whose souls are of crude understanding".

Heraclitus' words resonate with my own attitude to the deficiencies of the popular conception of travel - one must seek understanding that is internal prior and as a prerequisite to external motion of the body. The latter does not necessarily guarantee the former. And one of the key things about understanding a foreign culture is language - without it one is deaf and mute, a wandering beast with a camera stripped around his neck, nothing more. (The pervasive use of phone cameras has largely made a personal experience of the Other's culture obsolete - instead of soaking it in, trying to internalize and work through the encounters, a digital camera offers a cheap way to externalize and to a large degree neutralize the experience by allowing one to "dry-freeze" it, supposedly "for later use". Beyond the knee-jerk reaction of publishing everything that happens to flow through the eye sockets on Instagram, the cherished moment of "later use" typically never arrives.

Αξύνετοι ακούσαντες κωφοισι εοίκασι, φάτις αυτοίσι μαρτυρέει παρεόντας απείναι -

"They that hear without understanding are like the deaf [senseless]; of such a saying testifies, 'Present they are absent'".