Why You Don’t Want to Go Back in Time and Do It Over Again
Why You Don’t Want to Go Back in Time and Do It Over Again
By The Wealthy Accountant
Owen Flanagan was on a quest to understand what it takes to live a good life. As he prepared an essay for the book How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy he tells the story of when he interviewed the Dalai Lama. Knowing that Buddhists consider resentment and anger as very bad, he asked the Dalai Lama if it would be wrong to want to go back in time and kill Hitler.
The Dalai Lama felt that it would the the right thing to do, go back in time and kill Hitler before WWII and end all the suffering and cruelty that entailed before it happened. He felt killing Hitler should be done with “martial fanfare” even.
But not in anger.
If the goal is to reduce suffering, the Dalai Lama got the question wrong. To see why going back in time is the worst choice to right a wrong or to take a different course, we need to start closer to home. (We’ll address the Dalai Lama and the Hitler issue later.)
Going Back in Time to Fix a Mistake
Science fiction has made a subgenre out of time travel. The idea is we can “go back” and fix a wrong, right a mistake, take a different course.
Aside from the fact that travel back in time is impossible, as far as we know, there is one serious problem we can’t ignore. Travel back in time means we could kill our parents before we are born so we are never born to go back in time to. . . you know. (Causality Loop)
Astute readers might point out we can travel to the future using relativistic speed or a gravity well. True, but you can’t reverse the process. When you move forward you leave it all behind.
All this deep thinking on traveling back in time to fix a mistake or make a different life choice is counterproductive, regardless the science.
The assumption is that if you could travel back in time you could make a different choice. You would call a cab rather than drive while intoxicated. The person you killed, maybe even a family member, could be saved.
Late in life you might dream of starting over and taking a different career path. It is natural to think of the things that might have been. Maybe a different spouse. Or no significant other at all! Maybe start that business, write that book, see that exotic place.
Yet you forget one simple fact. If you “truly” go back in time and do it again you can’t take the current you—wisdom, experiences and all—with you. Going back in time means really going back. The you that goes back leaves all your experience and knowledge in the future.
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