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changehistoryThe best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. -Bob Dylan
It is all I have ever wanted to do--to set the course of my own destiny, taking the ideas that were planted and moving forward into something new. I didn't want to know my course through time was set, predetermined, in stone because someone from the future said that it was so. Even now, I feel that flutter of dread that one day one of them, or another like them, will appear from another four centuries in the future to tell me what steps are next to fulfill the course that fate has set.
Time is not immutable. They have changed it in the past, knowing what was coming, warned by the future, and adjusting their course of action to switch the outcome to one more palatable. Kirby Plaza. Odessa. A moment of foreknowledge, and paths shift and a new future is created. Every day, every choice we make, we are creating what comes after. The world Peter saw existed -- it happened, somewhere, in some time line, in some way, but then it changed. He changed it, or Hiro changed it, or I changed it by seizing it as my own. Perhaps it never was mine. Things can be changed and destiny may set a course, but even those from the future cannot say that the world in which they exist is predetermined.
It's a terrifying thought, that--people existing in possible futures, and the one in which we walk each day is only a possibility that is an iteration of various choices in the past. If we were to go back, change one thing, would our entire world disappear, or would it split itself off into another reality and the consequences of both choices exist simultaneously on separate paths, one never knowing the other slinks alongside it, each moment mutating it into something else, pulling them farther apart, or perhaps bringing them closer until one could almost think they might merge.
They can do that, they have that power. The power to reshape the world with one change in the past, to prevent futures from ever occurring, or, at the least, shifting them to someone else's timeline to deal with. And I...I move ever onward, looking to the future with a keener eye than those around me, because I am one who will have to live in it. For too long, humanity has said, "It isn't my problem." They want their cars, their products, their food, their technology and the problems it causes spiral onward but they will not have to live in the world they ravage. It will be for their children to deal with, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren.
And me.
I have seen the consequences of actions taken, of choices made. And because I understand where the world is headed, because I can see the long-term ramifications...Just as they do, when they see the future with their own eyes...I have a responsibility to act. I must act. I must find a way to shape a future that is better than the one toward which we are hurtling. If humanity itself will not think of its future, of the lives its children will lead...then I must, if only because it will be my world then, as well, and their choices will be consequences I must live with for eternity.
I would rather live with the consequences of my own actions, to be responsible for my own choices, than to live mired in theirs.
I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. -Bob Dylan
It is all I have ever wanted to do--to set the course of my own destiny, taking the ideas that were planted and moving forward into something new. I didn't want to know my course through time was set, predetermined, in stone because someone from the future said that it was so. Even now, I feel that flutter of dread that one day one of them, or another like them, will appear from another four centuries in the future to tell me what steps are next to fulfill the course that fate has set.
Time is not immutable. They have changed it in the past, knowing what was coming, warned by the future, and adjusting their course of action to switch the outcome to one more palatable. Kirby Plaza. Odessa. A moment of foreknowledge, and paths shift and a new future is created. Every day, every choice we make, we are creating what comes after. The world Peter saw existed -- it happened, somewhere, in some time line, in some way, but then it changed. He changed it, or Hiro changed it, or I changed it by seizing it as my own. Perhaps it never was mine. Things can be changed and destiny may set a course, but even those from the future cannot say that the world in which they exist is predetermined.
It's a terrifying thought, that--people existing in possible futures, and the one in which we walk each day is only a possibility that is an iteration of various choices in the past. If we were to go back, change one thing, would our entire world disappear, or would it split itself off into another reality and the consequences of both choices exist simultaneously on separate paths, one never knowing the other slinks alongside it, each moment mutating it into something else, pulling them farther apart, or perhaps bringing them closer until one could almost think they might merge.
They can do that, they have that power. The power to reshape the world with one change in the past, to prevent futures from ever occurring, or, at the least, shifting them to someone else's timeline to deal with. And I...I move ever onward, looking to the future with a keener eye than those around me, because I am one who will have to live in it. For too long, humanity has said, "It isn't my problem." They want their cars, their products, their food, their technology and the problems it causes spiral onward but they will not have to live in the world they ravage. It will be for their children to deal with, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren.
And me.
I have seen the consequences of actions taken, of choices made. And because I understand where the world is headed, because I can see the long-term ramifications...Just as they do, when they see the future with their own eyes...I have a responsibility to act. I must act. I must find a way to shape a future that is better than the one toward which we are hurtling. If humanity itself will not think of its future, of the lives its children will lead...then I must, if only because it will be my world then, as well, and their choices will be consequences I must live with for eternity.
I would rather live with the consequences of my own actions, to be responsible for my own choices, than to live mired in theirs.
