what if?

take life back two steps and imagine if you hadn't made that choice. now speed forward and see if it's all the same. is life a linear line or is just a big game of snakes and ladders and things we think are "progress" are really just taking us back to the point at which we began. as someone new to sociology, i'm only now started to become fascinated with this whole idea of causation. what makes things go? how do things happen?

i'm interested not only from an academic perspective but from a personal one. how did i get to where i was today? what variables explain the greatest amount of variance between my life now and what it would have been if i had made other choices? and is this whole notion of choice just a big farce? i had a friend who recently espoused a theory that as we near the holidays a whole bunch of people start trucking out an ecumenical argument that regardless of your belief, as long as we all commit to the ideal of treating others as we would want to be treated, the world will end up ok. this friend suggested that this argument or ideal is only one strategy for ensuring preservation. that maybe killing all your enemies is equal if we hold up another ideal or maybe preservation isn't something worth pursuing at all and that this strategy necessarily forces it upon us.

so, what if? take life two steps back and see where you end up. or maybe i'll just be more conscious to try and trace my steps and find the connecting line...