What With Time Travel and All...
Several weeks ago I was reading viewer comments about Lost and was amused by the number of comments in which people were upset about how the show had gone Sci-Fi. Huh...what? You're just now realizing that this show was science fiction?? In the first two episodes of the show a large unseen force shakes the jungle trees and then apparently snatched the co-pilot out of the front of the plane and then dumps his mangled body in the tops of the trees and it wasn't obvious that the show was...well...science fiction. And what about the paralyzed Locke who suddenly gained the ability to walk when he woke up after the crash? The smoke monster? The guy in the hatch pushing a button every 108 minutes to keep the world safe? And so on and so on. But throw in a little time travel and suddenly the show is science fiction. I guess time travel just smacked of science fiction and everything else just seemed subtle?
My entire understanding about the area of time travel stems solely from watching science fiction...so there's a fair bet that my understanding is lacking in just about every possible aspect, but it's still a fascinating subject.
On the Stargate (SG-1 and Atlantis) side, time travel is possible under the right circumstances...namely the passing of an artificially created worm hole through a significant solar flare event and oops...there you are in the past. Star Trek also involved the sun in the achieving time warp and sling shotting oneself into the past. Both, however, dabble into other ways of time travel, but I don't recall anything approaching a scientific explanation regarding how it was achieved. Over in Primeval, they regard time as just another dimension so every point in time theoretically exists all at the same time. The other big debate is about causality. Typically, there is great concern about changing something in the past that would then change the future. They debate paradoxes such as going back into the past and killing your own grandfather before he fathered your parent....if you existed to do this how could go you back and do something that meant you wouldn't have been born to do what you just did. Lost has been different in that the Farraday character has, until recently, maintained that you couldn't change anything...whatever happened, happened. And no action you can take would change anything that had happened. Sayid tried to change the past when he shot Benjamin Linus as a child to keep him from growing up into the monster that they knew in the "present". However, a couple of his fellow survivors actually took action to save him...the same actions that change him so he actually becomes the monster. See...whatever happened, happened. They actually do allow things to be changed...sort of. When Desmond had a vision of Charlie dying, he took steps to prevent the event that would have led to his death. The result? The next day he had a vision of Charlie dying with the only change being the manner in which he would die. So, he could make a change, but all it did was delay what was going to happen.
If we could time travel and if we could change things, should we? On the surface, it would be easy to say that someone should go back in time and kill Hitler before his rise to power. He was a horrible monster who led to the deaths of millions of people so what could be wrong with changing that. It seems like a clear cut decision. The problem is that while we know the path of history, we have no way to determine what the new history would be. As hard as it seems, we might actually make thins worse...we might, however unintentionally, create a worse scenario...give rise to a new evil. I think if we had the ability, we'd probably use it, but I'm not sure that we would be better off for it. I think it might be better off that if time travel is possible that we never figure it out.
My entire understanding about the area of time travel stems solely from watching science fiction...so there's a fair bet that my understanding is lacking in just about every possible aspect, but it's still a fascinating subject.
On the Stargate (SG-1 and Atlantis) side, time travel is possible under the right circumstances...namely the passing of an artificially created worm hole through a significant solar flare event and oops...there you are in the past. Star Trek also involved the sun in the achieving time warp and sling shotting oneself into the past. Both, however, dabble into other ways of time travel, but I don't recall anything approaching a scientific explanation regarding how it was achieved. Over in Primeval, they regard time as just another dimension so every point in time theoretically exists all at the same time. The other big debate is about causality. Typically, there is great concern about changing something in the past that would then change the future. They debate paradoxes such as going back into the past and killing your own grandfather before he fathered your parent....if you existed to do this how could go you back and do something that meant you wouldn't have been born to do what you just did. Lost has been different in that the Farraday character has, until recently, maintained that you couldn't change anything...whatever happened, happened. And no action you can take would change anything that had happened. Sayid tried to change the past when he shot Benjamin Linus as a child to keep him from growing up into the monster that they knew in the "present". However, a couple of his fellow survivors actually took action to save him...the same actions that change him so he actually becomes the monster. See...whatever happened, happened. They actually do allow things to be changed...sort of. When Desmond had a vision of Charlie dying, he took steps to prevent the event that would have led to his death. The result? The next day he had a vision of Charlie dying with the only change being the manner in which he would die. So, he could make a change, but all it did was delay what was going to happen.
If we could time travel and if we could change things, should we? On the surface, it would be easy to say that someone should go back in time and kill Hitler before his rise to power. He was a horrible monster who led to the deaths of millions of people so what could be wrong with changing that. It seems like a clear cut decision. The problem is that while we know the path of history, we have no way to determine what the new history would be. As hard as it seems, we might actually make thins worse...we might, however unintentionally, create a worse scenario...give rise to a new evil. I think if we had the ability, we'd probably use it, but I'm not sure that we would be better off for it. I think it might be better off that if time travel is possible that we never figure it out.
Labels: Time travel
posted by Hope at 7:39 AM
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