The Time Travel Mythology Unraveled

As children we are taught via our language common notions of time feature a steady progression from past present future. Moments fade into memory as new moments emerge ad infinitum. Yet radical perspectives that diverge from this standardized model exist across cultures. Both physicist Carlo Rovelli and Australian Aboriginals conceive of time as a unified instant – an eternal now. Time is a tool of measurement used in the perceived experience while travelling in space. Yes even while you sit still you're traveling in space, due to the earths rotation. So if time can be so fluid then what is the definition of time to the human species. Time is the rate/speed in which we decay while travelling in space.

Popular culture provides imaginative windows into playing with time, such as the beloved Back to the Future movie trilogy. When teenager Marty McFly travels back in time and inadvertently prevents his parents from meeting, he must figure out how to ensure his own future birth. The series humorously depicts how altering past events reshapes the future reality. Marty races against the clock in a DeLorean that can traverse decades instantly. But the DeLorean's flux capacitor cannot transport us beyond the unfolding moment.

In his work The Order of Time, Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli puts forward a groundbreaking temporal view. He argues that linear time does not objectively exist. For Rovelli, time itself is simply the constant unfolding of the present moment.(plays dust in the wind from Kansas.)

Remarkably, Australian Aboriginal cosmology closely echoes this notion of time as an endless present. In their mythology Dreamtime conception, all eras perpetually coexist. The age when ancestral beings created the world’s features persists in unitary timelessness that interweaves seamlessly with the now. To them time is just one instant, the sound of one hand clapping from Buddhism if you will.

In The Order of Time, physicist Carlo Rovelli methodically builds the case against the conventional view of linear time unfolding from past to future. He explains that according to Einstein's theories of relativity, time dilates relative to an observer's motion or proximity to large gravitational masses. In other words, time flows slower for objects moving rapidly relative to another observer or nearer to objects with higher gravity like planets. This time dilation means there is no universal objective past, present or future - they depend on perspective. One example was the two people with clocks synced precisely and one stood at sea level and the other stood on a mountain then the clock on the mountain would lose sync with the other clock. The clock on the mountain would have experienced time a fraction of a percentage of difference.

Time travel is impossible that’s a gut punch because some of my favourite works of fiction involve time travel. From terminator to doctor who, after contemplating the dread of this concept and nausea of it I remembered a quote from the Hopi Indian tribe “We are the ones we've been waiting for.” Which to me means to be the ones who change the world instead of those who wait for others to do it.

I think one of the reasons we romanticise time travel is because its ability to undo mistakes. We carry this generational guilt and undue trauma that is not our own. To go back and to make sure that hitler was never born instead of making sure that we never recreate the conditions that created him in society and politics. But lets analyse time thru different lenses as well.

From thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger, existentialism places emphasis on individual experience and freedom of choice. Time, in this framework, is not just an external measure but is deeply intertwined with human existence. We construct our essence through our actions, and this construction happens within the temporal dimension. It is within time that we forge our identities, reflect on our past, and project into our future. However, this temporal structure isn't some external force; it is a creation of human consciousness. The anguish of existential freedom is amplified by the ticking clock, reminding us of our mortality and the weight of our choices.

With its opposition to great narratives and focus on relativism, postmodernity has offered a fascinating perspective on time. If all narratives are localized and no single truth is universally dominant, then our perception of time too becomes subjective. Depending on cultural, social, and personal factors, what could seem like a lengthy time to one person might be a brief moment for another. The relativity theory in physics, which postulates time's fluidity and dependency on the observer's condition and position, reinforces this subjectivity.

Furthermore, our perception of time shapes and is shaped by the language that we use. With past, present, and future tenses, linguistic structures generate time as well as describe it. While navigating the present, we think about the past and the future. Language, in this sense, is both a tool and an expression of our temporal journey

One of Wittgenstein's most well-known ideas is "language games." According to his theory, words acquire meaning when they are used in particular situations or "games." This implies that our perceptions of and conversations about time depend on their environment. The way we talk about time in daily life, in physics, in philosophy, or in poetry, would all be different "games" with their own rules.

With Rovelli’s physics, Aboriginal myths, and philosophical perspectives has revealed the limitations of viewing time as a straightforward linear sequence. It draws us into a vast reality where past, present and future form an interconnected eternal now - at once malleable yet resonant.

Within this boundless moment unfurls the totality of events and experiences that shape consciousness. Though we parcel existence into epochs and eras, time flows as a whole through our awareness. While memories reconstruct the past and expectations conjure the future, we inhabit only this immediate present where both converge.

To journey through time is not to rebuild the perished or foresee the unborn, but to immerse in the transient miracle of what is. Each instant, we are born anew, offered another chance to infuse now with wisdom and gratitude. For within the eternal present resides everything we need to nourish our fleeting lives with meaning. Time in the end is a tool a unit of measurement for our time in these mortal coils and we mustn't get lost with the memory of the past or the imagination of the future but remember that “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”