MovieChat Forums > Rewind (2013) Discussion > In reality it might actually be counter ...

In reality it might actually be counter productive.

posted 11 years ago by MidnightThud
12 replies | jump to latest

Its the classic theory of would you go back and Kill Hitler thus stopping WW2.

Problem is that Hitler was a symptom of the era and fed on those German fears and resentments from the previous war. Who knows... you go back and kill him and another German leader who was not totally insane and incompetent at warfare may have taken his place instead.

So with this show........ who are they protecting? Just the citizens of NY? Who is to say the rest of the world would not have benefited greatly in the long term from the ensuing economic and social corrections? Crap happens in the world every day and changing everything (probably American orientated) would be the same as historical manipulation. Would they go back in Ep2 and stop the dropping of the Atomic bombs on japan?

[–] ughmoretodealwith 11 years ago

They mentioned that the nuclear destruction of New York had caused the world economy to crash and world war 3 could very well break out due to it. So to prevent that from occuring they decided to stop the nuclear destruction of New York.

Christians call it faith ... I call it the herd.
-- Friedrieh Wilhelm Nietzsche

[–] foomonger 11 years ago

The point you completely missed is that the total destruction of New York might actually be in mankind's best long-term interest.

In other words, crap happens. Deal with it. We have no right to intervene.

-fm

[–] xenophile2002 10 years ago

OK, turn this around: you don't have time travel. Nobody does. But you find out that a terrorist group has smuggled a nuke into NYC. Do you stop the destruction of the city? Do you even try? Probably you do; probably any of us would. But for all you or any of us know, just sitting back and letting it happen might actually be in mankind's best long-term interest. How is that any different?

You spot a child drowning in a pond. You save his life. No time travel involved; you just wade out and save the kid. You didn't even have to swim. Of course, that kid could grow up to be the next Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, or Pol Pot. Then again, he could grow up and cure cancer... and one of the people cured of cancer is the next Hitler.

OK, now back to time travel: you were too late to save the kid. You didn't see him drowning, you found his body floating face-down in the pond. So you hop into your time machine, go back a couple of hours, and sit by the pond until the kid arrives for a bit of swimming and tell him to beat it. He goes home and lives. How is this somehow "We have no right to intervene" if the first wasn't?

I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler.
- Jon Stewart

[–] foomonger 10 years ago

I was simply pointing out that ughmoretodealwith had missed the gist.

As to your philosophical question, I would say that if it is within our power to make a change (prevent nuclear explosion, save a life, etc.) then it is our duty (to our conscious, heart, society, whatever) to act. It's not possible to not intervene in the present.

However, messing with things that have already happened, whether by travelling through time, or even just distorting history, is a mistake. But that's just my own personal view, and not related to my previous post which was more analogous to clarifying grammar.

-fm

[–] xenophile2002 10 years ago

OK, sometimes grammar needs to be corrected and points need to be clarified.

As for the ethics of time travel, it's not a problem we're likely to have to confront anytime soon.

I disagree with you, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler.
- Jon Stewart

[–] bruce-129 10 years ago

You stop in the present because that is what you do in the present, but re-engineering the past has all kinds of problems with it that actions in the present does not. It is no one's right to engineer the world for their own benefit ... so in this case there is no good that come of stopping the New York bombing. The one proviso to that would be if you could go back to right before the guy set the bomb and kill him ... because we knew in the future he would no be there in the future after killing himself, and he would not have done anything after setting the bomb that would have a major effect in the future. So you go back as close to the time you can, go to place where the bomber was, give him a heart attack or whatever ... but then - would that make a difference and hold? Because if he did not bomb NY, the team to kill him would not be sent back, and he would then again go ahead and bomb NY. This is why time travel is not possible, or if it is our existence is meaningless and just a dream.

[–] AtheistRevolution 11 years ago

Twilight Zone did an episode about going back in time and killing Hitler.She ended up killing him as a baby but the nanny replaced him with another baby and he still became Hitler. It was a whole nature vs nurture thing.

I think if you went back in the past and crushed fascism before it started.The communists would have taken over most of the world and all of Europe.Fascism was a counter to the growing communist parties. Before Hitler, the communist party was the largest party in Germany and Europe.Communism was the populist revolution after the failures of the great depression.And it was even taking root in US.US would have kept its isolationist policy without fascism/ww2 and the cold war would have never happened.So the communist party would have never been crushed in the US. Also the atomic bomb would have never been built by US.Since the atomic bomb was influenced by Albert Einstein writing a letter to the president about Nazi Germany possibly building one and taking over the world.

- Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

[–] bruce-129 10 years ago

You cannot say the communists would have taken over the world .. because Russia only became so powerful because they had to in order to survive hitler. Maybe, maybe not, you cannot predict the past any more than you can predict the future from the past.

Hitler got to be political because he was in the national socialist party ... which you might call communist. He was taken over by subversive industrialists ... in other words he was fascist for the same reason the US is becoming fascists, because the rich powerful people of his age took over government for their own purposes.

If the communists took over, the same thing may have happened, or a strong state that prevented private fortunes and dynasties might have evolved and facism, which is always a threat may never have happened. The bomb would likely have been build, the Germans were working on it, but had to drop it because the were low on resources.

The Germans lost because Hitler was a real lunatic and made hugely bad and stupid decisions. Attacking Russia was the worst, but he drove the military, the military did not drive him. He was the one who loved big weapons, so he produced big lumbering tanks that were too big to fight, support and maneuver.

The world was very lucky Hitler was such an idiot.

[–] AtheistRevolution 10 years ago

The biggest party in Germany before Hitler took over was the communist. Most countries were hit by the great depression and the populist movement was communism as a replacement for the failed system of that day. Even US had a growing communist party. Fascism came out as a third way and beat communism from Western Europe and US. Nobody wanted a WW2. So who would stop communism or fascism from spreading. If Japan didn't attack the US then US wouldn't have came into the war.Soviet Union wouldn't have spread across all of Europe because Stalin didn't try to expand but Germany and other countries would become a kind of independent satellite state like Cuba or they would be like China.

- Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

[–] dwarol 11 years ago

In this show they made not changing the time line a major plot point. I didn't see them going back and trying to fix all of history. In fact, to justify further trips back in time, they had that silly plot at the end of Malcolm going back, shooting someone, and changing the time line again.

Yeah, it could be argued that the destruction of NY was somehow "natural" and shouldn't be messed with. But it was done by a scientist who was essentially using that event to force them to go back and save his wife. It could be argued her death was "natural" and that he was the one ultimately messing with the time line (at the very end it would have been hilarious if they mentioned that the couple got divorced in 1985).

[–] bruce-129 10 years ago

Yes, good thinking. It was lucky Hitler was such an idiot, and he really was ... and that has lots of questions and thinking and discussion about that as well ... but who knows or can predict the future or the future from the past ... same problems.

Also thing is that if they go back to the past and change it, it would change their lives as well, perhaps to the extent they would not be born, or at least would not have gone back in time to make the first original change, meaning that once it is changes, the change would not need to be made so it would not have been made and the original past would resume.

[–] MuggySphere 10 years ago

Ah...........but

What if you travel into the future and see someone you know of doing something very, very bad that is bad enough you want to change it? You go back home to the present discuss this with your superiors then decide to go back to the future and kill them.

What happens though when you return and your present catches up to that future?