'Would it be possible to design a strategy to steer a path towards a desirable future?'
The Twilight Zone dealt with this question in “Back There.” A couple of men theorize about the possibility of changing the past with a time machine. The purely theoretical conversation turns into reality as one of the men finds himself back in time on the night that Abraham Lincoln gets shot. Not to ruin the end, the answer isn’t clear cut; some things can be changed and other things cannot.
Doctor Who also tackles the same question with a better worded idea of how time works. There are fixed points in time that cannot be changed. Jack Harkness is a fixed point in time for the future. While Doctor Who has enough leeway to change even this axiom, the idea is that, generally speaking there are points in history, as seen as a whole across space and time, that are immutable. These times will always happen. Other things can be changed.
To answer the question that we started with, we could conceivable steer a path toward a more desirable future depending on what the future fixed points are and how they come into being. Since time travel, as far as we know, is currently impossible, even if theoretically possible, it could very well be that there are no fixed points in the future. If that is the case, then we can steer a path toward a desirable future.
Time travel aside, this question may come down to whether the person answering it believes in fate or free will or in what combination the two normally opposed ideas exist in the individual at the time of the question. For those who believe in a governing entity that controls the future or some other version of a life where people don’t make decisions but just go through doing whatever they have been programmed to do, the answer is that there is no way to navigate to a desirable future. Those who believe in free will would say that the future is humankind’s to determine.
Of course, the whole point may be moot. Even if we can navigate toward a more desirable future, we have to have the will to do so. Far too many people are too concerned with trying to get theirs now to help make life better for those immediately around them, much less concern themselves with finding a better future for people they will never know.
Doctor Who also tackles the same question with a better worded idea of how time works. There are fixed points in time that cannot be changed. Jack Harkness is a fixed point in time for the future. While Doctor Who has enough leeway to change even this axiom, the idea is that, generally speaking there are points in history, as seen as a whole across space and time, that are immutable. These times will always happen. Other things can be changed.
To answer the question that we started with, we could conceivable steer a path toward a more desirable future depending on what the future fixed points are and how they come into being. Since time travel, as far as we know, is currently impossible, even if theoretically possible, it could very well be that there are no fixed points in the future. If that is the case, then we can steer a path toward a desirable future.
Time travel aside, this question may come down to whether the person answering it believes in fate or free will or in what combination the two normally opposed ideas exist in the individual at the time of the question. For those who believe in a governing entity that controls the future or some other version of a life where people don’t make decisions but just go through doing whatever they have been programmed to do, the answer is that there is no way to navigate to a desirable future. Those who believe in free will would say that the future is humankind’s to determine.
Of course, the whole point may be moot. Even if we can navigate toward a more desirable future, we have to have the will to do so. Far too many people are too concerned with trying to get theirs now to help make life better for those immediately around them, much less concern themselves with finding a better future for people they will never know.
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