The Time Machine

You travel hundreds of years into the past. You find yourself in the midst of redundant conversations - the brightest people on the planet are fiercely debating the infinite attributes of God.

It is liberating and challenging experience. You have entered a 'smooth space' intellectually: because you realise that these conversations are nonsensical, you are not bound to participate. You do not have strong views on trivia. You are not attached to a particular position in this 'space'. You - dear reader - are untroubled by the infinite attributes of God. Transported back in time you realise that the space in which you are attached to a position has yet to open up.

But what do you do? What would you do? Almost certainly you wouldn't go around challenging people. These people may believe utter nonsense, but that doesn't mean some of them aren't smarter than you. And you are smart enough to realise that people will not simply capitulate if you quietly whisper 'what you are talking about, is gibberish'. No - not even if you rattle the cages and ring the bells for decades. That is not how people work: people change their attachments slowly, painstakingly. Even a single soul's salvation could be a lifetime's work. And to what end? To prematurely advance someone to a place they will be hundreds of years from now? To leave them as isolated and adrift as you now are?

So conversational space becomes peculiarly smooth: since significance is levelled you are free to choose whatever trivia you prefer. Are you merely to mark time? Will you leave little messages lying around like so many time-capsules, so that you can imagine your ghost saying 'I told you so!'. Or perhaps you will be interested in food - or you take a keen interest in gardening, or archery. The theologians see you as a 'bon viveur', untroubled by serious concerns. They gather darkly to rage and rant over their godly theses.

Your perspective brings with it a new point of view: even in your own time you are as a medieval theologian from another standpoint - as viewed by a time-traveller such as yourself. The villain of the piece, after all, is gravity. The same anchor that holds you to the future will in time hold you to the past.