The Past And Future Are Alive By Rick Doble

  The Past & Future Are Alive  

Text except as noted is by Rick Doble. All images are from commons.wikimedia.org unless otherwise noted.

I do not believe in any legacy. 

 The past is dead and gone. 

 N. R. Narayana Murthy 

 For me, the past is dead. 

 Can't go back. 

 Jonathan Ames 

 Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) 

 The future's not ours to see 

 Que sera, sera 

 From Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956 

 Don't tell me the past is dead 

 and the future is not ours to see: 

 "The Story of a Word" from The Story of Mankind by Henrik Van Loon.

The Latin word mater which comes from the Sanskrit (above) is the source of the words mother and matter in English. http://wordinfo.info/unit/1261 

Every word you speak and every letter of the alphabet, is thousands of years old. The origins of many Western languages are perhaps 10,000 years old with Indo-European roots. Without the historical development of words that we use everyday, we would be unable to think and communicate as we do now. In addition without your learning your own language in the past when you were young, you would not be able to read or understand this writing you are reading at this moment So the past is quite alive -- we live it everyday.

 Without the past 

 the present 
 cannot be understood 

 and has no meaning 

The French animated silent film of 1902, A Trip to the Moon, foreshadowed the actual moon missions 70 years later, even though such a journey was considered pure fantasy when the movie was made. For example, space capsules used in the actual moon missions by the USA look almost exactly like the capsules in the French animated film (see above and next). This cannot be coincidence -- and it is through such 'work of the imagination'  (my phrase) that the dreams of the past influences the accomplishments of the future.

 Without the future 

 the present 
 has no purpose 

Apollo 17 space capsule above the moon in 1972.

Four space probes, Pioneer 10 & 11 and Voyager 1 & 2 launched in the 1970s, are now at or past the edge of our solar system. It will be the task of future generations to send humans to explore our planets and eventually other stars and beyond.