Timeline Splits
Parallel Universe Theory is back in vogue after a recent, viral episode on the Joe Rogan Podcast. But what’s the big deal, and why should you care?
I love this graphic by Tim Urban from What But Why.
It juxtaposes two powerful insights.
The many paths your life could have taken.
The many paths your life could still unfold.
Humans underestimate the power of a single decision because many seem inconsequential. Maybe if I became friends with John instead of Steve, my life would be 99.9% the same, with a few tiny details changed.
This is true in some instances. In other cases, The Butterfly Effect helps us see where a 0.1% change could lead to a 99.9% difference in life.
Take the news I just heard this weekend. A friend of a friend just died at age 43. He was drunk and collided head-on with a tree. Mind you he grew up in this town and probably drove that road no less than 1000 times under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But one small factor this time was enough to end his life, and change the course of an entire town.
You’ve also made big and small changes that have forever shaped your life.
Your best friends.
If you went to college or not.
Where you went to college.
What you majored in college.
Where you traveled.
Where you moved.
Your first job.
Your current job.
The person you married.
If you got divorced or not.
If you had kids or not.
As Robert Frost so eloquently said in The Road Not Taken:
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Humanity’s Timeline Split
Then, there are changes that affect the entire human species. Everything from the invention of the atomic bomb to 9/11 to a Covid pandemic. Had one of these not happened OR happened differently, it would have changed entire segments of society.
What if Covid-19 was a lab leak and what if it was caught in time? The entire 2020-2023 experience across much of the world would be unrecognizable compared to what we went through.
Now, consider some recent events. In the last year, we had a bullet miss Trump’s skull by approximately 1 inch. The world would be unimaginable today if a gust of wind pushed the bullet that small distance. Would there have been riots? Who would have taken Trump’s place? Would Joe Biden have stepped down? Would Kamala have won?
And not just that one bullet. What about Elon buying Twitter? What about Trump winning the election? Each of these events led to massive downstream effects.
I prefer our timeline, although I would have liked to have skipped the pandemic timeline. Still, one path leads to another (remember the beautiful Life Paths graphic by Tim Urban up above?). Had we not gone through that, we may be in a worse place now. That’s the tricky part about parallel universes; we can only speculate what could have happened, but we will never know for sure.
So for now, better or worse, we stay the course on this one…