Travels with Desmond

Want something to make your head hurt? Try this:

Mrs. X and I have been big fans of Lost since the beginning. At the moment, the storyline is engrossed in a big time travel arc. The particular theory of time travel that the producers seem to have embraced is one that this sometimes called the Flowing Forward model. In this theory, time is completely set and if a person travels to the past, they cannot change anything because the point at which they came from has already been influenced by their decision to go into the past.

As an example, let’s say tomorrow I gained the power to travel into the past and decide to try and stop the murder of Abraham Lincoln. No matter what I did, I would be unable to stop the murder because even though I haven’t travelled back yet, all the actions I have taken already exist in the past. Time has recorded my future decision to travel back and the past is set with the actions I have performed, even though it’s my future self doing those things.

On Lost, this is shown and done well, although the matter of Desmond needs some additional explaining. Unlike the rest of the Losties, Desmond has not bodily travelled in time, only his consciousness. In his first trip back, Desmond tried to change things in the past, but he was thwarted by universal correction and instructed in this by a character known as Ms. Hawking. In his second trip, Desmond’s mind goes back to 1996 where he meets Daniel Faraday and get’s some help in managing his shifting consciousness.

A question that has popped up among viewers is that given that the past is set, why doesn’t Desmond recognize Faraday either when he comes out of the Swan station or when he comes to the helicopter for the first time if he had lengthy conversations with him in 1996? I’ll warn you that this is where your brain will hurt.

Even though Desmond did all these things in the 1990’s, they were overseen by his 2004 consciousness. Effectively his 1990’s mind was turned off during these periods, and his 2004 mind was running his 1990’s body. We know these events actually happened in the past and that Desmond is not changing anything because Faraday remembers all of this and has written it down. He knows how to react in every situation and can give Desmond proper instructions and uses Desmond’s information to help his own research.

Now, Desmond’s 1990’s mind cannot process the invasion of his future mind. Some of these periods might simply remain as blanks in his memory, but, and especially in the first instance of time travel, Desmond’s mind crafted events in a way that did not involve his future consciousness. For example, when Desmond goes to buy an engagement ring for Penny, rather than process the fact that Mrs. Hawking tells him that he doesn’t buy it and ends up going to the island, Desmond’s 1990’s mind justifies things by accepting the suggestion that he simply chickens out. Essentially, Desmond is creating a false memory to preserve his sanity. He is not changing the past when his 2004 mind intrudes, he is simply breaking the false memory his 1990’s mind created to protect itself. Does your head hurt yet?

The violent nature of Desmond’s swings in his second time travel trip would suggest that the entire trip to Oxford and his conversation with Penny would not have been recorded at all. Unlike the first trip, which was a gentle overriding of several days of memory, Desmond’s consciousness was ripped back and forth. To preserve itself, Desmond’s 1996 mind completely shut down and could not even record passively. This is demonstrated in the fact that when Desmond’s mind went back to his 2004 self, his 1996 body simply turned off and he passed out. Think of it like The Matrix when several people died because their minds were disconnected from their bodies by being left in the matrix. Desmond doesn’t die because a channel is still open, but the stress of the jumps would have eventually destroyed his 2004 body unless he could anchor himself (hence the need for a constant). Once the jumps were over, Desmond’s 1996 mind would have uncocooned itself and his entire leave would have just been a blank spot. This could have been justified by assuming that he had been drinking heavily or done something else to wipe himself out, again creating a false memory to justify the blank spot.

So, in a nutshell, Desmond is not changing the past. The past is what it is. The only thing Desmond is changing is his own false assumptions about what happened in the past. I think that is enough brain stress for one day.