You are a product of your past.
Obviously, no one knows to what extent this is true -- the nature versus nurture debate is still deeply unexplored battlefield, partially because 'nature' and 'nurture' are so intimately interwoven that it is generally hopeless to try to separate them.
Suffice it to say that your identity has been a long time coming; the choices that you have made throughout your life have led you to certain experiences and away from others, have shaped and molded your thoughts; the choices that your parents made led them together and taught them how to raise you; the lines and lines of previous generations have sent down identity in strings of DNA but also in your roots, spread out among the cultures of the world. Whether or not you were raised according to a certain heritage, somewhere, somehow, someone who affected your life made a choice and your past shifted, just a little bit.
This is why it is easier to think of the past as static than not. The past is such a large part of identity that considering it malleable would only serve to disrupt the fundamentals of how we relate to the world. In a sense, your past is your vision through which to construct your reality.
When Dana takes a step into the past and meets her own ancestors, when the situation allows her (at least the illusion) of the ability to construct her own past, it both calls into question everything she knows about herself and highlights the grounding from which her family grew.
If we, for a moment, accept that Dana could have let her ancestor Rufus die, then she lives a paradox. She is a product of her past, but her past is a product of her. The logic chases itself in a circle, and there is no center point from which to ground reality, and say -- this is the stable me, this is who I am.
This makes me wonder -- if we were truly masters of ourselves -- if we were given the chance, from birth -- the ultimate freedom to construct our own identities, the ability to create not just our own futures, but our own pasts -- what would we be left with? What could we cling to? What would we lose?
Would we be able to be anybody at all?
Cool post. I especially like the last part about what would we be if we had ultimate free will. I constantly think in my own life, what would have happened if I hadn't done this or if I had gone to the movie etc. I think its true that in every action you take, you are defining yourself because you are putting yourself on a certain path that will lead to defining actions. This leaves an infinite amount of possibilities and potential future paths! I think this is overwhelming and somewhat frightening to imagine that each step you take is definitive and by taking it you are ridding yourself of another reality that could have occurred if you had stepped to the left instead of the right. This total power may also be why it is easier to think of the past as static. Otherwise, you would drive yourself crazy thinking about "What could have been."
ReplyDeleteOn a less serious note, the latest episode of Community discussed just this. A character rolls a die to see who will pick up the pizza downstairs. Depending on which characters was chosen, a whole string of different events occur.