If you had the power to Travel in Time, if you could go to the future or the past as many times as you want, Would you still have preferred to live in the present without making any alterations? Would you be happy or bored/sad? Happy knowing that everything is going to turn out as well. or bored because there is no adventure, noting that you didn’t expect. How would your life be?
Sections covered:
- Single-day loop
- Past in one’s lifetime
- Past Centuries
- Past Milenimus and infinite time.
- The Future
- Notes and additional links
Let’s do some thought experiments with different scenarios. Starting from a single day loop to a lifetime to centuries and Millenniums. There are a lot of references you will enjoy. Many things unfold as we imagine things from short to the long time span. From Fantasy lands juices to World Wars, Scientific developments to deep Philosophical stuff. I would suggest you ask the question to yourself first then read on. You could nothing them in comments for fun.
You have one day that would keep repeating in a loop, it’s a fresh start every morning, you live without any consequences, nobody but you know what’s happening. What would you do?
Travel, Sex, Food, Making Money, learning, creating, etc.? If you ask a child he would say chocolate, Toys, and Disneyland. For senior citizens, it would be like playing with kids or something that their Doc doesn’t allow or just a good bowel movement. So basically it comes down to our short term Urges and Desires, or not?
Let’s start with Sex. You would have a choice of having sex with as many people as you want every single day or many times in a single day. You could travel anywhere and everywhere, You would just need an adequate vehicle to travel if you want to travel far. Your limits will just mean how far a plane or helicopter can go in a single day. Food, what are your favorite foods? Imagine you got to enjoy that every day as much as you want and in as much verity as you want. Well, you will need money for all that and Speculation seems the easiest single day earning thing(legal). Just search and remember which stock had the most difference between opening and closing. Illegal ways are many (considering you don’t have any consequences) but remember, your money would be zero every new day and ,Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility will apply your urges like Sex, Traveling, and eating. Etc. isn’t it?. Only your skills and knowledge would keep compounding every single day as you would remember.
The movie ‘,Groundhog day’ explores these ideas too, the hero doesn’t know when this loop would end. He is frustrated in the beginning. Later realizing he can do anything without any consequences he does all things in excess: eating, drinking, breaking laws, stealing money, buys anything that money can buy, dating any girl, having sex, etc. Then he gets tired of doing all that. He now wants real love from the actress. On unsuccessful attempts, he gives up and tries to end his life; in all different ways. That doesn’t work, his day restarts as usual. Then he accepts the situation and spends time doing things he would like to do every day no matter if he has to do the same thing again without getting bored. He learns new skills because every day he could keep improving at them eg. playing the piano, making ice sculptures, etc. He also gets to know all the people in town, helps people, even becomes a doctor to save someone. So you can still watch the movie as I haven’t revealed the climax.
One thing is naturally acceptable, It would be wise to learn new skills and consume knowledge because we could go on building on top of that. You will discover ,Ikegai after trying all the things out there. And to keep the interest you will improve on the day by day doing a task in lesser time or experimenting and trying to do things differently. Apparently you will also stop worrying about the future.
About time, for a lifetime. You are given the power to travel at any point in your life. Just your own life, not like you can go and kill baby Hitler. What would you do? You now have more liberty to travel, you get to live through different stages of life.
You can travel to any place on earth now! Take as many attempts as you want to climb ,Mt. Everest. On lust, your interest will evolve from one night stands to something serious. Would you face problems in choosing a perfect match? No problem, now you can live with each one of them and find out. Isn’t it? Restart life and change partners. You can try different regions and choose one or be an atheist? You could make important discoveries by trial and error or just get something from the future haha…
Would you keep this secret to yourself or share it with others? What if sharing it with others impacted the new future every time… New permutation and combination every time? Would you go back and forth to correct all that or just lay back and let things unfold on their own?
Whatever spiritual belief you chose, you will do it with total belief in the idea, isn’t it? Would you really enjoy living life with different partners and repeating stages again and again? Partners influence each other as they grow together, so each one is going to leave an impression on you. You will have good and bad experiences with each one of them naturally. Haha, you will be stuck in the ,Paradox of choice,,. Do you agree? What does your past experience say? Especially asking those who have been in many relationships. Or someone who usually needs to go through several options to make a decision. So does it make sense to just be a satisficer instead of a maximizer?
So coming back to our reference: ,About time, is actually a movie. The hero gets to travel in life but he can only go to the past, not the future. His father retired at 50, reveals this power to him. The duo discusses different possibilities and choices. The protagonist is very timid in the beginning and later becomes confident and wise. He makes full use of this power. It’s a love story too. Watch the movie to know about it. He starts observing little things around him. Realizing that thinking too much about the future takes away your present, and future actually ain’t that bad. Sometimes tough situations are meant to be, for the growth of that person. All situations, at all times, can’t be controlled. He finds lesser use of his powers. Starts living in the present moment. Starts living each new day with the same calmness as if it has occurred before.
Now let’s expand our imagination horizons. Starting with timelines of history we learned in our school books. Yes, now you can kill baby Hitler,,. Which period would you like to go to? You also can carry the present day technology to that period. What would you take? And for what cause?
Imagine introducing ,Mahatma Gandhi to Emails and social media.(note7d) He could have spread his cause in a shorter time period. Not just India but all the colonies would have got independence much earlier. Imagine giving current Navy vessels to ,Shivaji Maharaj. Haha Marathi would have been the world’s official business language.
Would you actually kill baby Hitler? Or to keep the drama of the war, just brainwash him against Racial supremacy and just influence him to prevent the Holocaust,,. What would happen? How would the war turn out? How would Hitler be remembered? or If you want to prevent the World Wars itself just prevent the first bullet of ,WW1 from hitting ,Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It would have never started. Or maybe it would start anyways, for some other reason, they were in a heated race of,, ,Colonialism.
So the war has started. You can now take the big guns, all of the latest war tech, or haha just a couple of Warcraft like ,F-22, Su-57, Rafale, etc. The war of decades would be over in a couple of days. Several millions of lives would be saved. Just one clause, you won’t get to watch the thrilling present-day War movies. The world watches the history you make. The side you fought for is Glorified…
So knowing everything which side would you pick? What will the concept of a nation to you then? Where would you belong? Whom would you associate with? You see our sense of belongingness is derived from stories: One’s others tell us and the one we tell ourselves. Our National pride comes from the stores that our Government wants us to hear. History books have a subjective history of their country, don’t they? Likewise, parents and relatives influence our culture and spiritual paths. Friends and social media influence our careers, don’t they?
What story would someone who has known everything tell to themselves? What would you? I think he/she would be just silent and not give any hint or clue to others (like Dr. Strange in Avengers endgame(note9) He/she would have a sense of belonging for everything and just remain an observer. As even small changes would dramatically affect the outcome. As a ,butterfly affects,, a hurricane.
The time travel movie that comes to my mind at this point is Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow(note9). It’s a fun action war movie involving aliens. Haha no, he just doesn’t sit and observe. He doesn’t have the vision of the future. He restarts after dying. Basically he keeps improving strategies from every death.
The Man from Earth(note9) is a great movie. Thought of giving the recommendation before the next part. It is one of the rare movies that I have watched more than once. Haha, the producers of the movie have spent the least on set and costumes. Most of the money to the scriptwriter. It has an amazing story. Even though there are only dialogs, between professors, of different subjects, the mysterious revealing of the strange past of the professor makes you wonder.
No limits now, How far will you go back? 1 CE? 1 millennium? Birth or earth? Imagine my friend. Or how far into the future? In both cases what would you find necessary to carry along with you?
It’s funny, right? It’s difficult. We need a reference point to go to. To have a reference in the human evolution contest read ,Sapiens. There were six different species of humans at a point in time. Let’s go further back, You will get to witness the evolution of all animals and you can come back and help out ,Charls Darvin. You would witness the actual reason for the ,extinction of Dinosaurs.
Most of the scientific revolution we know of took place in Europe. For the world to know about science in other parts of the world, you could go there and tell them to record their history. Give them the tools. Like in ,India, there are talks on how much our Ancestors knew and how great they were. But few talks on why didn’t it continue?
You could gather actual facts related to the Epics of ,Ramayan and ,Mahabharat and profits such as ,Jesus or ,Mohammad.
One question remains: How would you come back and explain to the people now? Imagining people’s reactions when you tell them that you met Ram. How will you place your findings of ,Ram Janam bhumi? Imagine trying to clarify the lives of Jesus and Mohammed to common people. Would they believe it? Would they want to believe? You take a risk of ,,Psychiatric Hospital or Lunatic Asylum. You see people need to have some faith and believe to survive through uncertainties. Stories make the belief stronger. Anything going against believes will be taken to severe offense! See it’s evident even now.
Anyways you just want to travel back to just explore and chill. What would you need to carry along with you? First, you will need a translator if not you will end up spending a long time just learning the language in different periods. Language evolves and changes so quickly! Many times I don’t even get my Grandmother’s words. Frankly, how many people understand the language of William Shakespeare? How many can read them without a Google search for meaning and interpretation? I directly searched for a simple modern language version.
What would you use for money? Gold? Silver? At least they are a better option compared to notes, pieces of paper with funny illustrations. Even with gold and silver you will not go much further. ,Inflation remember? The best value for exchange would be Technology. Imagine just flashing a torchlight, you will be praised and treated like a God. Or put to death being thought of as an evil haha.
To establish a proper empire you will need to take many things. ,Conventional war weapons (Nuks will be too much), Mobile phones, water bottle etc. How will you generate electricity for mobile? So even Renewable energy plants. For the Internet Satellites would be enough. You will also need modern trained manpower to maintain all this. Unless you could get Robotic and AI technology from the future. Wow you could actually rule the world. You will need medical assistance as well if you want to rule for a long time.
I wonder what Alexander the so called great must be thinking after he conquered his whole known world? So you are the monarch of the whole world in its entirety. What will you do next? Collect taxes, but for what, you don’t need to fight wars any more. Your robots don’t need money, just their fuel. Of course, you could fuck everyone from different ethnicity, and locations even neanderthals or other human species. Without worrying about STDs haha .
,,Genghis Khan, comes to mind. the person how has reproduced with the highest number of population. He created a lineage with about ,,20,000 individuals! Every place he stopped he would leave his Gene Code.What a coc*. The priest believes that he needed sex for longevity in his life. It’s believed that 1 in every 200 men in the world has a Y chromosome identical to Genghis Khan.
Conquering the world and having all these techno powers that no one understands. You would be God to them. All your desires get fulfilled even before they appear. You would be lonely though because you can’t share your perspective with anyone. No one would understand. Imaging God, the all know-er, all bountiful, talking to us about ‘God issue’
We have talked only about the past until now. You see it’s easier to think about the past. Because we have evidence and stories from the past. Thanks to Archaeologists and Historians on one hand and Spiritual leaders and storytellers on others. We have good reference points.
You can travel to any place on earth now! Take as many attempts as you want to climb
The future is a little different. Well, we just have theories and a lot of uncertainty. We can’t tell if Humans will become intergalactic species or die in the near future due to Global warming or self-sabotage with Nukes. Now you travel to the future. For fun, you can bet with yourself which theory will turn right or gets close enough or fails completely.
As we progress we change the attribute we give to our Gods. People once believed that only God can send Rain, stop rivers from flowing, cure an unconscious person considered dead or simply fly. By those standards, we are gods now. See ,,Rainmaking done in UAE, we have dams to stop rivers, our medicine has evolved to unthinkable levels, forget planes, use bodysuits to fly, We are so powerful that we can cause our own ,,pralay by throwing Nukes at each other.
We can go to the future with reference to current day scientific pursuits: ,Artificial Intelligence, Interplanetary civilization, ,Data storage in DNA, ,Gene Editing, etc. We are becoming more God-like in terms of creation with ,Biomimicry. We need hear to current day visionaries and thinkers to guess the future.
So what would you expect to witness in the future? 100-500 years from now?
On your first day, you will be lost in complete madness. Just like a stone age person landing up to the present and seeing Mobile phones, Cars, Planes, even the dressing of people. He would wonder if people have learned to change skins.
You will land up in the world for ,Cyborgs in the ,Internet of things… Only people who look like you would be isolated tribes who could afford to upgrade themselves. Kids of this world have been born by Gene sequencing.
Their traits have been chosen as per the interest and economic level of their parents. No need for schools, just update this Cyborg with the latest versions. The anatomy of all these beings has adapted and evolved as per their Planets and Star Systems. There is no Death here! When you grow old you just transfer your memory and intelligence to another body or preserve it on a system.
You have interesting conversations with ,Hitchhikers of the Galaxies. Their travel will include ,Wormholes and slingshots of black holes. Sequels of Star Wars(n9) are now featuring the Multiverse. Now the movies are Reality simulations, you are in it like an Inception dream(n9). Occupations now involve ,Quantum computing,, skills. Memory is now ,stored in DNA strands. ,Moore’s law has now reached all-new levels. ,Artificial Intelligence it’s all just cosmic intelligence now. The Demand for energy has reached such a level that we cover the sun itself and pump out energy like we pump out water from wells.
What are Economy, Politics, and money now? Ancestors of this world have used single nonregulated cryptocurrency. There are no banks here; all the cyborgs maintain their own Blockchain accounts in their own body. The role of the government is limited to maintaining the Rights of people and the smooth functioning of the whole system. The concept of God is limited to questions they have answers to. (note1)
Having experienced the future and the past Now you decide to come back to the present moment.
How do you feel? Happy? Calm? Curious? You have been to both the past and future!
I think we realize that the present moment is Inevitable. For the past there is no point in ‘What ifs?’ and there is no scope for regret. We can’t control everything and everyone at all times. For the future, there is no point in worrying. It’s going to be great. Stay curies.
So we decide to enjoy every moment.
Notes
- Talking about God, I like the way ,Neil deGrasse Tyson describes God. He says God is Gap filler. We fill God in stuff that we don’t have an answer to right now.We believe the Big band created Universes, but what before that? “God knows” Even for normal stuff… The child asks parents where do babies come from, parents reply; God sends them. Totally recommend hearing this podcast: ,Star talks
- Ask senior citizens would like to relive their life if given a chance. Most of them I see just want to die quickly, they become indifferent about death. I am talking about people above 80 years.
- ,Elon Musk put it very nicely. He says communication between Humans and computer devices is to slow. You type in, software translates it, the computer interprets it, etc. What if we developed a direct channel between our brains and Computer? He is already developing a chip for the same. On Cyborgs he says, Mobile phones are an extension of ourselves, it represents our virtual selves, it’s just we have to type in to communicate. What if we could connect it to our body directly?
- Cosmic Intelligence: Integrated yet separated intelligence of living and non-living. Humans, Cyborgs, and Machines.
- I would really like to do research on ,Deja Vu. Many people have thought about it but no definite answer, only theory, because it’s difficult to experiment with it. It’s nearly impossible to recreate the circumstances.
- Upcoming Blogs
- How to Travel in time
- Biomimicry
- Money
- Lust
- Happiness
- Books recommended:
- Ikigai
- ,Sapiens
- ,Homo Deus
- My ,“Experiments with Truth”– Mahatma Gandhi’s Autobiography. Must read. In this blog’s context: he used to write articles in Newspapers both in South Africa and India. He used to reply to all Letters. He even taught himself to write with a non-dominant hand, Just to keep writing even if the other hand was tired. It would have been so much easier with Social media and Emails.
- ,Edu Video Playlist as a reference to this blog
- ,IMDB List of All movies I recommend with respect to this blog. Enjoy! Let me know the additions.
If you are reading this. You are the best! You have read the entire blog! I am looking forward to your comments.