Alternate universe problems
Aug. 22nd, 2020 12:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealSo there's this famous movie called "It's a Wonderful Life." Spoilers, obviously, but mostly cut for ranting. Also content note: discussion of suicidal ideation.
Our protagonist owes a lot of money he can't make up, and his boss kind of hints that his family would be better off if he was dead and his life insurance policy paid out. So he wanders over to a bridge thinking about jumping off it. Then he says "yeah, it'd be better if I'd never have been born." Then his guardian angel shows up like "okay, I'll show you the parallel universe where you were never born." The guy looks at it and is like "wow, this sucks. My wife never married me, my kids were never born, my brother died because I wasn't around to save him when we were kids, a bunch of guys died in the war because he wasn't there for them, etc. This universe sucks! Take me back!" Angel says "okay, sounds good, you're back in the real timeline." And then he has a new lease on life and has renewed hope.
The problem with this is...he's still in the exact same place he was before he went to the parallel universe. He still owes the money, and that plot is only resolved by a deus ex machina. Because the issue he had wasn't actually the issue that got resolved. When he said "I wish I'd never been born" that wasn't a real suggestion, because he didn't know he was living in a supernatural film, it was just a rhetorical rant.
Thank God, I have never been suicidal. I've never been in a situation where I was like "jumping off a bridge will solve my problems," I can realize "jumping off a bridge would make my loved ones and friends really sad, not to mention making the conditions I have even more stigmatizing in the future." So, I have no more risk of being George Bailey than anyone else.
But I have been in a position, lots of times, where it's like "it would have better if an alternate history had branched in such a way that the world was less terrible, and also, I would never be born." And it's like...what do I do with that? Where do I go? The "haha you've probably done good things too" moralizing just feels like a copout.
Our protagonist owes a lot of money he can't make up, and his boss kind of hints that his family would be better off if he was dead and his life insurance policy paid out. So he wanders over to a bridge thinking about jumping off it. Then he says "yeah, it'd be better if I'd never have been born." Then his guardian angel shows up like "okay, I'll show you the parallel universe where you were never born." The guy looks at it and is like "wow, this sucks. My wife never married me, my kids were never born, my brother died because I wasn't around to save him when we were kids, a bunch of guys died in the war because he wasn't there for them, etc. This universe sucks! Take me back!" Angel says "okay, sounds good, you're back in the real timeline." And then he has a new lease on life and has renewed hope.
The problem with this is...he's still in the exact same place he was before he went to the parallel universe. He still owes the money, and that plot is only resolved by a deus ex machina. Because the issue he had wasn't actually the issue that got resolved. When he said "I wish I'd never been born" that wasn't a real suggestion, because he didn't know he was living in a supernatural film, it was just a rhetorical rant.
Thank God, I have never been suicidal. I've never been in a situation where I was like "jumping off a bridge will solve my problems," I can realize "jumping off a bridge would make my loved ones and friends really sad, not to mention making the conditions I have even more stigmatizing in the future." So, I have no more risk of being George Bailey than anyone else.
But I have been in a position, lots of times, where it's like "it would have better if an alternate history had branched in such a way that the world was less terrible, and also, I would never be born." And it's like...what do I do with that? Where do I go? The "haha you've probably done good things too" moralizing just feels like a copout.
no subject
Date: 8/22/20 04:37 pm (UTC)(I'm not saying that's an *ideal* solution. But it's a solution that applied to his actual problems! :P And less glibly I do think a lot of times the only possible, if super unsatisfying, answer is stop worrying about ideal solutions and long-distance theoretical consequences for other people, just play the cards you're dealt.)
(Not that I'm any good at *taking* that advice; I've never ended up on a bridge over whether the world-as-a-whole would be better without me in it, but I've too often ended up wishing that I was a person who could.)
no subject
Date: 8/22/20 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/20 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8/22/20 06:05 pm (UTC)I think as I've gotten older my ability to remind myself that imagining a spherical cow is NOT a solution, that I have to work with the cows that exist and not the cows that don't, has improved. I used to get very upset and agonize about things that I screwed up, and wish so hard I could turn back time to make them not happen, and, I mean, I still burst into tears when I accidentally scraped the side of our new car a couple of years ago. But I'm better at letting things like that go.
(but I like existing and the only case in which I could seriously imagine not wanting to exist would be if I accidentally killed someone dear to me.)