Time travel's only course

People continually dismiss or outright argue with me when I tell them about the nature of time. Simultaneously my knowledge of time isn't represented in any big theories as far as I know, and Wikipedia certainly doesn't have anything about it. So I'm going to post here something I figured out when I was 12 years old. The nature of time and its application to time travel. If there's something wrong with what I say, please point it out, if you have a question, please ask. If it makes sense to you, ponder about why this information is wholly unavailable to the public. Is this novel information, have I put together something new for the world?

First I want to dispel the "common" views of time and time travel. I just read what Wikipedia had to say about theories of time travel (back in time) and they were put together in a couple general categories.

=Alternate Dimensions=

These are touted as "paradox proof" theories because they completely ignore "time travel" and propose the ability to enter an alternate "dimension" that may coincidentally look exactly like the past. Essentially these theories rely on an unknown and entirely imaginary view of the universe. Similar to Russell's Teapot and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the design is based on the lack of evidence, not actual evidence, thereby ensuring the theory can't be proven wrong. There may be alternate dimensions, but there's literally no evidence of it. However this is irrelevant and basically a cop-out to the question "Is it possible to move back in time?" with the customized add-on "In the same dimension".

=Paradoxes prevent certain events from occuring=

Admitting that certain actions taken by travelling back in time would be paradoxical (like killing your grandfather before he gets your grandma pregnant) these theories suggest you can still go back in time, but somehow those paradoxes won't happen. Theories along this line don't entirely dodge the theoretical paradoxes of time travel (like the dimension theories), they try to contain them. Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder simply and inexplicably declares since you are one person, you can't go back and meet yourself, so if you do go back to some distant past, you'll pass yourself returning. This fit in the narrow confines of the short story but didn't even begin to address what would happen if you went back to your own childhood. Interesting to note that this short story is where the term "butterfly effect" originates. In the story, the main character accidentally steps on a butterfly during the age of dinosaurs, comes back to his time and finds there's a different president, words are spelled different, etc. The movie Time Cop suggested you could see your past self, but not touch. Again, this is really a limited explanation, saying the same matter can't occupy the same space, but no person is ever "the same" all people are at all times in motion and changing, and in Time Cop there's like a 20 year age difference, certainly by then their skin wouldn't even be of the same cells. The latest big budget adaptation of The Time Machine delt with the paradox of taking actions in the past that would prevent the time machine from being invented. The guy builds a time machine to save his love, but if he saves her, he won't build the machine, so when he does save her, something else just kills her. Kinda like that inexplicable series of films "Final Destination", there's no explanation for "who" is making people die, and even if people are meant to die, isn't extending their life for even a fraction of a second already a negation of necessity? I mean, if you were going to die by mugger, instead get hit by a car, won't there be implicit unavoidable side effects, like a good driver feeling bad for the rest of his life, and an evil mugger just killing someone else? Basically all these variations imply that you can change some things but not others, but the very ability to change anything, makes everything possible. If you can save someone's life for a minute, you've saved them nonetheless. Do it a thousand, or a hundred thousand times, and you'll have bought your time paradox. Or to put it in another way, these theories give a moralisitc quality to time. As if time gives a shit if someone dies, but also doesn't care if someone from the wrong time is just walking around. If there were a force that could force events to occur, why would it let you do anything at all? This is elemental theism, like in old Greek myths where mortals "fight" universal forces.

=There's no going forward=

I'm using movie references, because the theories aren't any more complicated, and at least films try to hammer out the kinks. A good one is the idea that you can only go back, not forward. Because forward doesn't exist yet. I love this kernal of conception because if you build on it, it reveals the flaws in all these theories. But I won't get ahead of myself. Time Cop sort of followed this, but the movie opens with guys from the future killing Van Damme's wife. So the question would be, if people can come from your future, then if you hop into their time machine and go to their present, then haven't you just gone into the future? The "Terminator" films try to cover up this flaw by saying only human tissue can go through, and that their machine only goes back in time. But again, it doesn't really solve anything. Because if at any time anyone can come from any future, then at all times, the future is just an open door.

Overall these theories create as many paradoxes as they try to negate. Who was the father of the first John Connor (infinite time loop paradox, although I came up with a smart-ass answer to this, the first John Connor, the one we see as an adult in the first movie had no idea that his buddy would nail his mom, in his time line his dad is just some random guy. Sending back his buddy broke his continuum, and he stopped existing, however his buddy got Sarah Connor pregnant, and 50/50 chance it was a boy, she wrongly assumed this was THE John Connor, and so names this boy, essentially the real Connor's half brother, John Connor, and this kid has to live up to the real Connor's legacy, paradox averted. But I've really digressed here).

=The Intentional Paradox=

I flat out don't like time travel stories with this attitude. The Terminator is one of these, trying to claim that John Connor could only exist after his adult friend from the future bangs his mom. That's probably why I came up with that alternate possibility. Another one of these is Professor Peabody and his Wayback Machine, I don't know where the hell that cartoon came from but when I was younger it was attached to episodes of Underdog. Anyway so Peabody is a dog, and there's a stupid boy who's is assistant or something and they keep going back in time to make things that already turned out fine, turn out fine. The way it's presented is that if they hadn't gone back, things would have been different than what we know them to be, as if the past was waiting for Peabody and the idiot to fix it. The television series Heroes pulled this shit too, a time-travelling "Hiro" goes back to the age of Samurai, and finds out his hero from history is an immortal douchebag alcoholic Limey. Seeing that the drunk couldn't pull off the legendary acts he was known for, Hiro fills in for him...but then how could Hiro ever hear the story in the first place? Intentional Paradox, that's how. Bullshit. The newest time travel movie, Hot Tub Time Machine, among other insane, impossible, and absurd ideas about time travel, did its own intentional paradox, when a kid goes into the past, and is then reborn as the same person but with a different dad, right after said different dad altered the time line to destroy the kid. Jesus that was stupidity at its finest. Still a funny movie, on DVD or BluRay now.


=Misc=

The fun of time travel stories is that they pretty much just make up rules without any factual reasoning to fit the plot. Back to the Future had a ball with the idea that if you change the past, you can view its effects while it's happening, like seeing photographs or people disappear, or words in newspapers change, equally speculatory are films that suggest you won't see the changes until you get back, like Time Cop, and The Butterfly Effect, however even between those two films there's a huge difference, when Time Cop Van Damme went back to the future, he was surprised to see how things were changed and had no memory of the alternate timeline (this is a common assumption) in The Butterfly, when Ashton goes back to the future, he immediately acquires all the memories. Another common one in many stories, even if not overty acknowledged is that even after someone goes to the past, the present continues. Sometimes this is an extremely important plot point, as it was in Star Trek: TNG's series finale, 3 ships from 3 times had to go to the same place in space at the same time, yeah, how could it be the same "time" if they're definitively separate times? Most of the other examples I can't think of off the top of my head but they are all tv/cartoon interpretations, where the "ticking clock" somehow keeps ticking even with the ability to travel through time. By the way, I hate that so many entire series' of cartoons rely solely on the "ticking clock" for plot drive.

=Why time travel theories are created=

People imagine a past that doesn't exist, but because it did exist at one point they conceive of a way to return to it. The time machine, is really just a manifestation of memories. It is a projection in narrative, that is a recreation of the human mind. The cultural perception of a time machine allows one to revisit the past, as a present self (this is memory incarnate) this machine also allows a person to see the future (our mortality and daily grind suck the fun out of our regular path to the future), or change a past event (desire and regret). The best proof I can offer that the common portrayal of time travel is purely self-serving wish fulfillment is that in all stories of time travel, the method of travel is accessible to only a very small number of people. If time travel were possible in the way it's portrayed in all science and stories, why wouldn't there be millions of time travellers? Why wouldn't there be a total collapse of society and functional reality? A while back I addressed this by writing a short story that takes place in a world where anyone can travel through time, so "reality" becomes as fleeting as a flicker from a match.

I love time travel stories, not for their science fiction, but the underlying goal of the story, to seek answers that can never be had in our real lives (what will the distant future be like or what if a different choice had been made) and to allow people a second chance at something that burns inside them, an everlasting regret. The "Back to the Future" films deal with this, amidst all the bitching about affecting past/present/future, by the end every character's life has been completely altered to their satisfaction. So it is the narrative, and journey of imagination, that I love in time travel stories, but they are all wrong. And now I will tell you how.


=Joshua's epiphany in 7th grade=

So I was at my house and the brother of my friend comes to the door. I see him through the screen door, and I walk towards it. Bam! The nature of time hits me. Almost a "Eureka" moment, but to this day I don't know what the trigger was exactly. I didn't shout eureka, I calmy said aloud "This is it, there is only now".

I had realized that our common perception of time is that it is a place. That there is a now, and a then. That we actually "pass through" time. Whether it's conceptially continuous or fragmented, it doesn't matter. The common portrayal is that there is a past just waiting for someone to visit.

But time is not space. Time is a measurement and a function of motion. That is, if there were no motion in this universe, even if it were full of matter, then time would not exist. Time is effectively the acknowledgement that the arrangement of the universe alters. And this is what most time travel theories get wrong.

To put it bluntly, you can't build a machine to "go" into the past, because there is no past. This world IS the past. There is no duel 1985/1955 this is 1985 and 1955, and all other time, past present and future. What most humans regard as "the past" is psychologically another world. But in terms of true functionality, there is only one time, now. It has always been now, and it will always be now. Time is a measurement of objects just rearranging themselves. Every atom of your childhood puppy is still in this world. Every atom of your future grandchildren is in this world right now, maybe some of it is in a tree, much of it is in the soil, in the sun, in the air. There is only now, but your childhood puppy suffered the effects of mechanical breakdown, and lost the ability to manipulate existing matter in its image. Eventually, things you are stepping on, mowing, breathing, drinking, will be pieces of your great great grandchildren. They are here now, as is your dog, but not in the forms of your paychological conception. Human minds create a chronology to make thinking easier. Imagine seeing a cup of tea, as both plants and mud, a satisfying drink, and broken glass, urine, and a breath of energy in a person. Past, present, and future. I know I'm teetering on Buddhism at this point, but Buddha was right in this regard. The nature of existence is motion, yet our minds tend to create stagnant perceptions.


Reality is quite different. There is no 1257 that can just be dialed up in a phonebooth, no 1985 that can be "returned" to in a car. There is always now, and now is always.

But, alas, this does allow for one way to "time travel" provided the technology existed, if you had the power, however that may be, to rearrange all energy in the universe, AND, if you had some blueprint, or tracing method of the arrangement of all energy, matter, etc. from a fixed point, and providing for the matter necessary to both create this world, and put yourself in it (thus requiring some compromise) you could effectively travel "back in time". But it is in this requirement that you might realize a few things, 1. All those paradoxes about time travel are bullshit. If you could recreate the past with yourself in it, then it is, by definition not really the past, so if you happened to kill your grandfather, there is no paradox, your real grandfather was destroyed the moment you manipulated the entire universe, and this recreation of your grandfather might have produced a child like your father, and that man might have produced a child like you, but it isn't you, because the only way to "go back" in the past, and "be" in the past requires keeping yourself with you, essentially stealing those atoms and molecules from the wind and trees and shit, so it can never be "your" past, as time is always now, and this recreation can't be 100% accurate if you're not dismantled in the process. Those aren't your atoms, you're borrowing them, and some of what you call you, was a part of your mother and father and other parts were in other arrangements, so that to ever truly recreate the past, no one, and no thing could "visit" or observe or "travel" there. Well, as long as we assume energy can neither be created nor destroyed, otherwise that would be one of those teapot unanswerables.

I beg anyone to tell me why I'm wrong. Although I'm not looking for theories. Because, you know, teapot again, I don't care what the teapot has to say. What I have written is just a blunt observation of how energy transfers get labelled as eras.



=Random=

I mentioned Time Cop a lot, probably because there aren't a lot of stories that take as many liberties with time travel, most films use time travel as a pretext to create a "fish out of water" or redemption story, Time Cop didn't play that noise, the time travel was the story. It was Van Damme's most successful film earning over $100 million globally in '94. The movie takes place with the "present" set in 1994 and 2004.

I alluded to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, making a total of 2 written stories, 1 tv show, and 6 films not counting sequels. I'm sure I could have pulled out many more, every incarnation of Star Trek, and many of the films use time travel in various ways. I didn't even want to get into Bill and Ted's version, where it's more like the anti-butterfly effect, and was it Bogus Journey where they just keep dropping time travel cages on each other? That was ridiculous. But Bogus Journey was all fucked up, instead of just time travel, it had aliens, God, heaven, hell, the Grimm Reaper, mother fucking evil robots, Jesus, oh and excessive yet mundane time travel.