BLOG -- Some of My Thoughts on Time and Time Travelling

Okay, so Final Fantasy XIV still has a ridiculously tight grip on me. I mean, I completely missed blogging last week -- I was busy crafting, gathering, and leveling up my character. I am also at the point where my inventory is filled with items (my character's inventory + my 2 retainers' inventories) and every now and then I find myself playing the "Manage my inventory" game. I probably wouldn't have this issue if I was focusing on one class at a time, but I don't want to play that way, haha. I want my various classes to support each other. If my fighting class needs new gear, I want my crafting classes to make some. And if my crafting classes need the materials, I want my gathering classes to get most, if not all, of them. But I'm already getting sidetracked here.

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In light of the Daylight Savings that happened yesterday, I'm going to share some of my thoughts on Time and Time Travelling.

I have to first put this disclaimer: I do not know much about science. These are thoughts that I've pondered and developed over the years. And due to that development, this is the perspective that makes the most sense to me. Do NOT take any of these as fact -- again, it is my perspective. Also, please excuse my term of "man-made" and "Man". When I use it here, I am referring to humans as a whole.


So... Time. Besides it being what I consider to be one of the most expensive gifts anybody can ever give to somebody else, I think Time is a man-made concept that controls our world.

Yes, Time exists, but "Time" is just an arbitrary term to a state of being (humans just had to put a label on it). Time isn't an entity; it has no thoughts; it has no feelings; it is not even made up of molecules. If the world blew up and nobody was alive to witness it, Time would still be present and moving. To me, Time is simply "progression".

My thought about Time being a man-made concept comes from our measurements of it -- a year, a month, a day, an hour, a minute, a second, a nanosecond, a millisecond. It is to this measurement of Time that I think many of us (I would dare to say all) are slaves. You have a report due in a week? In two days? In an hour? Or you have to get to this shop before it closes for the day. Or you have to catch a show that starts in 2 minutes. Whether we want to or not, I think we have all ended up prioritizing our actions around Man's measurement of Time at one point or another. 

Now, I'm not exactly against this measurement of Time -- it's useful when you want to meet up with your friends, or when you want to hype up a product's launch date or whatever. I just find it a little funny and sad sometimes that we stress and worry over it (like a report's deadline, a bill to pay, whatever). It's just the thought that Man stresses over something Man created. It's... amusing.

So... with that out of the way, here are my thoughts on Time Travelling. 

Just so you know, I would love to be able to time travel. I would totally go back in time and adjust some of my errors. Not all of them, but definitely the ones that still affect me today (not going into details here, but it's nothing bad -- just bad for me). BUT... with my opinion of Time and how the measurement of Time is man-made, I think that travelling back in time is impossible.

Let's try to it break down a little:

You want to travel back to... umm... 1994. You build this crazy contraption, and then when you start to define the days, the years, the minutes, etc., you pause. Just how are you defining this?? Sure, you can define the length of a minute, the length of a year... but then what? How would this contraption that you just built know exactly what happened years ago? Time is not an entity -- it doesn't have memories. Time is a state of being that progresses nonstop. It's... just impossible.

Sorry if I burst anybody's bubble here. I so want to believe in the possibility of travelling back in time. But I just can't.

In that same regard, I think that time travelling to the future is also impossible. Again, it goes back to what time travelling involves. Time travelling is the manipulation of the progression of Time. BUT... the progression of Time is man-made (a day, an hour, etc.). Manipulating that progression means nothing to Time. Because, again, how would that be defined? I guess a machine could determine how a world's state could be in the future, given specific constants and such, but to place somebody there? Impossible.

Still... I do believe in something Time-related. I wouldn't really call it time travelling though some people might. So I don't believe in the possibility of Man creating a contraption to manipulate the progression of Time in any way. What I do believe in, however, is the possibility of areas or forces that alter the progression of Time in a natural way -- something where Man doesn't have to interfere. Maybe a specific spot on Earth has a slower state of progression than another spot -- or even out in space (which is more probable). I don't know if such areas or forces exist, but I'd like to believe in it. Even with this line of thinking, though, that would still alter the present progression -- altering the past is still impossible.

You know what can travel back in time, though? Video games (and other man-made programs). ;)


That's it for this blog!

If you disagree with my thoughts or anything, go ahead and comment or send me a message. If I am completely off the mark in terms of science, feel free to let me know, too. Sometime after this blog, one of my friends is going to beat some knowledge into me by having me read a book by Stephen Hawking. I can't say for sure if I will understand it, though. If it changes my thoughts about Time, who knows -- maybe I'll revisit this topic again.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week! Now back to playing Final Fantasy XIV... after a bit of Call of Duty: Ghosts... :)