QUOTE : According to the standard view, the past is fixed, what happened happened, it cannot be undone, and the future is open, it depends on unpredictable contingencies. What we should propose here is a reversal of this standard view: the past is open to retroactive reinterpretations, while the future is closed, since we live in a determinist universe... This does not mean that we cannot change the future; it just means that, in order to change our future, we should first (not 'understand' but) change our past, reinterpret it in a way that opens up toward a different future from the one implied by the predominant vision of the past.