The Trolley Problem of the Self

The image places the present self inside the trolley, a younger self on the track and a future self beside the lever. Read as a picture of decision-making, it makes an imagined future seem capable of directing the present towards something in its own past. The labels create the tension; they do not tell us whether that future is desirable or the threatened part of the past dispensable.

The younger self can stand for earlier needs, wounds or commitments, while the future self represents a possibility being taken seriously now. Caring for the past can help someone change: acknowledging an earlier injury need not mean organising the rest of life around avoiding it. Equally, a desirable future need not require the destruction of everything that made the present possible. The image compresses these relationships into tracks that appear to exclude one another.

Kierkegaard connects anxiety with the possibilities of freedom. A decision about who to become can carry that uncertainty without requiring a metaphorical death. Sartre's account of bad faith concerns the evasion of freedom and responsibility. Waiting is not enough to establish such evasion. Delay may be avoidance, but it may also be a deliberate attempt to understand the consequences before acting.

Jung's idea of individuation offers a way to think about coming to terms with parts of one's own psychology that a preferred self-image leaves out. Acknowledgement does not require obedience to every impulse or the preservation of every former commitment. What matters in this reading of the image is the possibility of recognising what has shaped us while changing how we live with it.

Some decisions close possibilities, and postponement can also have costs. Available choices depend partly on circumstances beyond the person's control. A role can end while its skills remain useful; an ambition can be abandoned without making the person who held it worthless. Choosing a future includes deciding which parts of an earlier life can continue within it.

Further reading: Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread; Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism; C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology.