Chapter Sixty Five
Bootstrapping
The expression of, “Lifting oneself up by one’s
bootstraps,” often misused by individualists, capitalists, and fascists is an
actual physical impossibility. Absurdity
is the actual point of the expression. You
cannot lift yourself up by your bootstraps.
Try it sometime if you don’t believe me.
That said, outside of Newtonian mechanics and socioeconomics,
there is a field where bootstrapping (a verb form of bootstrap that
encompassing the lifting oneself up idea) is a thing. Time Travel.
It’s well used in science fiction, though one of my favorite versions is
the myth of Platinum Man’s uniform.
Originally, we are told through interviews with his own personal
propagandist, that somehow or other his adoptive Earth mother cut and sewed his
impenetrable swaddling blankets they found in.
Later, I heard a different, far more believable version.
When the teenager that would grow up to become the
Earth’s Greatest Superhero (you, know, before the was beaten to death by a
Russian billionaire) was approached by a group of young superheroes from the
future, he traveled with them to their time to help them. Upon arriving in the future, they took the
young alien to the Platinum Man Museum and explained that he would become a
superhero. They gave him the original
uniform that had been preserved in the museum.
He helped those future heroes and returned to his time equipped with the
uniform and superhero experience. So, in
this story, Platinum Man’s uniform was bootstrapped into existence. Where did it originally come from? Was the first iteration the version where
some Midwestern farmer’s wife with impossible sewing skill made it from indestructible
alien fabric? Or was it really
bootstrapped, always existing in a time loop, preexistent and eternal? It’s fun to think about.
The universe is like Platinum Man’s suit.
© 2020 by Diana Hignutt
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