Fringe? Paranoid? A seemingly schizo delusion? Too many episodes of the X-Files? Perhaps. But would it be surprising if true? I mean, this is the same agency that attempted mind control experiments on U.S. civilians culminating in the defenestration of some poor soul who was tripping on LSD in the 60s, much to the chagrin and schadenfreude of the hippies. Can you really put anything past them? Even if this Disclose.tv story is so much conspiracy theorist confabulation, utterly bunk in it's details, my familiarity with history compels me to explore what could be a kernel of truth in many people's ideas of what the government may plausibly be up to...
It jibes with what we know of the mindset of certain subcultures within the intelligence community. Of course, most people when considering a secret time travel program the CIA might attempt to implement, they'll assume the worst: weaponization, overreach, unethical applications, et cetera. But even if their intentions are benign, it's still somewhat sad and pathetic. (When will the intelligence community and the military-industrial complex ever come to terms with the inarguable fact that every concrete application of scientific exploration and research inevitably improves and diminishes the human condition at the same time, and that scientific visionaries are not resources to be exploited by those whose intelligence is inferior, and whose responsibilities do not really exceed national security and petty scheming, no matter how large the scale of that scheming? But I digress...) Humanity isn't at its best when impotently yearning for what it cannot but misremember, and for what never was as we think today it used to be, or when it spins its wheels fantasizing about what could have been and what ought to be yet isn't.
Who among us hasn't at times longed to go back and choose differently if we could only have known then what we know now? Even I have (I hope harmlessly) frittered away time in such a way in my youth. But the hours and energy spent doing so in my humble opinion would be better and more effectively harnessed in pursuit of making whatever use of what we can remember and do no more than remember about the past for the sake of what could be the optimal future an accurate assessment of now can help us work towards. If life hands you lemons, is it really worthwhile to strive for some pie-in-the-sky plan to go back in time and refuse them in favor of some unknowable options (while, as such scenarios inevitably have it, ignoring the law of unintended consequences), or do we just make lemonade in the here and now?
As I understand it, there are as often put forth by physicists (with plenty of heated argument) three theoretical ways in which time travel could be accomplished, but I see no point in exploring them or possible scenarios in which they could be realized. The power in going back in order to choose differently is an illusion, a mirage, a pipe dream. The real, attainable power, mastered by so many individuals every day around the world, lies in coming to terms with what is so as to arrive at what we hope can be and what ought to be -- what cannot but be. But of course, this wouldn't be the first time humanity, particularly the federal government, has wasted untold millions or billions, has taken so much time -- years -- that could be better spent, and crushed its own feelings and others' lives, to attempt and predictably fail, when it could have much more cheaply and quickly simply practiced acceptance.
Oh, well. If the poor timing and outlandish expenditures are good enough for government work...
"The past is a place of reference, not of residence." - Willie Jolley
"What a blessing it is not to know the future." - Me
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