Sir or Madam Denibriliny,
It is a most broad and complex question that you favor me to ask. It is compounded by the centuries, all those days and dayss so full of experience and each experience coloring the next that seperate you, and I, within our minds. What I mean to say is we are taught in my time that the human history is divided into three great and divided epochs: the Spiritual, the Rational, and the Practical.
The Spiritual is the earliest of all days. When men were to believe that nature and natural things were animated with thoughts and emotions. That the elements and forces of the natural world were living things themselves, capricious and beyond understanding except as well as one understooded the moods of a distant acquaitance. Then comes the Rational Age, which to the occidental mind starts with the Greeks and their claims that reason and logic alone could determine the moods and rules of natural actions. Finally comes both of our ages, the Practical. This is where reason is supported by experiment. Where what we believe and trust is tested against not alone the rules of logic and rhetoric. But most important and necessary beliefs are tested against nature and nature culls the false from the possible.
We are of the same epoch and one would thought we would share many assumptions. But we seem not to. This is my first field trip and so I am very cautious in going into the midst of society. For that reason I have watched many theatrical products of your television cable. I understand and accept they are fictions for entertainment yet the amount of magic in them is of a great and revealing surprise to my mind. I see very much of that Spiritual epoch where invisible and unknown powers solve a crisis, while the workings of men and women of intelligence are an evilness. This thinking and beleiving I do not understand.
Walking on the road the other day I saw a sign with an eyeball and hand palm's above a store. Curious I inquired and was told this was a business of a lady who read the wrinkles on hands, or the selection of cards from a deck and from these could for tell the future of a people. As one might imagine this most amused me. I had never thought in a serious matter on the fact that a people to whom the future is not known, or at least knowable, would pursue knowledge of it in such a preposterously desperate manner.
In my time the temporal dimension is well understood and integrated with three spacials. It is understood they behave exactly the same, with only the natural momentum and speed of the temporal setting it apart. Moving negatively one can see the consequences of decisions made at a point without regarding the line. Moving positively all is much more placed. We can be trained after all.
Of course the same power source to accelerate the temporal can accelerate the spatial. That is of much more consequence and purpose perhaps. Many people are gone having moved on. Two other things have had deep influence upon us. One I can speak of, the other it is best not to. Of the one I can speak it is the progress in genetics. Our life spans are considerably longer and we suffer very little from the effects of disease or decrepitude. A good proportion of us heavily modify ourselves. But most like me only fix glaring flaws but stay true to mold.
I am shameful that these answers have been so brief and cloudy, but a broad question requires it. If I might humbley ask a questions of my own. I am speciallized in the historical study of female/male pair-bonding, with an emphasis on asymetrical power gradiants during the era of romantic love as a selection mechanism. Of particular interest to me is a minor celebrity of your era by the name Vicki Lynn Hogan (she confusingly also named herself Anna Nicole Smith) who married a wealthy gentleman named J. Howard Marshall II. I appear to have misjudged the time to arrive since I meant to buy copies of the television cable show since it is not preserved in extent. But it seems to be to my misfortunes yet in continuing theatrical productions. A broken cup must be glued and so I am using the research tools of this internetwork but am confused by the many and varied results. Would you perhaps indulge me kindly and shovel me some advice as to how to sort the noise from the signal in this regards?
Xerxes D'Rhubarb, Ph.D., M.D.C., SsRC.,
Bratislava Polytechnic Institute
