RUTLEDGE: Limited view of time creates racial discord

Time, once you get past the benevolent mask of Father Time and the atomic precision of modern time, is a tricky thing and, I submit, a fascinating study.

Time travel fascinates our creative sensibility to the Nth degree, judging by the staying power of time travel motifs in novels like H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" (1895) and Octavia E. Butler's "Kindred" (1979). Recent Hollywood fare allows us to escape to "Star Wars" (1977) in a futuristic setting "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . .," "boldly" "Star Trek" (2009) to futures "where no person has gone before," leap far-away back to "10,000 B.C." (2008) to the dawn of civilization, or do a quick hopscotch-jump forward to escape childhood and become "Big" (1988) or witness the "Armageddon" (1998) of the world, again, in "2012" (2009).

Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) technology makes possible the wonderful time-travel odysseys into the past and future, replicating the ancient storytelling of epic mythology – remember Brad Pitt as Achilles in Warner Bros. "Troy" (2004), a CGI-enhancement of Homer's written version of a far older performance? – with an increasingly realistic and epical intensity right on time for our HDTVs. Indeed, that ancient bardic artistry has been objectified, digitized, commodified and mass-reproduced by sciences of chemistry, physics, architectural engineering, economics and advertising, among others.

But the objective measures here also mask covering subjective states of mind. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity (E=mc2) suggests, to me, that time can be subjective, relative, tricky and, thus, potentially dangerous. This is especially true when we confuse time with the mask of modern times, which we often accept without ever scrutinizing the "official" history-making forces that compress time and make it linear, progressive, benevolent. Thus, a very friendly Father Time, with his long, white beard, reminds us of the good things and helps us to forget. "Forget the struggles of life," he says, his voice smooth like caramel and his breath cinnamon-sweet, "and don't worry, be happy now and cheerfully look forward to a brighter day." Forget the struggles of others. Forget the deeper time that makes us pause to consider its scale, the connectedness of everything, our smallness, our common humanity . . .

As the recently deceased French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss indicated through his lifelong work, human memory reveals the same basic structures and myths when you bypass the mask of present times and look for the deep essence.

The relationship of human memory and mythology occupies artists, literary scholars and philosophers for this reason, for just as some remarkable events sear into our memories, it is not uncommon for unpleasant and traumatic memories to be relegated to the RECYCLE BINS of our hard drives. The "true" and "official" story, measured by objective time, is shaped in this way by individuals and societies. This is fine because it is human; however, when this temporal awareness becomes too flat, linear, progressive and self-centered, that's when alarm sirens start to grow in intensity.

When once we had the old alarm clocks sounding Brriinnggg!-ing wake-up calls to take affirmative action, relatively and metaphorically speaking, now we have alarms that soothe us with the sounds of pleasant dreams. Perhaps our favorite talk-show voices, maybe New Age, lite jazz, classical, soft rock musak or, in my household, "nature" sounds: rain, ocean, thunder, summer night, rainforest and waterfall.

The tricky, dangerous nature of time shows itself in such dreamy modern moments.

Consider, for example, a recent opinion poll on race and President Barack Obama reported by CNN. Apparently, following African-Americans' remarkable exuberance about the prospect of overcoming racism during the 2008 election campaign (about 67%), their optimism has gone back to levels they held, ironically, during the dreams and hopes of the Civil Rights era.

Following Obama's election, the sale of guns and ammunition has served notice as a referendum on his success, causing far too many Americans' memories to leap far away "Back to the Future" (1985; 1989; 1990): "back" to the time of pure, individual existence that the Founders' codified in the Second Amendment as the right to bear arms; and toward the "future" bearing (semi)automatic guns with laser-guided scopes and armor-piercing ammo.