this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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I really like this topic and think the idea of ones past self is a very interesting concept to think about. Personally I've thought about it in a different way, specifically about whether I own my past and it's also a question about how we own our body.
For example, let's say ten years ago someone took a picture of me and I demanded that this picture must not be shared or posted online. Now if ten years later I ask the photographer to send me the picture and I post it online, then the photographer and I broke the rules. I certainly did not get consent from my past self. So now the question of whether or not I am my past self comes up. Most people would probably say yes, but it's still an interesting question.
To continue this chain of thought even further one can be creative and add themes like time travel and meeting ones past self. That expands the idea to a crazy big scope of possible questions though and is perhaps a bit too unrealistic for most people to bother thinking about.
Coming back to a more realistic idea, would posting a picture of my baby self online and insulting the person in the picture be considered morally wrong? It would certainly be considered rude by people who don't know the context. But how many rights do I actually have here? How about using it as a profile picture on social media? There's many different possible interesting questions here.
I understand that this is opening a whole other can of worms and a different idea than the original post, but I feel it's a similar direction and also brings up the question about the relationship between a person and their past self.
edit: Also I just now noticed that I tend to write "past self" as singular while you write it as "past selves" in plural. I guess that's because you talk about the topic as a more continuous thing that happens constantly. That reminds me of a theory according to which the universe splits up into many different paths every time a random quantum thingy happens. I think it's this thing: Many-worlds interpretation (wikipedia).
Interesting. I also wonder why people justify past selves as an identity of us even though we have changed or grew as person while our past selves have already dead.
Well if you were to decide to take the two identities out of context and compare them to each other, then they would definitely be different. You know, some people do take their past selves and make fun of them, they can hate them, they can insult and loathe them. Similarly, if they could see us today, our past selves might be disappointed or even offended at what we have become. Imagine growing up in a very conservative family, perhaps adopting prejudice views and as you grow up, you change and maybe even find yourself befriending and loving the things or people you used to hate. Your past self might attack and kill you if you were both put into the same room.
I'm aware that that's a very extreme example. It's just an idea I wanted to bring across. Of course it can go both ways. I guess the topic would make for very interesting stories in media, I'm sure it was already used often.
You know that reminds me, this whole concept is already a very realistic daily occurrence. Say two people fall in love, but then years later they break up. Oftentimes people say things like "you've changed". They fell in love with each others past versions. I'm sure we all know humans or mechanical devices or software programs that we used to love, but then they changed and we started disliking them. I might like my new comb, or my new phone. But when they break, I might get angry and hate them.
I like this idea. You explained it simple enough to be understood and provided relatable examples.
Yay! It makes my-current-self happy that your-past-self said nice things about my-past-selves comment. Go, my-past-self!
With that silly comment of mine out of the way, there's one thing I want to add which is that I think we should maybe show a bit of leniency towards our past selves. Keep in mind that our past selves had less experience than us. They didn't have all the experiences that shaped us. For better or for worse. When we say "I didn't know." maybe to make things more interesting we could instead say "My past self didn't know." at least once, just for the fun of it.
Physically speaking, what our past selves did have though was a lot more potential than us. They had the potential to become our current self and at least in theory they also had the potential to become different versions of our current self. Some of them we might consider better, others worse. These versions would all have a different experience than our current self. Maybe even a slightly different thought going through ones head can be an experience with a big impact on the future.
I guess some people do say that they need to makes ones past self, or even another persons past self proud. One thing that I thought was funny was hearing another person saying "That will be future me's problem.". So in a way we really do take snapshots and project things onto them.