Have you ever said something or done something that you were not entirely proud of or maybe you did not say "hi" to the cute girl or boy waiting in line? We have all felt that regretful discomfort feeling of "what if." Throughout history time travel has been a fascination of human reasoning because we all would like to go back in time and do something differently. But, assuming time travel would be technologically possibly, would time travel even be logical? Would it not create some vortex or mess with the overall chronology of time? Some of these questions are asked by many contemporary physicists and philosophers that indulge on the "what if" feeling. Michel Gondry, director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), brings a different type of time traveling that may not be so far from the distant future. In his movie, the possibility of erasing parts of one's memory is possible, giving the patient a new start in life. Though this is not seen as the more traditional form of time traveling, Gondry does open the window to exploring the "what if" feeling in a more subtle and less universally effecting form.Richard Taylor, author of Space and Time, describe the events that have occurred and will occur as changeless because time and space are two distinct things in relation to one another. In his literature he writes,
"time and space, we should speak of temporal and spatial relationships between things. And the temporal relationships between things and events it should now be noted, do not change... Viewing the matter this way, then the whole history of the world, together with its entire future, can be regarded as fixed and changeless, for the relationship which any event whatever has to every other event that ever occurs, whether past, present, or future, is quite unalterable"
So, is gong back in time and altering an event to effect the future possible? Taylor claims that the past and the future will not change because these are ideas that are separate but linked by the present. This is something that is reoccurring in the movie because even though they erased parts of their memories they are still ultimately linked by the present that was (or the past). Taylor is saying that something in the near future will become the present and the past. So, it technically does not matter what occurs because time is in a linear setting therefore "pure becoming" because one cannot alter this stable aspect of time. If time travel were possible and someone went back in time and did something to alter the future then it would be technically possible because time would continue. In a sense its like the movie because one would go into the memory and erase the parts that they no longer wanted. Therefore creating a new beginning a new life and a new direction in the present that will ultimately become the future and ultimately the past..
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteAny given day you'll come across someone who is plagued with the drowning thoughts of "what if's". I did have those thoughts when I was younger about the regrets and what if be I learned two things; follow your gut and no more regrets! It was interesting reading about Taylor's perspective on Time and changing the past. In trying to grasp Taylor's point about changing timelines, I did have some.... disconnects but I could see what Taylor was trying to get to when he was talking about "pure becoming". Do you have any aspects in life where you remembered times where you wondered, "What if?"
I think pondering the ¨what ifs¨ is a big part of the idea of time traveling. People´s desires to have re-dos based off of this what if hypothetical ignites wanting to try to make the possibility a reality. Many great inventions start with the question ¨what if¨. What if I could talk to my mom who´s in Texas while sitting on my couch in New York? Now we have telephones. Nevertheless, the idea of time travel as Taylor so bluntly stated is just an idea. There´s no stand-still were all our lives are frozen in ¨time¨because time itself is a construct of man. Time has meaning and purpose because man has given it.
ReplyDeleteHmmm that is very interesting you said that "time has meaning and purpose because man has given it," because Aristotle once said that Time does not have a beginning or ending. If humans have arbitrarily created time to fit our needs then could we really go back in time to an exact moment? The reason I ask this is because humans might have declared it year 2016 but could it actually be another year that we do not know of, the actual time?
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