The Price Of Ignorance

How many times in your life have you ended up back at square one?  The idea of having to start over, or go back to the beginning and try again, this idea is often seen as something negative but at times there can be many things to gain from doing this by choice, rather than finding yourself back there because of something or someone that caused you to end up back there against your will.

One of the reasons we think of going back to square one as a bad thing is because we think about everything we have achieved, and feel fatigue, both mental and physical at the thought of having to do it all over again; yet, when we think about the idea of time travel or the idea that we could literally go back in time to another point in our lives, knowing what we know now, we often dream of how different the path we would walk could be.  We don't give much thought to the reality that you are here, present in this moment with all the knowledge and experience that you hold, with the freedom to make that choice to start over - yes it probably won't be easy, but life rarely is, even if you continue with your life as it is now, eventually you will be presented with hurdles you must jump over.  Life is not without obstacles, past or present.  The idea that you could go back in time with foreknowledge of the future and change the course of your own history is also presumptive by nature, you make the assumption that history would continue as you remembered it but with the changes you make, little thought is given to the idea that once you make that first change your entire future from that point onward could also change and you would then have no advantage as you would have no idea what the future held - in other words you would be exactly where you are now, just in a different year.

When we play games we progress through a story or a campaign as far as we can get, but when we get no further, or when the weight of our past choices begin to mount up like the mistakes you made in the game of Tetris, we often end up starting over, either by choice or as a consequence of failure.  When we start again however we have experience that can guide us, new skills that we acquired, and hopefully a greater understanding of the game we are playing.  Some of the games I like to play the most like Minecraft as an example are games that we benefit from starting over as we shed the confines of the worlds we created and get to approach our new world with a new vision.  Other games however have a much more defined linear path, these games are those we often associate with time travel as we assume travelling back in time with what we now know would allow us to play through the same story, "new game plus" in effect, but life is not so rigid, life is much more akin to Minecraft in its open-endedness, starting over offers little advantage beyond the preparation you hold at the start, which quickly falls away.

There are many things in life you only get to do once, of that we can agree.  For most people their education for example is something they only get to experience once, primarily due to the cost; doing it a second time around can be difficult for many reasons, but cost remains the biggest barrier for many - here in the UK for example you get to progress through further education for free only once, and through higher education with loans and grants that are only given to you once; if you want to do another degree at the same level you have to fund it yourself.  There are ways to fund further study of course, but not all of these means will suit or even be options for most people.  In defeat we must admit for most people then there is only one chance, starting over isn't really an option in this regard.

Beyond things like education, we also find ourselves limited in many of our experiences; certain events in our life can only happen once, we may be able to repeat them but we never get to experience it the way we did the first time, we can never recapture that innocence that comes with ignorance.  Once you know how the trick is done, it's hard to enjoy the illusion, but what if you could?  What if you had the option, to forget, and start over, would you take it?  If I offered you a pill like Neo in the Matrix, that could fundamentally shift your perception of the world, would you want to take it?  In the Matrix, Cypher became disillusioned with the real world, to the point where he was willing to betray everyone around him for the chance to be reinserted into the Matrix, forgetting everything about the real world.  Of course you can debate whether the Agents had any intention of delivering their part of the bargain or whether they would simply kill him once they got what they wanted, but that's not really relevant here.  What is relevant is the price of ignorance, if it could be bought, what would you want to forget, and how much would you pay to be able to forget it and regain that innocence?