[Mad] - Fate

[changehistory]

Beyond the obvious animal cruelty issues, does anyone really care if the butterflies get stepped on? Really?

Because, in the end, if time is fluid and people are hopping all around in it anyway, then we're all already living in someone's past, and when we, using the whole "we" loosely here mind you, go bopping off to the future and see something dire and them come back here and decide we can't let that happen, well then, we annihilate those people's future.

What the hell is the difference with going back and changing the past? Because, oh dear god, we might change the present? And that's too horrible to contemplate, even if we might make it a better present, but we can change the future without any thought about the implications?

So, I ask you--are we really worried about the poor butterflies, or do we just want to selfishly preserve the status quo that best suits us, citing butterflies and hurricanes and dire and disastrous results of messing with "fate" and "destiny", but when it doesn't suit us, we decide we must change it and damn the butterflies and their right to not be stepped on?

No, honestly--I'm curious.

Comments

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

...What do butterflies have to do with the price of eggs?

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't step on them in the past for fear of destroying the future or some such nonsense.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

...Oh.

I'm pretty sure that's a metaphor.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

...and you don't think I'm not using it as one?

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Animal cruelty was mentioned. :P

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Irony, Baileigh. Irony.

[deep-red-bells.livejournal.com]

Sorry. It's just, it might possibly be the dumbest metaphor I've ever heard and a horrid mangling of chaos theory.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree it's the stupidest metaphor and possibly the stupidest theory, as well.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

Destroy the future, change the future, blah blah blah. People are going to do what they want to do about the future, the present or...well, maybe not the past but people still seem to do it.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, if they think they've the right to go around changing someone's future, I don't see what's so wrong with changing the past.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

I don't know really, the whole space time continuum thing just makes my head hurt.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Yours and mine both.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

Who is worried about changing the past?

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Oh, Peter and Hiro both go on about it.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

So now there is worry about going into the past? *sighs*

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

We can't really be certain that we do destroy that future. All we ensure is that it is not our future. I believe there are multiple dimensions - that large decisions you make creates them. I believe that the future I saw continued on its own course, but that it is no longer a future that I will have to face.

What is it that you want me to change? Do you want me to make me go away in the past? To just let things happen without me there?

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

So it is selfish then. You don't want to go through it, so you change it for you, not really "saving" anyone for sure--just in your timeline.

Nothing in particular. Someone just...it's nothing specific, and no. It has nothing to do with wanting to make you go away.

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

In a way, yes, it is selfish. Unfortunately, I can tell you truthfully that I have no idea who the changes may or may not have hurt, but I do know it helped people. Whereas every time I've tried to change something in the past, I know no one was helped.

Someone just...what?

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Except future you came back and told Peter to change what was for future you the past and that helped someone so, well, future you got the past changed and helped someone, or. Something? I'm getting a headache.

Told me they would change the past if they could with that little regretful sigh and I just...no. He wouldn't have.

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it was not the same me. I never became that man. And it did not help them. It helped us.

What is it? What do you want changed?

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

But you could have, and if you went back into the past to change something you might never become this man or...I don't know. It's all convoluted and the whole theory is ridiculous.

Nothing you can fix, carp.

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

But at this point in my life, I have no reason to change me. My future self saw a reason to change himself.

If I can't fix it, then why are you upset about not changing the past?

[youngerpetrelli]

We live in the present. We don't live in the future -- it hasn't happened yet for us. The past, on the other hand, has. If we change the future, it doesn't change US. If we change the past, it does.

Changing the future doesn't wipe any of us living now out of existence, but changing the past could...

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

So it is purely selfish, then.

[youngerpetrelli]

I don't mean just us us, but everyone on the planet at this time.

The future is just potential and possibility right now, while the past is fact.