I just finished watching the 2002 version of The Time Machine based of course on the book by H.G. Wells. This isn't of course the first version movie of his book. I had loved both the earlier and newer versions of both movies.
Being the science geek all my life I can't help wondering...like wow, wouldn't it be great, if time travel really was possible. We could go back into the past to our favorite times in history and get a real perspective of what life was really like, say in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Roman, Medieval, or Renaissance times. We could experience first hand the Revolutionary times of a young American or the Civil War times (periods of history by the way I've always been fascinated by).
Or maybe you would like to travel to the future...how is our Earth say in the year 2136?..Is there an Earth? Or have we blown ourselves to smithereens due to petty hatreds due to race, religion and so forth?...Is the human species still here?..how much have we changed..are we are a more loving, caring, compassionate species? Does war still exist? The petty intolerances and hatreds...do they still exist? Or have we finally come to an understanding that the Earth is the only planet we know and therefore we have a more loving compassion for all living things and have a humble respect for everything in our world?
Or maybe you don't want to get so grandiose...maybe you would like to travel back in time and right the wrongs in your own life...the detours, the setbacks, the pain and misery you may have gone through. Would you want to go back in time and try to change that...so you wouldn't have to go through that pain, fear, anger, misery in your life? They (whoever they are) say there are no accidents in life, that everything happens in life in general for a reason and if we didn't go through those experiences we wouldn't grow, know, learn. In other words, our greatest teacher in life is precisely through our mistakes, our setbacks, our detours. So with that in mind....would you really then want to change the past?
What is the saying? If we don't learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat the past....So have we learned?
With this heavy duty thought in mind...if time travel were really possible.. and you could especially travel through the past into your own life, with the knowledge of what period in your life went really wrong and wanted to change it...would you? Do you think you would be a better person for it? Or do you see that everything in your life had a reason behind it? And there was some purpose for it?
[question posted by pyewacket]
responses and comments:
I have both of those movies. The first one on video and the second one on DVD. Since watching the first one... many years ago... I always loved the idea at the end of the movie... where he goes back to the future to re-teach the knowledge they have lost. That would be me. I would love to be the teacher. But as far as going back in the past... no thank you. The past is a nasty place... where most people were slaves. I would not mind experiencing being 18 in 1958... It did sound like a fun time. "Happy Days" comes into mind. But then again... I only want to go there for the music. My parents were 30 at that time... and they were not having any fun. No... for me... it is the future... Not the future on Earth... because I already know that it will suck here. But the future on another planet. The truth is out there... And if an UFO wants to abduct me... I am willing to go... lol [Aussies2007]
I have that movie as well... a classic.. [Aussies2007]
IF I could read Latin or Greek, I might go back then - tho the way they treated women would be a PITA! I would probably be more interested in going forward - science fiction fan that I am. I would love to travel really far back, but since I'm really REALLY bad at languages I would be kind of stuck for communicating. I don't have the "Time Lord" gift of languages! [ElicBxn]
I suspect that language will change less in a couple of hundred years because of the mass communication than it has in the past. I also figure that just as we have some people that can speak Greek and Latin, there will be some who can speak English. [ElicBxn]
If I had the opportunity to travel in time I would go back to the year 1565 the year of the great siege of Malta. Malta was invaded by the Turks and managed to stand still with the help of the Knights of St. John and the Maltese people. I would be glad to see how things really went and perhaps being able to take part in the siege. I would also like to go back to change a decision or two in my own life. Perhaps I would go back when I entered university. I would prefer going into computers since they are today's most means of a good income. [ronaldinu]
Mmm...I thing one fascinating place to travel back in time is right here in America....I'm part Native American and I would love to have seen how America looked prior to the uh....invasion..LOL. No skyscrapers, no concrete roads or sidewalks...just beautiful wilderness [pyewacket]
As interesting as it seems I don't think I would want to do the time travel thing, as I have a hard enough time with what is going on now in my life. [irishmist]
Mmmm...how true..now if there was only a way to get MORE time in one's life each day...lol [pyewacket]
I am not sure, but I know for a fact that I would give it a try. I would want to go back to the age of 12 or 13, because it was at the age of 14 or 15 that things started to go wrong for me so I would go back and change it yes. I think that I would be a better person for it and although I do think that everything happens for a reason I think that mine has happened not for reasons but because of me and there is a lot I would change, at this stage of my life I cannot really see a purpose for the way things turned out! [gemini_rose]
Believe me I often wondered why the different things happened to me in my life and I had the detours and setbacks I've had....but maybe there really was a purpose and reason for them....just don't know what though... [pyewacket]
Would definitely like to go back to bible times in the old testament!!lol [eagle_f15]
Mmmm....I wouldn't mind going back to the ancient Egyptian times. [pyewacket]
I, too, have wondered about this, but how far back should I go in my own life to change things? Do I go back to when I was married and not agree to divorce but insist on working things out? Do I go back a bit further and not get married at all? Maybe I should go all the way back to Grade Six and agree to go to my local (right behind my house!) Junior High instead of the one a bus ride away with the "enrichment" program? And would it really change anything? On the other hand, to be able to go back for a visit, as I am now, to any one of the many happy Sunday afternoons of my childhood, when the whole extended family would gather at my grandparents... to see my dear dad, grandfather and uncles playing cards under one of the spreading birch trees... or sit in on any of the conversations the womenfolk were having, that I always got shooed away from, find out just what the big deal was... [BarBaraPrz]
Did any of us? [BarBaraPrz]
Lot's of questions here, I'll do my best to answer them. First, the most important one: to change my mistakes? No. I believe all the things that have happened made me a strong and better person. And it's that path that brought me here, right now, this very second. For all the adversity I've had in my life, it is completely the opposite now, safe, secure, loving, peaceful. No, even if I had to do it all over again, I would, so I could wind up right where I am. To travel in time? Mixed feelings. I'd love to be able to witness historic periods throughout mankind's existence but the chance of contaminating the timeline would be too great. Who knows what tiny thing I could do to change all of history? I wouldn't want that responsibility. To see the future? Only if I knew it would be idyllic existence I know we can have someday. And how would I know? Only if I travelled to the future. A personal paradox, LOL I'm a great big science geek too, as well as a sci fi geek. I love to read novels about time travel, if it's got time travel, I'm reading it, no matter what. I like to see other's take on it. One of my favorites is Timeline by Michael Crichton, book and movie were good. [thelastwolf113]
I get your drift there ...I think we really do need our experiences both the good and bad to make us for what we are now....I sure as heck wouldn't want to be the way I was say five years ago...still one thing that would have been great for me if I was to go back in time in my own life, with the knowledge I know now, would to be more vocal of what I wanted in my life....it took me way too long to realize what a push your buttons mother I had and was very manipulating in my life...all to be her "good" little girl and seek her approval..it was because of that, I wasted so many years not being more assertive [pyewacket]
hmmmm this is a thinker. Only thing in my life I would want to change is to have had an earlier warning that hubby had cancer and that we could have got him cured of it before it was to late. FOr when we found out it couldnt even be opeated on and if we knew more could have got to it earlier and maybe got that operation and he wold be with me today. Then I would like to go back in the old western days. and take back my ways I do now. I wouldnt be a cowtoe wife. and I wouldnt be treated like I had no brain. SOme of the western women. acted like they just didnt know what to do except to be ordered around by the husband even got whipped. SOme how I would have liked to changed all that earlier than what they did. [Lakota12]
I love to be teacher and see lot my childhood friends [trv231]
I wouldn't mind seeing my childhood friends again either [pyewacket]
what would i do?? i will take all of the previous list of lottery winnings. and go back in time.so that i can be a millionaire..no questions ask.... [Greeneagle24]
LOL--not a bad idea [pyewacket]
If I could travel back in time, I would take my daughter to meet her dad so she could see what a wonderful person he was. He was killed in a motorcycle accident when she was only 13 months old. All she knows of him are the things I have told her. That would be the only reason I would want to time travel. You can't change the past and the future is what you make it so I am happy where I am. Uniting my daughter with her dad would be the only thing I would want to do. [ldybgsgma99]
That sounds like a very admirable reason to want to go back into time. I never knew my father either, though it was because my parents got divorced when I was very young..by the time I did get reconnected with my father's side of the family I found out he had passed away some years prior [pyewacket]
If there would a travel machine i wish to travel back dated June 27, 1914..It was when the world war begun. I would like to see and feel what's they feel, how they felt and the pains in their heart. But I'm not wishing to get hurt. I just want to visit those time. But i still want to be born on this modern periods. My ultimate purpose to witness the event, what's behind it so that i could shape my future to the better. I also want to witness the registration of the church called the "Church of Christ" it was of the same date too. June 27, 1914. I want to see the young face of the person Brother Felix Y. Manalo as he officially registered the Church. That's all i could say right now.. [worldbestwriter2008]
Wow, you're very specific on the date you want to go back in time to. Mine would be more generalized....like going back to Ancient Egyptian times or the Medieval or Renaissance periods. [pyewacket]
Well I have just heard about those books, din't bother to read them. According to me, it would be amazing and no wonder if we had time travel. Just imagination goes on and on and continues to propagate, until a wild thought wokes you up saying, ahh it can't be true, stop dreaming. Also everything has its own advantages and disadvantages, so I believe that the time travel may also have some disadvantages, may give way to new inventions, then can we think or regard the world like as that of aliens? Since we havn't experienced it, we are eager, later bored of it, we will get back to enjoy this simple life. [AamidMS]
of course i would love to go back in time !!! if i could go anywhere, i would defenetly like to see how the piramids in Egipt were made [roxy_stp]
I would love to go back into the Renaissance times through time travel.. I just don't want to get stuck in that stinky era. I can just imagine people of those times throwing out the garbage and slop jars out their windows and anyone walking down the sidewalk near the apartment buildings would get a head full of slop. I read that is why the men and women who walk together the man walks to the right of the woman so he will be on the outside.... because of the slop jar days... hehe. [OreoCookie3]
yes i would. instead of running away with that nasty lazy, mamas boy i did id go back and do everything in my power to get John, my late, last hubby and have a long lasting life with him! in the 8 short years i had him, i wondered where my soul mate had been for so long. [bunnybon7]
Hi pye, If I could go back in time, I would go back to when my mother was alive and well and young so I can tell her how much I love her and just cling to her and never let her go. Bright Blessings Tamara [tamarafireheart]
I would not want to time travel, because no matter what you do you disturb the flow of time. I just don't see any way you can avoid not changing the past because everything is interlocked and happens for a reason. But time travel works both ways....going to the future might be ok, but I would have to think about that one for a bit. I am not sure the future would be good though because you would inadvertently bring knowledge back with you that you shouldn't. Either way I guess time travel is tricky at best. The only reason one would want to go back in time is to change something for the better, but you can't. Time is one of the great paradoxes and you can't mess with it. [sumofalltears]
Hello Pye Dear Friend Oh yes, I would indeed do time travel in a heartbeat if I could right the wrongs and the mistakes I have made and when I have hurt others...oh yes, in a heartbeat, for perhaps now, I may not be so sad. Of course, there are a lot of others who have hurt me badly, so of course I would like to undo those things that happened in time travel, or prevent them from happening as in a rewind. I would love to have all my sins, flaws, impurities, and utter foolishness erased by going back in time. I feel right now though Pye, as if I am in the film Somewhere in Time. Yep. I do. Hugs xooxoxo Thanks ever so much for last night too Pye Dear..! [OceanTiara]
Hi pyewacket, A great discussion by he way. I haven't seen the movie but I've often thought about time travel and I've heard of some people who claim to have experienced it quite by accident. There doesn't appear to be anyone who can do it at will, but things have happened to people that they can't explain. As for changing things that I've experienced, I would not want to do that. I believe that there is a plan for each of us, and no matter what our situation, there is a reason and a purpose behind it. Also if we were to change our past, just think of how many others would be affected. I often think that reincarnation is true and that is why we are fascinated with certain periods in history. Life itself is all a great mystery, maybe we just haven't discovered time travel yet. Blessings. [Pose123]
I think what you may be thinking about is maybe past life regression? Sort of sounds like it, where a person can go back into their past lives. I still wouldn't mind going back into my own past and maybe make better choices than I did...it might have helped me to have been a success in life sooner...I'm still going for that goal. [pyewacket]
Yes as long as i can remember what i did wrong in my life. and besides i wanna be in high school again...it was the best time of my life. [inrage_angel]
It's my understanding that 'time travel' is possible. Not only that, but that you have other aspects of yourself that are living in any of those different times at exactly the same time as you are living in this time, just in a different dimension, so you have to be able to jump the gap between dimensions in order communicate with them in any way. I am currently seeking to contact and draw on certain aspects of my over all entity, who are not only living in the 'past' but in the 'future' as well, who are more focused and accomplished in some of the areas that I am wanting to improve in my current experience. That's my purpose for it. Also going back or forward to different lifetimes, or even aspects of this one, that are pleasurable and 're-experiencing' it for the good feeling of it. I'm tired of mainly remembering the sorrow and the grief and the things that don't make my heart soar. [zigzagbuddha]
The only thing I want to change if time travel really is possible is my dad being sick, or he may not have been cured but at least we know what we're dealing with rather than being shocked when we found out that he had advanced cancer already and we didn't even have 6 months to be with him. I wouldn't change anything else even if I could. Cos everything that has happened is a series of events that shouldn't be messed up with and it's a chain reaction. Change one event and the rest will follow and who knows what the outcome will be. So, I'll just go back and spend more time with my dad, take care of him, and tell him to tell us when he's feeling sick cos he didn't before that's why we weren't able to detect his illness in its early stages. My dad's passing away is the only regret I have that is worth changing cos I was not able to hug him and be by his side during his last breath. [marababe]
That is such a hard decision to make. I have a few mistakes that I would love to go back and change. But what if correcting those mistakes made my life worse than I perceive it to be now? Most of my "mistakes" that I would like to correct occurred in the span of about 3 years in college. I think my life would be very different if I had done a few things in a different manner or not at all. Would I have to go back, make the changes and then come back to the present to the uncertainty of what those changes have done to my life, or would there be a way to know beforehand how changes would affect things? Without knowing how changes would affect things or being able to just take over from my younger self to live my life over again, I don't think I would want to sacrifice what I have now for the uncertainty of what might be better or could be way worse. [Trace86]
if i were able to go back to the past... i dun think i'll change anything (the decisions i made) - if i do.. i might lose everything that i have now.. life may not be as perfect as i want it to be.. but, i dont want to go back, change things.. because i may not... have the children i have now.. the friends i have in my life.. the life i had growing up... still... if i could.. i would change my attitude.. be a bit more nicer to my parents, especially my mom... be a little more kinder to my younger brother... be a nicer person to be with.. be a better, kinder mom for my older kids... not to be the 'so self-centred' person that i was when i was younger.. ahhh yess.. i would find the time to read more... more books, on many more subjects... [4mymak]
I would like to return to my childhood,find the little boy who I was,and talk with him,play with him,tell him something that will happen in future...How amusing if the time travel really comes true. [scyzyyyy]
well yeah it would be wicked cool to travel through time and anyway whats wrong with righting the wrongs in ur life? [archer7527]
No way would i want to go back in time. I may think oh but if i could just go back and change this like it never happened. But then again if the bad never happened then the good to fallow it may have never happend. And im not about to risk lossing the good. [ryezon]
Hmm theoretically I believe when we can time travel. I would like to do it. By being able to travel in time I could change and make up for all the mistakes I make. I would change the things I did which I would regret. Yet I think time traveling is not that good, because if all of us would time travel and change all our mistakes we could be perfect where we can do everything right by being able to change what we did. [donburi]
Although I think the concept of being able to travel through time would be an awesome journey, I would not use it to change things in my own past. Though there are times in my life that I could have seriously lived without, I feel that if I had never experienced them, I would have not been able to grow into the person I am today. Which is stronger, a little bit wiser (that's still to be determined..lol), and a bit more caring to the ways of the world. Life as I see it, will never be a "happy-go-lucky" sort of deal, even if we humans finally learn how to get along and our money troubles come to an end, There will still be death and the ever fluctuating human emotions to contend with. [jeweledbluerose]
yup you're right in a way. I think it's especially the negative things that have occurred in our lives that make us stronger later on in life, still I wish I could have come to some of the different "conclusions" about things much much sooner as I may not have wasted in a sense so many years of my life.sad [pyewacket]
Mathematically, it is possible using string theory and Schwarszchild geometry. The problem is, though, avoiding creating a paradox (See the movie "Millennium" with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd). [Vladilyich1]
LOL--yes there could be strange paradoxes about time travel Can't remember if I saw Millennium...sounds familiar though [pyewacket]
Would I want to travel back in time...yes, to see different periods, perhaps see relatives that had passed on long before my time. Would I want to change things in my past...as tempting as that sounds, like you said everything happens for a reason. Say, I changed things and didn't marry my first husband at 16, I wouldn't have moved back with my Mom or back up North, I wouldn't have been there for my younger brothers or to help out my Mom...who's to say where they may have ended up or where I would have ended up...it could turn out that I would have never met my Hubby. There's millions of things that change when you think about tampering with the past...it's nice to think about correcting our mistakes but then who's to say how it would turn out. **AT PEACE WITHIN** ~~STAND STRONG IN YOUR BELIEFS~~ [twoey68]
That would be nice to "visit" distant relatives and get a glimpse of what their lives were really like. Would love that with my great-grandmother and maybe her mother's time which was around the Civil War period. Maybe you're right, though, by going back into our own time and try to "fix" things, who knows? Might have made things worse instead of better [pyewacket]
It would be interesting to go back to prehistoric times and see the dinosaurs with my own two eyes. As for me...I would and I wouldn't want to go back in time of my own personal history and change wrongs to make them right. But, you are right. We learn from our mistakes. It is all a part of being human. Regrets, wrongs, lessons learned keep us grounded. Without them, our egos would get out of control. We may think we are perfect and without mistakes. So, I don't think it would be a good thing to go back to fix what was once broken. This was a really good question. [cortjo73]
Be careful if you ever do manage to go back into time of the dinosaurs...you just might become lunch..LOLrasp [pyewacket]
I think if I went back in time I'd like to go back and maybe see what would happened if I had changed how certain things had worked out. I don't think I'd mind seeing what life was like during other time periods either. I'd be afraid of changing something by going back in time then though and really messing things up. I'm not sure I could handle that weight on my shoulders knowing I ended up messing up how the future was supposed to turn out. [highflyingxangel]
Yes that might be a danger there of changing some event of the past that might make future events worse. I guess things are meant to happen the way they do for a reason whether good or bad. [pyewacket]
Hi pye... I'm playing catch up here, I'm soooo far behind!! ARG!! rolleyes If I could turn back time or go back in time, would I? YES!! Oh God YES!! I'd go back as far back as when I was 8 years old and not gone to the basement on my house where this low life had molested me And at the age of 13 and would've never gone through the woods to my friends house the day I was raped by three neighborhood guys. AND I would be more assertive towards the ones that have wronged me since. I was molested so many times that I thought that was the only way to be loved or get attention. After I was raped, I went on the path of self destruction and tried to commit suicide so many times including jumping out in front of a moving car in hopes it would hit and kill me but it swerved around me. I would've put a lot of people in their places and I would NOT have stayed in my parents home but instead moved into my grandparents house where I knew I was loved and wanted or begged to be put into a foster home where I could've gotten the attention and love that I so deparately seeked and couldn't get. I would not have gotten married the first time to a guy who needed to be babysat. I could go on and on and on but I won't for this is enough to explain my wanting and wishing I could change things for I would've if I could've. I was a legally deaf gal back then and because of that I was so nieve that so many took advantage of it and I was so fearful of my parents that I couldn't go to them for anything. Even questions about learning things, I was told time and time again, I was too young to understand which has taught me that when a child has mind enough to ask a question, they have mind enough to know the answer. Maybe not the whole answer but some of it till they're older. My hearing is worse, much much worse but still even in my younger days, I was legally deaf not legally DUMB no more than I am now. Oh and I'd have learned sign language and gone to deaf school so I could've finished school but I didn't because I was raised in the "hearing" world. [CatsandDogs]
Funny you say that because I started a journal years ago and got a good start on it but I've let it go for years too but maybe I could pick it back up again and start writing once again. At the top of each story I've told in the journal I've put either "A Memory" or "Happening right now" so when it's ever read, they'd understand why there's so much detail in one and not so much in the other. But yeah, that might be where it truely and really happens. [CatsandDogs]
I have watched those movies so many times that I have fancied the idea of time travel my self. If it is possible I would certainly want to time travel. I would choose to go back in my past days. I would pick my elementary days. Those days are the most memorable and happy ones for me. I want to experience it all over again. It was perfect for me then. But if I would want to correct my mistake and make my life different from now I would choose my college days. There's so many bad decisions that I done and I would want to correct it. There's so many things that happened to me during college days that I some of it I want to experience all over again and some, especially the bad ones' I want to correct it. [katkat]
I wouldn't mind going back and correcting some of my wrong decisions in life either, but who knows maybe even the bad decisions I made were meant for a reason..right? [pyewacket]
I'm almost ashamed to admit it, pyewacket, but, yes, I would go back and change things in my life in a heartbeat. My reasons are that I grew up in an unusual situation where I had very little choice. I would not trade my happy childhood for anything, but I would begin starting around puberty. Prior to that time I had a very romanticized picture of what to expect from life. My aunt and uncle(as much as I dearly loved them), had no idea of how to relate to a budding teenaged girl. Suffice it to say that my life was very tempestuous during those years. It took many years for me to come to terms with my real mother because I always felt that she should have come to my rescue when I truly needed her the most. [worldwise1]
LOL--in many ways I can relate. Even though I was raised by grandmother and mother, I don't think they knew how to "handle" me as my personality was so diametrically different from theirs..My mother especially didn't know HOW to be a mother as it took me many years to realize that in some ways I was more the mother and my mother the child... [pyewacket]
It would probably be fun to change my past, but that could seriously mess up my future. [jorjh_and1]
Yes one sometimes wonders if interfering and changing one's past might make one's future even worse. [pyewacket]
I'd love to travel back to the past and meet my younger self or younger mom or dad or even grandparents. I'm a really big fan of the series Quantum Leap which was aired in the 90's and I wish I could do the same :D [010878]
I used to LOVE that series. One of the best around about time travel [pyewacket]
I would initially want to go forward in time, and find an era when we have learned how to rejuvenate humans. Then I would spend several years learnign a whole batch of skills I don't now have, and memorising some important facts and figues (like the winners of all the major races in Australian racing history lol). Then I would like to go back to 1951 in Sydney, Australia, and use my knowledge of the races to make the money I need to set up a quiet utopian commune and co-operative industries and businesses, where I would train people in the skills I had learned and hopefully inspire them to creating an equally utopian society. I would keep them under the radar, place them in public service jobs, the military, universities, all forms of public life, and have them recruit new members until by 2000 there is a large core group of dedicated people of all age cohorts, some in positions of significant power and influence, with major financial and business resources and research facilities, and then come out of 'hiding' and set about creating my utopia. The 'under the radar' bit has two purposes, firstly not to affect the flow of time too directly, and secondly to avoid opposition as far as possible. One of my favourite fantasies. Lash [grandpa_lash]
Ah, the rejuvenation of the environment would be the larger part of the utopian society I would be trying to create. Bah, I just realised the paradoxes never end in thinking about time travel. If my utopian socity changed the course of history, my rejuvenation might come unstuck, and turn me instantly into powdered bone. Unless time travel is an integral part of parallel universes. Lash [grandpa_lash]