Sharon’s comment on yesterday’s post really resonated with me. I too have had the experience, as an adult, of reading the journals of my sixteen year old self, and finding myself shocked at how similar we were. From that experience I came to the realization that at sixteen, we already have all the emotional equipment — we just have none of the experience to know what to do with it.
This notion of reading journals from a different time in one’s life does raise some possibilities for science fiction. If we could read the future journals of our older selves, then time would take on a far more interesting shape. Every time we looked at those journals, we might make choices that veer us away from the reality they describe.
And so, as we then grew older, we would write different journals. Our new younger self, reading those “reality spoilers”, would then create yet another version of reality, and so on.
Eventually scientists might discover properties that govern such reality shifts — some sort of operational rules of cause and effect. If you want to help cure world hunger, or make a world where people will be kinder to one another, it might turn out that certain kinds of journal entries are more effective than others.
Of course there will be other people writing journals only for selfish gain, trying to optimize their own personal time loop karma. All through the world, opposing forces would arise and do battle, one journal entry at a time.
If we really could steer reality itself in this way, I wonder what kinds of universes we would collectively create.