The End of Eternity
Here is a slightly more philosophical question. I know this is a primarily political community but please do bear with me if you like. What would happen if we could arbitrarily and without hindrances travel back and forth in time, to whichever "point" in time we wanted, and change past and future events in a way that would prevent the occurrence of
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Oh spare me!
When you are climbing a steep slope and overcoming all sorts of obstacles, your muscles and lungs become stronger. Your body and spirit gets tougher. You get used to new challenges and nothing can scare you. Even if your feet are covered in bruises and cuts, and your toes are hurting from the constant tripping in sharp stones, you would eventually reach the summit - stronger and more confident than ever. And there, what awaits you is a stunning view: a whole new horizon opens in front of you, and beyond it - more and more new peaks that you crave to conquer. And so you embark on the next journey.
Just the kind of sentimentality I'd expect out of someone who's never experienced true hardship. Hint: it might make you a stronger person, but it's still fucking awful. Hunger, misery, desperation, loss, death - why would we inflict these on anyone if we didn't have to? It may look terribly romantic in nineteenth-century period dramas, but you'd be singing a different tune if you were the one living it.
If you are a complacent, but feeble ignoramus, unaware of the realities out there, and a useless parasite on the fabric of Space-Time who is so self-assured of their invincibility and untouchableness (sic?)
Curiously enough, this sounds very like the state of being experienced by human infants. Strangely, we tend to idolise their 'innocence', not decry it. Could it be that we recognise a simpler, better state of being?
And the End of Eternity was an utterly conventional reflection of the cultural mores of its time - first, the ever-irritating trope of a competant man being led from his duty by a mysterious woman, and secondly, the idea that perpetual technological progress is the key to success, while maintaining the status quo leads to stagnation or worse. These days I'd bet that most of us would be delighted with the idea of hundreds or thousands of years of comfort and societal stability.
Basically - the ideas underlying your post are perhaps well-meant, but are basically nostalgic, unrealistic, romantic claptrap. And if we ever do develop the means to go back in time and fix the various 'problems' of humanity, we should bloody well do so - and make their lives as uneventful and contented as possible.
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Yes I sprinkled some sentiment and maybe melancholy in this post - so what? Is there a problem, other than your dislike of the style?
Of course it's unrealistic. Did you not notice that we are talking about a science fiction hypothesis?
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