Category: Series Three

E | rest | B | rest | A | rest | rest | rest
E | rest | B | rest | A | rest | rest | rest

The chord progression, played by a synthesizer keyboard, underscores the melody playing through my headphones. Or more accurately, the melody underscores it, as its sustained, stringed effect is the main driver of the song.

E | rest | B | rest | A | rest | rest | rest
E | rest | B | rest | A | rest | rest | rest

And then the notes softly, E A B, slowly, B A E. To the right, and in reverse. To the left. Forward, and the converse. Backward.

The song is “Slow Buchla Sunshine” by Above and Beyond. The song, likely a nod to Don Buchla, who pioneered sound synthesis in the sixties, is part of a larger piece of work, the “Flow State” album, which lends itself to a slow, building, and burning sunshine. I write this myself, while I watch the sun do just that.

And while my mind wanders, I wonder what would happen if the chord progression was played backwards like the notes, when the sun retreats for the night to its home.

Last night, when the sun had done just that, I was myself retreating to bed in the hope of sleep, depressed with the world and this life and my state of mind. I was coming up short in this hope of reprieve, to not think and to sleep – similar to how I come up short in other pieces of self-regulated unfathomably and unnecessarily high standards – when I thought: If the past were to change, would we ever know it?

The consensus I purchase, labeled as the grandfather paradox, dictates, “No, we would not.” This is because, per this paradox, by traveling back in time and altering the past, one would be altering the future and, with it, their reason to travel back in time and, as such, no longer have a reason to do so. Ergo, is time travel even possible to begin with, in the first place?

But I put to point, if this wasn’t the case, and time travel did exist, we would still not be aware of it. If someone changed an event that occurred in our past, the history we once knew we would no longer remember, and a new history would take its place. Everything we learned about it would be gone. Everything we now know reflects this new history. And the cycle continues, and we know just one. We are part of the line, not the loop.

In fact, if we look at this chronologically and not linearly, didn’t history happen in such a way that the past happened, the time travel occurred, and the past then happened in a different way, so that all of it was real, and all of it is part of our history, yet we are none the wiser, and we nonetheless only know one history?

I pontificate (because that’s what this is, pontification) that when looking toward the future, there are infinite possibilities at any time that could create any number of realities, yet by the ceaseless decisions we are constantly and simultaneously making, we only have one universe, the one we live in right now. The one in which I wrote this at 10:01am, the one in which you are reading this at whatever time you find yourself in. If I get up right now, if I lie down, these are seemingly small choices to be made and probably do not have a butterfly-like effect on the rest of the world, but they still constitute the ceaseless decisions we are always and often times sub-consciously making, which shape the world around us on the grand scale of billions of such moments a minute. And so this is the life that was formed and will continue to be formed, based on this construct of time. It almost seems like we can reach back and grab the past, grasp it, touch it, feel it again – we remember it so well, it was just so long ago. And we forever fade into the future, but the future never comes, since we find ourselves in the present (even if we don’t choose to live like it).

We break time down into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and so on and so forth. It’s almost tiring to write it all out, but it’s all been invented, constructed. Look around and see the wonders of innovation and creation of the past hundreds, thousands, millions, and billions of years (it’s frightening to think we’re so cocky in this one year, our time here).

And now understand all of the unknowns to still be answered or simply asked, explorations to still be made, and things to still come to be. It’s humbling to think how tiny we are.

But I digress from pontification because pontification has no purpose in this passage, a fate potentially shared with humans and other species. I put to the point, that if history A came first, time travel took place, and history B came second, both histories happened and have their place in time. But to our minds, we’re not aware of the cycle, and history B replaces history A.

Then, does it make sense that if in the future we can time travel and change our conscious past, we can write our past in the future?

The grandfather paradox be damned.

If in the future we can time travel and change our conscious past, we can write our past in the future.

No, this does not mean we should lean on the future to change the past. It means our future will one day be the past, and if our future will one day be the past, what do we want history to say about it?

             If the future writes the past, what do we want history to remember?

Indeed, the grandfather paradox be damned. Yes, there would be no time travel because there would be no reason for it, but not because we traveled in time to fix the past, but because we did what was right in the future for there to be no need to fix it [the past].

The notes play in reverse. The Earth completes its cycle around the sun in what we’ve determined is one year. The sun resets and then rerises in what we’ve decided is one day. Backwards. Reset. Rerise. E A B. B A E. A scene from a movie reverses the timeline of the events, with the destruction reversing its nature and water refilling a glass.

If, in 200 years from now, we were given the opportunity to time travel to right now, what would we do? We would do better to ask ourselves now, since we’re given the opportunity to live right now, what should we do. So, I ask again:

             If the future writes the past, what do we want history to remember?

“I’m good. School was good, dad. We mainly focused on history today. How we need to remember the decisions that didn’t work out perfectly in the past, so that we can learn from them and improve upon them, to ensure we make decisions that will work out perfectly in the future.”

“Ah, you know history was one of my favorite subjects. There’s so much to remember that one day you’ll forget. What was one of the examples you found?”

“Well, there was one we talked about that really stood out. It was a story – a true story – about one hundred years ago. One hundred years ago there was a debate, whether we should build a new hospital or stadium on the last lot of land near the town center. We had multiple of each, to meet the needs of our elders and serve as entertainment for our citizens. But we knew as we grew that we’d have to continue building to make sure we satisfy our society’s capacity. And so our leaders debated for days into weeks and then to months, and before they’d made a decision, we were already in the midst of the heaviest snow of season, and they had to postpone the construction plans they’d yet to agree to. In the end, it didn’t matter, though. We still had plenty of sports to watch and play, and our existing hospitals treated our oldest just fine. But we could’ve had one more.”

“Of course it was a true story, son. It’s history, not literature. I know it almost reads like a mediocre proverb, but it’s true. Since the end result is the same, it’s futile to spend too much time on a decision. If we want to build a hospital, build a hospital. If we want to build a stadium, build a stadium. If you want to buy something you see online, do it. Your decision won’t have enough of an effect on the outcome to warrant too much contemplation; it’s inefficient. You’ll probably be a little bit happier with the purchase, so do it. It’s hard not to feel fulfilled when you’re filling out a new outfit.”

“Yeah, so what I took home from it was that, in this case, it would have been perfect to make a quick decision and build either the stadium or the hospital, but since we didn’t make a quick decision, we were unable to build either. So next time, the decision that would work out perfectly is the one we choose immediately, because then we get to have one more.”

“That, and also: don’t remember too much or one day you’ll forget.”