The Novikov Consistency Principle does not give space to the dreaminess of possibility, but the concrete nature that what has happened cannot be changed. A time traveler cannot journey back to their parent’s college days and warn them not to get married, for it would contradict the now. The time traveler cannot poison Hitler because the Holocaust happened. Causality has consistency, there was an event and an effect and it cannot be taken back, for then the now would not exist. The now is built on the paragons and slabs of concrete matter from history.
But life is paradox, and there are violations to the rules, namely because there are no rules. Maybe you can go back and you can kill Hitler, but the outcome would still be the same. The idea of the aryan race is in the quantum field, and even if it does not sit in Hitler’s head, it infects a different figure. Maybe the method is not mass extermination but it is re-education, and the Jews suffer regardless. The Novikov Principle violation knows that life is made up of inconsistencies and contradictions.
But, particles move and collapse into one another, they do not stay in the same place, they change as they are observed. This gives way to multiple parallel universes, where this reality is not the be all and end all. There is no singular timeline. Schrodinger’s cat is alive in one universe and dead in another.
In the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics there are multiple time lines, therefore every possible outcome of a quantum event can occur in a separate branch of reality. The you that chose to go to the grocery store instead of sitting down at a cafe, is living a different life than the you that went to the dentist. You take on a variety of forms, therefore you are not static. The world is in flux, and you are an ever changing wave in the ocean of consciousness.
If there are many worlds, there are many you’s. The you that went to an Ivy League university to study Journalism can meet the you that is a refugee from Libya. You have destinies, not one fixed fate. The timeline is a kaleidoscope of varying refracting sides, not the surface of a pond, not flat or one dimensional.
Time is a dialogue in which present, past, and future speak. What does this moment say? What does the past forget? What does the future rekindle? Where is the convergence?
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