What if you could go back in time?!
By gbsomerville, 29th Jul 2010 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutWritingPersonal Experiences
If you had the chance to go back in time and change something, would you do it?
What If?
If you had the chance to go back and change something would you do it? A question which many people would instantly answer "yes". They would kill Hitler stop World War 2 and while they were at it find out who really killed JFK. Sounds great and easy. Or if we had the ability to we could go back and save a loved one from dying go to a past experience and do things differently. Go and fix a mistake you made in your life. It would be brilliant if we could do this right?
While there are obvious upsides to changing the past we also must consider the downsides. Travelling and changing the past could have disastrous effects on the future and seeing as we have no way of telling the future we can only guess what the consequences could be. By going back in time and stopping Hitler we could unwittingly create a time paradox. The Jews saved from Hitlers sadistic rule would change the timestream completely. Everyone they came into contact with would have their futures changed for better or worse. This is no longer merely saving lives this is now playing God with everybody's future.
One counter argument to this is that our actions in the present also change peoples futures. Should we not act at all for the fear of playing God? My answer to this is that the future should be created by our actions in the present which are based on our past experiences and mistakes which have made us stronger. Our future should not be created by us trying to shape our past to make it better based an alternate past. The mistakes we make we must live with and can only make us stronger. If we could go back and eradicate every one of our mistakes we would never learn and would ultimately become weaker.
Time travel is pointless. We learn from the past not by reliving it and changing it to our own will but by taking our experiences and using them to make ourselves stronger.
Comments
1st Aug 2010 (#)
Good article written well.
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1st Aug 2010 (#)
Thank you.
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3rd Aug 2010 (#)
i have thought of going back to do something about my regrets, but i felt like it wouldn't change anything.
my idea of time travel is going back to a certain point in the past and completely 'relive' your life from there. i don't think you would change anything because after all it was you who was back there years ago and it's still the same you going back.
(@_@) uhm, sorry if i'm confusing.
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