Ifonlyness
Having run over that pedestrian, you might well be prone to think “Things would have turned out better if only I had…”, ending the thought with “paid better attention,” “driven more slowly,” “reacted more quickly,” or suchlike. Thinking in exactly those terms is so common in us that I suggest we give it a label: ifonlyness.
Once you accept determinism and the relevant physics, you understand that if you hadn’t run over the pedestrian exactly as you did, then almost certainly neither he, nor you, nor the rest of us would ever have existed. Even so, your feeling of guilt can be hard to shake. Good, to the extent that it improves your future conduct; bad, to the extent that it makes you miserable.
Some psychologists say that ifonlyness helps us learn inductive lessons and take sensible precautions for the future. Nevertheless, ifonlyness is a factually mistaken way of thinking that isn’t required for learning lessons and taking sensible precautions.
The poet J. G. Whittier famously wrote that “of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” That line appears in Whittier’s admonition to those “Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.” But it’s not just that the past can’t be undone; not being around at all, we wouldn’t like the results even if the past could be undone.
