pantsfarm

There is this computer game I used to play a lot of. It’s called Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri or SMAC for short, and it is a really excellent game. SMAC is a fitting abbreviation because for a time I might have regarded it as nearly an addiction. This of course was in high school, but, whatever.

In this game, there were a lot of quotes. Most of them were fictional quotes. That is, some in-game event would happen, and to accompany it, a quote would be presented from one of the in-game fictional characters. One such quote is this:

Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.

Commissioner Pravin Lal
“A Social History of Planet”

This was mixed in with many quotes from more serious texts such as Plato’s Republic or the Bible or some passsages from literature, and while the game was rife with interesting little tidbits like this, I am not really so concerned with prasing the game right now.

Today, I found myself remembering this quote about a change in perspective because I had caught myself sort of wistfully thinking about the past. There are a great many things where I sometimes wonder, if I could go back to a state of ignorance, would I want to?

I think perhaps it would be better to not know what I am missing. Now that I do know what I am missing, I am looking back and thinking that it was maybe better when I could only imagine what I was missing. Of course, this calls to mind another proverb, that being that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

But it does not matter because I can not return. I have irrevocably changed my perspective and so shall it remain. There is no selective erasure of memories a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and so it is a rather pointless seeming thought exercise.