Good point about the earthly concerns. But we're talking about a guy who, in "Tao", had every intention of ascending just to "descend" again -- I could imagine him deciding this is a great idea, trying to get himself ascended, actually achieving it and then finding out that he can't actually *help* in any meaningful way ... sort of like Daniel in "Abyss".
Also Keller/McKay made sense to me because they were literally the last people alive who could even begin to understand each other.
That's exactly how I saw it, and, like I was saying in a comment above, that's why I think her death was the final straw that pushed him over the edge and made him devote his life to finding a way to fix this (at least for one version of him). She might not have been one of the people on Atlantis he was closest to, originally, but she understood. She'd gone through it with him; he could talk to her about it. Without her, he was left to carry it alone.
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Also Keller/McKay made sense to me because they were literally the last people alive who could even begin to understand each other.
That's exactly how I saw it, and, like I was saying in a comment above, that's why I think her death was the final straw that pushed him over the edge and made him devote his life to finding a way to fix this (at least for one version of him). She might not have been one of the people on Atlantis he was closest to, originally, but she understood. She'd gone through it with him; he could talk to her about it. Without her, he was left to carry it alone.