Regardless of speculation I don't believe that humans will ever be able to time travel, even though we can imagine such a concept and believe that advanced technologies will make this possible. I think part of the reason why we think that time travel is possible is that a strong idea has been implanted in our psyche by science fiction accounts, which fuels our desire about the possibilities of space and what lies beyond our sphere in the universe. We also have a three part division in the way we perceive time. It has been divided into the past - that which has been documented as what has gone before or preceded us, the present (immediate lived experience) and the future (a site of possibilities) and we have made these states of being or time frame solid in the sense that we most likely perceive them as containers in an otherwise void, almost palpable to our inquiring minds. I would argue that the continuum that is life lived is always in a state of presence and it is only via reflection, memory, oral histories or documentation that we know of the past. We know also of a time in which we did not exist. It is well known that even in that state of being present we can call to mind the past and a possible, if not imaginary future that we make real by calling it to mind. I say again, the present is all that is real in any moment of this continuum.
That future you imagine has already occurred whilst I am writing this. It is, by virtue of the fact that we divide the continuum of life by time pieces and calendars which measure out experience in minute lots that affects our idea of time as an evolution, as something running always forward and dropping behind it, like bits of straw falling off the back of a moving truck, some piece of information or experience that becomes a drop in the well of past time. Equally, when we think of the future it is a space of possibilities generally including desires or wishes of the person fantasizing about that future. Of course there are some things that we know will occur and it is based on patterns of existence and repetition that tells us at least some of what the future will look like and one of those things is that we know that life expires. Knowledge of our future existence then must include the concept of our demise. So, thinking about our own individual selves (which can be extended to others) we can say that within this continuum and in this moment we are a historical being within a certain framework and we will continue to be historical beings until we are dead and are no longer experiencing anything or contributing to the experience of others who are also in a sense traveling on that continuum. Our desire to know what lies ahead is understandable, we enjoy the idea of having the upper hand on life, which is, after all out of our control.
We know flow continues because we imagine and look forward to things however, I don't imagine the future as a repository already filled, although there are probably some who think of the future in this way. The immensity of the present continuously flowing into a future state tells me that that future just as quickly passes through present consciousness into that dark well of that which has already gone. We fragment experience(s) because we can bring something into being that had no prior existence. This entity will remain until it deteriorates or is destroyed. There is no doubting at all that there is duration. As such, we have a conversation with coming events by making things come into that sphere. But the future in my mind is not a place, rather the present moment continues to devour the future indeed the future and the past are integral to present experience. The present then a consciousness like a black hole in the universe, an attractor that draws all in, in its immense energy to absorb.
If there is flow, then there will be a future and we know this because this very moment is a continuum of the past. The issue is not whether the future is possible or whether it will occur, but whether we can pin it down as a substance that's already there as a thing contained. That future, already imagined and understood as a given, or fact, has passed into what was and will never be again. It cannot be exactly replicated. The possibilities for the future are endless, so how therefore can it be fixed?
Let me return just briefly to the concept of the future in science fiction accounts. It is a place densely populated with generally dystopian ideas about humanity and its controlling technologies. It is a repository of fears about what will happen to our fragile ontology amongst proliferating machines that we have created. It is rarely a happy place and this may be why ideas about the future continue to inspire. Those who pursue the idea of time travel admit that traveling back into the past would not enable anyone to change any aspect of that past since it is fixed and since each individual did not exist in that past how could they affect that past to benefit themselves in a future time. I would argue that (and I don't believe this) if the future is a place that is also fixed with events and things then isn't it already given and therefore not a future at all but part of all that has passed? What would be the reason for desiring to see the future if not to influence the present moment in relation to ethics or, on a more sinister note, to having the edge on a competitor. What if we positively knew that the universe was to end in one year. Surely the concept of the future would be compromised in that it would suddenly become finite. Because we cannot perceive of a sudden collapse of the future into nothingness, we perceive it as endless and this enables us to continue to believe that it is out there like space occupying a temporal spatial location that we might somehow access. No matter how much we meter out time it slips by virtually unnoticed.
Our concept of the future is so dependent upon the past in that there is solid, material evidence of the existence of the past in artifacts and human and animal remains. The past then is something that can be touched or held in the hands. It is monuments to past heroes and stone graves of our ancestors. It is narratives that link culture to material thing that bear witness to lives lived. And although the future will no doubt contain those things, which will be discovered and documented at a forward time, it is in no way an absolute given. A future time populated by machines may mean that human past may mean absolutely nothing, resulting in no safe keeping of the evidence of human existence. Of course all of this pure speculation, a thought bubble this morning after seeing an episode on Catalyst last night that was discussing those currently seeking to construct a technological time machine.
My conclusion is that since the human brain has the capacity to imagine possible futures it imagines those floating ideas to be solid. It is this that makes us imagine we might somehow, one day travel to the future, when I argue we are already time machines that move between past and future in our consciousness of present experience.
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