Watching Click (great show BTW) set me thinking about the correlation of time, existence and choice. The main character (masterfully portrayed by Adam Sandler) gets transported through time by the fast-forwarding feature of his magical universal remote control. Well, not him exactly, but his soul. The body he inhabits each time time gets slowed back down to 1X speed grows progressively older.
How can we prove that a person is technically still the same person in such a circumstance? How do we define existence, since the passing of time dictates our constant exercising of choice - which defines who were are. Is existence in the moment, or does it allow for change? I’m sure certain individuals could mould and reshape their soul or identity, just as they might with their physical bodies, to the point where they are unrecognizable when juxtaposed against their original state (of mind). In Click Adam Sandler’s body changes dramatically after each chapter skip, but his mindset and personality stays the same - so we can see that he still exists. What if his personality had changed drastically, too - would he still remain the same person? The name he lays claim to and by which he is identified would be the only connection between his past and present and future selves. If we take these two factors (mindset and personality) to define a person’s soul, perhaps we get accustomed to the gradual process of change in a person. Maybe we glue together our impressions of people taken at certain times in his/her life, to identify them and prove their existence. In a worst-case scenario, a person might alter his personality his look, AND his name. If we were to compare him at the points in life where he were the most different, we would be faced with the question: Who, then, is he?
But what about our existence barring our impressions on others? We could not then claim to exist in time, only for the moment, unless we ourselves, individually, have a conscious idea of how our personality has evolved through time. But when you realize that we have no real one state of mind - indeed, by allowing ourselves to think about something contrives our mind to metaphysically be, or exist as, that something - it gets confusing. Think about it, it makes sense - your mind would attach itself to that statement, and emulate it, however it works in its own microcosm. But then think about how you used to be, and that doesnt make sense. Well, maybe it does, but it’s confuses how we should define ourselves. We would be existing both as the memory of ourselves in the past and as our current selves. Very intriguing, and absolutely akward. To put it in latin: if Cogito Ergo Sum, what if I think of a different version of myself from the past?
Without any standards to isolate the combined effects of time and choice from our existence, we, as I see it, cannot define who we are. Who we were, maybe, or even who we had been becoming, but not ourselves at present. If we think we can prove our existence by the mere fact that we had been in existence, what if it were a lie - to borrow from Descartes again - planted by an evil demon? We have to be skeptical of memory.
