| This entry is in response to the issue raised in this post on Belindadnileb's xanga.
She wrote: "Wouldn't it be awesome if we could simply push "Ctrl-Z" or "Apple-Z" to go back and undo some things in life?" My response was that with all these people going back in time, the world would keep repeating this short stretch of history and stop progressing. After some debate, two conditions were proposed: 1) No one would have the power except herself; 2) She wouldn't tell anyone about it. (Feel free to track the entire string of responses, which goes back and forth a couple times.)
Given those conditions, this is what would happen:
In order for your Ctrl-Z power to do anything, you have to still retain the memories of whatever it was that you regretted and decided to undo. If you change history by undoing your mistake, and then forget your mistake, then you'll just repeat your mistake the second time through history, and you'll be forced to undo it yet again, forget it yet again, and be stuck in an infinite loop, all without other people's ever knowing about it. (They don't know you have the power.)
But if you do remember all the things you do wrong and then change with your Ctrl-Z power, then you will do differently, and succeed in avoiding that mistake the second time. Then, the others around you would be oblivious to the changes, but you would remember what the alternate future was like. Sooner or later, you'd make more mistakes, and have to use Ctrl-Z more times. You might even find out, five years down the road, that you took the wrong path five years ago and then you'd have to undo a whole bunch of undoes to go back and take the fundamental correct path. The result? After several years, so many things would have changed in your life that you'd get mixed up between what is or isn't still true in the current revision of your life. You would be stuck with confusing memories of something bad that happened in an alternate timeline when you turned right instead of left, or got on a wrong bus and missed a flight, or failed a semester final, and so on. And when the next catastrophe presented itself in the life which you made perfect, you would struggle to figure out whether it's related to something way back that you forgot to undo, or shouldn't have undone, or whether it's some entirely new challenge.
It just wouldn't work. Yes, it would work to undo a couple of things in your life, but if the Ctrl-Z power is not used with caution, it is very problematic. So how would you resist the temptation to use it for every little failure...and how would you know when it's something big enough to be worth Ctrl-Z-ing?
Debate is welcome, of course. However, I may only sporadically have time to reply, so be patient if you wanted a response. |
