The Time loop of the present and future

First off, anyone and everyone would love to be able to time travel. There are so many options and possibilities that we have all missed out on that if we knew the answer to we might change them. I agree with Lewis when he says, "that a possible world where time travel took place would be a most strange world, different in fundamental ways from the world we think is ours." (492) This strange world is pictured perfectly by the bizarre world that skynet takes over in the Terminator movie.

James Cameron builds The Terminator much like the movie Looper is seen. There are irrefutable fact that come into the equation that make you overthink the movie because of the impossibilities. In The Terminator Officer Kyle Reese is sent back to protect Sarah Connors because is going to be killed by that terminator sent back before him. This seems all fine an dandy, until we consider the whole picture. The only reason that Kyle is sent back is because the future leader, Connors, told him to protect his mom, but in turn, ends up having sex with Sarah Connors causing her to have her child who eventually sends Kyle back to save his mom again. The only way that we can justify this is with the multiple times and universe theory, which means there are identical worlds out there with just very minor differences. If we take this into consideration then it is possible to change the past because the past for you is another persons present. David also states that, "the past is impossible to change because it is logically impossible."

Another issue that time travel has is the formation of matter that was not originally there. The laws of physics that matter cannot be either created or destroyed. This would be the in the instant like Looper where there are both two loopers present who are the same person. This would be impossible for two of the same person to exist in the same time and space. Time travel to the past has my aspects that can be questions and proved wrong unless the whole world that the movie is built in stays true to its own boundaries. The future has no boundaries though. The actions of the future are not decided yet and therefor have no implications that would hold the time traveler bound to his/her previous time.

The time machine problem is a perfect illustration for this movie. If i stole a time machine only to donate it to a museum so my early version could steal it again and donate it once more, then there is a never ending cycle. The only way for this to end is by the person dying before his time frame, loop has been reached again.

Time travel is one of those issues that people would never be able to contemplate and is only attainable in the movies. This is why we cant logically come to a conclusion for the questions that we ask because we do not know of the right answer and this time. Maybe a future version of us will tell present us the answer.

The World Forgetting, By the World Forgot

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores the concept of memory and the possibilities once deleting memories becomes a reality. Upon this discovery, a market for deleting painful memories of loss and pain immediately surfaced. Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski take advantage of this new technology and erase each other from their memories in the wake of their broken relationship. Other than telling the creative love story, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind unveils new conflicts regarding memory and time as two people try to avoid the pain of lost love.

The interdependent relationship of memory and time is overtly exposed in this film. Memory is the recording of events over a period of time. Memories cannot be recorded without the passing of time, and for this reason memories are recorded in a linear fashion: past, present, and then future. As found in our readings, Taylor suggests, “The future is something necessarily lying ahead of us, and the past, behind us” (486). On the other side of the coin, time cannot exist without the recording of memories. If an observer cannot record memories, then that observer  cannot distinguish previous events from present events. Establishing two points between two events is necessary to comprehend our linear conception of time. Furthermore, if the linear nature of time cannot be determined, then the concept of the future is an impossibility.

This impossibility is readily revealed with basic mathematic principles. To anticipate a future event, a trend must first be determined. In this model, the trend is the slope of a line that represents the linear nature of time, where the future is a point further down the line than the event point currently being observed. In this respect, the past is all the previous event points on the line of which the observer remembers traveling. For a line to exist, at least two points must exist. In terms of time, these two points would be an event in the present and a memory of an event in the past. By using the points remembered from previous events and the event point of the present, the observer ultimately calculates the slope of this line to anticipate future events. Therefor, without memory, the concept of time vanishes, as there are no past events for an observer to remember and thus no way to anticipate future events. There is only the present. Only a single existence. The late Alexander Pope romantically envisions the beauty of this reality in an excerpt from his poem “Eloisa to Albert”:

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

In a world where memories can be eradicated from a heartbroken citizen by going to a clinic, the nature of both memory and time are challenged. In this film Joel and Clementine rashly delete each other from their memory in a desperate attempt to elude the pain of their shattered relationship. However, upon doing this, they run into each other again and fall in love for a second time. The conflict between time and memory comes fully to light when their deleted memories are exposed to them. After reviewing their previous medical records and seeing the ugly side of their relationship and breakup, they realize their previous records suggest they will eventually hate each other and suffer at the hand of their relationship. It seems as though this would encourage them to go their separate ways and avoid the massive heartache likely to ensue. Surprisingly, Joel and Clementine ultimately choose to start over with a new relationship and love each other with reckless abandonment.

Why would they make this decision in the light of such exceptionally clear and personal evidence that strongly indicates their relationship will fail?

Based on the concept of time being linear in existence, Joel and Clementine found themselves in position of the “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind,” as described by Alexander Pope. Previously, their relationship was following an event curve with a downward slope. The future events of Joel and Clementine's relationship, as predicted by them, seemed to only get worse. This was due to the fact that the slope of their satisfaction in their relationship was negative and showed little signs of improvement based on the memories of their most recent events. Upon deleting their memories, Joel and Clementine deleted all of the previous event points of their relationship and all of the slopes and predictions of the future that came with those points. For this reason, they found themselves in a situation where they could start over and re-establish the direction of their relationship. Joel and Clementine’s story artfully exposes how the manipulation of memory has the capacity to control time and its interpretation.

The Predestined

Predestination is something that haunts time philosophy. Predestination is a form of time loop, in which, the time traveler is caught in a loop of events that predestines them to travel back in time, thus fulfilling their role to create the future. This loop can be seen in the film, The Terminator.

Firstly, in The Terminator, the character Kyle Reese (27 years old) must go back in time to become the father of his future leader, John Connor (33 years old). Does not make sense right? Well, this is predestination at its finest. Kyle Reese was born in 2002 and was sent back in time to 1984 to become the father of his future leader who had not been born yet. As time progressed, Kyle (under the tutelage of his son, John) would be prompted to go back to the future, thus creating the loop. 

In "Making Things to Have Happened", authors Chisholm and Taylor discuss the sufficiency and impossibility. The impossibility is the focus of The Terminator. Impossibility is it is impossible for event B to take place without event A taking place. And,in case of The Terminator, it is impossible for event A to take place without event B. This is defining the loop in simplest terms. 

But my biggest question for you all is "Is it possible to break this loop"? 

Terminating the Loop

The Terminator, a 1984 movie with questionable graphics that has so many relations to Looper. In both films, there are people from the future traveling back in time to assist some way in the past.  The question we discussed in class was how did Bruce Willis not know what Younger Version of him would do.  Just like in Terminator, Kyle had to come back in time to save Sarah Conner from the Terminator because she was the going to carry the future of the human existence.  Unlike in Terminator, Joseph Gorden- Levett had to see what the potential future would be when the Future him came back and did the damage to the child Seth.  Yet, Kyle in the Terminator came back and became the father to John Conner, leader of the rebellion. The issue with the paradox with time is that the future joins the past which equals the present; though neither film had the same time traveling effect with regards to memory.  Looper was focused on the future in a sense that memories could constantly be accessed, Terminator was not using a lot of memories from the future to aid the quest to save Sarah.  They did not know where the Terminator was going to be.  All characters from the future had to join the past because there was no way to ever get back to the future.  Which begs to question the of how time traveling back into time, why is it so loved by movie writers? Why change the past, to potentially make a better future? Thinking of people trying to consider "time as a river", and "space as a great motionless vessel", how can one possibly believe traveling back up the river (into the past) is nearly as possibly and traveling into the future.  Going back into the future poses so much threat to certain existence because if just one thing is changed, a life can be altered, a species can be eliminated, Earth can be destroyed; Or in Looper, Seth could become the RainMaker, or John Conner not existing at all.  The simple paradox of time travel into the past to alter the future is impossible, even though Hollywood thrives from the idea.

Wondering Why Hot Tub Time Machine Didn't Make The List

David Lewis and Dr. J have both mentioned the grandfather theory: if one were to go back in time, she could not kill her grandfather because he would be incapable of having her parent who would be incapable of giving birth to her. In one scene in Back to the Future, Marty saves his father from an oncoming vehicle and saves his life; this is an interesting alternative to the grandfather theory.  We never considered the possibility of saving our parent, grandparent, or distant ancestor from death; something else would have saved them, as we exist, yet we could have also?

One major fallacy arises as the movie concludes: the dynamic of each of Marty’s family members has changed.  Because Marty altered his parents’ path, they became more confident and successful.  Their lives are drastically different: considering this, Marty’s existence would be too, and he would not exist or would exist as a different Marty, one who did not travel backward in time and eventually return.

My time machine theory (please ignore the logical errors): if one person had access to a time machine, travelled back in time (assume they're leaving 2015), and stayed for more than a moment, the present (2015) would change.  Someone would have stayed at a stop light one second longer, another person would not have bumped into their future spouse, etc. If numerous people time travelled backward, the present would begin to change drastically. If many people travelled back in time, the present would change constantly, every fraction of a second, you would be a different person or cease to exist. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but one person could change the present and future, so numerous people could radically alter it.

Richard Taylor’s description of time travel is simple, undermines all of our classroom theories, and is a total buzzkill: “To imagine “returning” to an earlier time is merely to imagine the recurrence of the events of that time” (484).  In other words, it is impossible and left solely for the imagination.  According to Taylor, “The future is something necessarily lying ahead of us, and the past, behind us”…sorry Marty (486).

Sidenote: way easier to follow than Looper.

Check out if you're bored, finished all your homework, and enjoy silly conspiracy theories and/or buzzfeed-like articles:

Reasons Time Travel Exists: lmao ok

Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day portrays the evolution of a man's perception while stuck in a seemingly endless time loop. At the start, Phil Connors is egotistical and manipulative; his only concern is to get out of Punxsutawney and, soon enough, out of the time lope he becomes suck in. Connors' first actions in this time loop involve him manipulating the people around him to achieve temporary pleasures, such as robbing the bank truck, seducing women, and endangering others' lives to take a joy ride. Connors lives like this for a while, only doing things to amuse himself. Eventually, he begins to dread the time loop. Everything thing he does is done in efforts to free himself from the time loop. So, though Connors has total control of his free will, his primary reasoning has changed. This the changes the type of actions Connors carries out. Connors is stuck in the time loop and a bout of depression. He continues to try to break the time loop, but several failed attempts leaves Connors depressed. He attempts suicide several times trying to break the loop, but he finds no success. Connors, in his depression, loses his sense of free will when his suicide attempts just end with him waking up again on Groundhog Day. Through out a lot of the movie, Connors tries to woo his co-worker Rita. Connors, after his depression, decides to change how he interacts with the people he encounters. He is nicer to others and uses the knowledge he's learned over the course of his time loop to help others. So, through this time loop, Connors has some fundamental changes in his ideology. This in turn allows him to act on different wants or needs. He makes such a dramatic change from the start of the time loop to the end of it that he is able to break the time loop. His ability to discover new desires and act on things to lead him to that desire show how Connors continued to have free will throughout the time loop, though it seems his actions were limited at times. In the beginning, Connors is acting in things to build himself up to satisfy his self-absorbed perspective. But as the story progresses, he starts to act in a more kind manner to others because he has grown tired of his manipulative and lonely ways. This change in him is eventually what is able to break the time loop.