A lot depends on those goals. In the scenario, your alternate/past self is not you, and so what happens in that person's life should be exactly as important as what happens in the life of any stranger. Should you care about them? Yes, I'd say so. Should you destroy your future to change theirs? Not under most circumstances. Maybe if the goals you never achieved have a wide impact outside your life, such as if you were going to invent free energy or usher in a new, golden era of enlightenment and social tolerance or something.
The situation suggests that the alternative to changing the past is living with the knowledge of your mistake. I think it's worth remembering that the knowledge of the mistake carries with it the knowledge that those life goals were at one time achievable, and it might still be possible to achieve them or at least their approximation - particularly since now you know where you went wrong the first time. Depending on how you look at it, knowing that you missed your life goals because of some mistake you made might be a really good, encouraging thing. So it could be a choice between discarding your own life to create some alternate world where some person who is very similar to yourself has the life you wanted, or finding a way to get that life for yourself.
Although if changing the past gets you separated from causality in such a way that you become a rogue element in the fabric of spacetime, journeying through all possible worlds as some kind of fantastic cosmic nomad rather than causing you to merely cease to exist... heck, those life goals weren't all that great, were they? If they were really so important, your alternate self can worry about 'em. ;)
Anyway... those are my thoughts, but I'm curious and wish to know your rationale, Goldkin.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 05:57 am (UTC)The situation suggests that the alternative to changing the past is living with the knowledge of your mistake. I think it's worth remembering that the knowledge of the mistake carries with it the knowledge that those life goals were at one time achievable, and it might still be possible to achieve them or at least their approximation - particularly since now you know where you went wrong the first time. Depending on how you look at it, knowing that you missed your life goals because of some mistake you made might be a really good, encouraging thing.
So it could be a choice between discarding your own life to create some alternate world where some person who is very similar to yourself has the life you wanted, or finding a way to get that life for yourself.
Although if changing the past gets you separated from causality in such a way that you become a rogue element in the fabric of spacetime, journeying through all possible worlds as some kind of fantastic cosmic nomad rather than causing you to merely cease to exist... heck, those life goals weren't all that great, were they? If they were really so important, your alternate self can worry about 'em. ;)
Anyway... those are my thoughts, but I'm curious and wish to know your rationale, Goldkin.