July Question Meme: Day 11

[rogueslayer452]

Asked by erychan86:

If you could travel through time, but could just go in one direction, would you visit the past or the future?

This is something I actually think about a lot, because who hasn't thought about or daydreamed the possibility of traveling through time?

If we're talking about going in only one direction though, it really depends on the nature of this particular ability. Am I going to be able to interact with anything or am I just a mere observer, wherein my presence disturbs nothing? Are we talking traveling in time only once, or actually having the ability to time travel wherever and whenever I wanted to at will? These are the kinds of questions and scenarios that strongly determine my answer here.

Traveling into the future is fascinating in and of itself because I would be able to see hundreds and thousands of years of the progression of humanity. I would want to see how far we've gotten as a species and whether things have drastically changed or if we've remained the same, what the popular culture is like, the kind of music, and especially whether or not our present day is retold accurately. And it'll be intriguing to see whether our depictions of the future have actually been accurate themselves or entirely farfetched in science fiction (similar how people thought the 2000s would be like The Jetsons). At the same time however, with the good also comes the bad. I would also end up witnessing the horrible state of things as well, and I know for a fact that it would be too much for me to handle that kind of knowledge because I would be too obsessed with wanting to change the path of that particular future, but it would be futile regardless. It would be like knowing how and when exactly the world/universe will end, and only you possess that information, and there's nothing that can be done. I don't think I would want to burden myself with that. So, traveling into the future would be a one time deal for me.

However, with traveling into the past, it would be like filling in the blanks of things we already knew happened. Like stepping into a history book and witnessing firsthand the events that occurred, and seeing how these people really lived and what really happened, not to mention rediscovering lost history and things that have never been recorded. We all know that history often gets altered a lot and things get misinterpreted or forgotten, and I've always been fascinated with wanting to go further and further back in time to better understand what actually happened versus what we learned what happened. Imagine the kind of knowledge I could gather and rediscover, and with the scenario of not interrupting history and just being a mere observer, like a ghost, I could actually take pictures from my phone/camera and come back to the present and show historians the truth about what happened, etc. If I had that power, that would be like a legit and fantastic career path to have, albeit one that would be deeply classified, but still.

So, my answer: if this is a one time deal, then I would travel into the future. If this ability was infinite, I would definitely travel into the past. Out of both, the latter would be the most probable one I would pick most of all. Both scenarios I would be a mere observer.

Comments

[denorios.livejournal.com]

It's an intriguing question, isn't it? The other side of it is, if you could travel in time, to the future or the past, but never come back again - would you go at all? And as much as I'd love to be adventurous, I really think if I had the option for a one-way trip, past or future, I think I'd choose to stay right here.

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

That would be quite a gamble, wouldn't it? Especially with the future, because we have at least an inkling of what the past was like, but we have no way of knowing about the future. Taking the risk of going into any point in the future and permanently remaining there would be such an adventurous thing to do that I wouldn't want that option at all. I would also choose to stay here. Time travel only is appealing if you get power to return back to your own time.