Can Time Travelers Go Back To Fix This Mess?

By James Donahue

One reason the Matrix film series is so popular is because it suggests that we live in a make-believe world where events can be altered by master game players at the push of a button.

As humanity rushes headlong into the threat of extinction because of over-population, reckless environmental policies and consequently a polluted, dying and over-heating planet, we seem incapable of fixing our desperate condition. Not only can we not fix it, we seem incapable of agreeing that it even exists.

As an old science fiction buff, I have been unable to avoid entertaining the thought that perhaps time travel is possible, and that somehow, at the last moment, we might discover a way to send someone back into the past who can do one thing to alter current events and save the day. But if it were possible, just where would we send this time traveler, and just what mission could he or she have that would make such an impact on today’s hopeless world?

Might Henry Ford be encouraged to develop cars operating on alternative forms of energy? Might Thomas Edison be persuaded to listen to the voice of the late Nikola Tesla and choose a cleaner way of generating power for mankind? Perhaps we could have persuaded Saul of Tarsus not to make that historic trip down the road to Damascus where he encountered an angel and consequently launched the religious movement that became Christianity.

A report by physicists Daniel Greenberger of the City University of New York, and Karl Syozil of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, suggests that the laws of quantum physics seem to permit time travel, but prohibit the paradoxical problem of altering the present because of the things we might do in the past.

The theory they present is complex, but it suggests that quantum objects split their existence into multiple component waves, each following a distinct path through space-time. They believe that even if a person were to travel back to the past, they would unlikely be in places where they might interfere destructively with an event and change the present.

While it may be good news among sci-fi buffs who worry about the paradox of going back in time and destroying themselves by accidentally killing their grandfathers, it also suggests that nothing we do can alter the course we have chosen for mankind in general, even if we succeed in going backward in time.

Suppose, however, that time is a relative creation of the human mind which is our way of putting events in perspective. Outside of our three-dimensional existence, however, entities that exist in a spirit universe around us live outside the boundaries of space and time. Thus they can see our future as well as our past because they exist in all places at the same time.

Taking this one step farther, can we perceive of ourselves as the creation of our own universe, or perhaps a living portion of the creator, which is, like all living beings beyond our three-dimensional existence.

Are we not, then, capable of fixing our dilemma by mere thought? Have we not been duped into creating an end-of-the-world scenario because of perverted religious belief systems? And is the solution to this crisis no more complex than the collective will of a certain number of humans?

Some might argue that humans living today lack the mental and technical ability to stop the ecological train wreck we are bringing upon ourselves. If we refuse to seek, or are incapable of finding a solution for fixing our planet in its current state, can we then send a remnant of our numbers back into history to start the process over? 

And if this can be achieved, will this new generation choose a different path and avoid the pitfalls that are falling on our heads today? And if it is possible now  . . . if the story of Noah was, indeed, a twisted version of a remnant of humanity escaping a similar dilemma via a time machine . . . will we fall into the same traps?

Yet another nagging question comes to mind: If we did it before, did the process occur even before Noah? Are we not caught in an endless repetitive drama that keeps us forever struggling, like people caught in a circling door?

Are we not doomed to remain in this hellish existence, enduring the pain and suffering created by the religiously controlled society in which we live, forever repeating our journey until we eventually find the right path?