Do you wish you could return to a moment
from your past?
Yes.
But do I really? Let’s consider what this means for a moment. Returning to a
moment in my past means that I’d get a chance to travel through time, which is
awesome. I could use my knowledge of the future to help humanity as a whole, in
addition to myself. Could I really change the course of human events?
There
are two dominant theories of time travel in literature: the branching and
single timeline interpretations. The latter, which is famously used in Harry Potter, says that time travel
cannot change ‘present’ events, as any changes made have already happened. This doesn’t mean that time travel is useless,
but it does mean that a return to the past will not change the course of events
I am already familiar with. The branching timeline interpretation disagrees
with this, maintaining that any changes in the past resonate through the
future, changing history through the creation of an ‘alternate timeline’. Under
this theory, time travel can be devastating and may only be undertaken with the
greatest care. In Ray Bradbury’s A Sound
of Thunder, a man accidentally stepping on a butterfly in the past drastically
changes the results of an American presidential election millions of years
later.
Whether
I go back to my past or not depends entirely on which theory we operate under.
In a single timeline universe, I’d go back to my greatest mistakes and attempt
to remedy them as well as warn a few people about upcoming disasters. Even
though I know I cannot change things from how they went in my memory, it is
possible that I can prevent things from having been worse. In a branching
timeline universe, I most definitely would stay home. It’s simply too risky.
The chances are too high that I’d ruin everything for myself or even humanity
as a whole by accidentally changing something. Things have worked out okay
overall without time traveling interference (I think). It seems foolish to risk
that in an attempt to fix things, although it is very tempting.
This decision does lead to an interesting moral question, however. Is it better to be responsible for deaths caused in an attempt to save others, or to be responsible for deaths caused by not attempting to save them in the first place? As with most interesting moral questions, I believe it depends entirely on context. In the case of this time travel, I have no way of knowing the odds of success or failure. It is almost certain that most changes would have both positive and negative consequences, but I cannot tell any more than that. With only that knowledge, I believe that it is better to be safe than sorry, and thus not traveling is the better option.
(Sorry about the weird spacing thing, my blog is acting up.)
I love how you looked at time travel theories and the implications thereof, as opposed to just launching into a story. I think your discussion of the morality of time travel and your approach to it counts as personal, and you should keep that essence. That said, I think you might want to talk more about yourself, maybe elaborating on what mistakes you would fix or adding some anecdotes about your past. I feel that that kind of material is crucial to a personal essay.
ReplyDeleteHi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Miriam; I like the exploratory conversation about time travel instead of going for the straight-forward description of a moment that you would change. I also think you could easily weave an actual event in your life as the example instead of the man that steps on the butterfly—that way you could explain the theories of time travel but still slightly avoid the specific topic. And time travel is a popular topic, so more than likely, with the addition of the references to two well-known novels, you have appealed to wide range of audiences.
I really appreciate the different angle from which you tackled this prompt. I assumed, initially, that it was fairly straightforward--asking whether there was a specific time in the past you'd ideally wish to revisit--but you've proved that thought to be a narrow-minded misconception. Thus, your post was very "fun", for lack of a better word, to read. I enjoyed your explication of the implications of both methods, as well as your analysis pertaining to the two of them.
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