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From a leftist standpoint, what is the right thing to do if you were sent back in time? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It feels kinda wrong how quickly some people say they wouldn't kill hitler if they were sent back in time and given the opportunity.

I'm using that scenario because it seems like a common example, but I'm curious about how materialist theory would approach this.

Barring the sci-fi theories around time travel and whether a new timeline is created, where I believe it's fair game to change the past (since it's a new timeline) would it be morally right to improve the world if flung into a version of the past?

My thought is that it would be a moral obligation to help with things and not just be a witness to atrocity.

Edit: I think my question was more - Is it wrong to do nothing if flung into the past when you know what is likely to happen, or is it more wrong to try to prevent or change it?

I ask because it's almost a given in media and general discussion that you don't mess with things on the chance you make things worse by interfering. That argument feels flawed and lib- brained and I don't think I would be okay with a bad thing happening in front of me just because that's how it happened in my history book. Like the idea of standing by and doing nothing in the face of suffering feels wrong especially with something as nebulous as 'affecting the timeline'

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

I still think the timeline would be less cursed if someone went back in time to kill Christopher Columbus. And it's not a "material conditions make historical events inevitable" situation. He was widely seen as a crank and him dying means people will shrug their shoulders and go, "told you he was a fucking crank." Nobody would've sailed for the Americas had he failed to come back. There's also a decent chance Europe would economically collapse with capitalism being developed in India or China instead. If nothing else, killing Columbus and waiting for Europe to economically self-destruct mean two continents, three if we're counting Australia, could've dodged genocide. I don't think it's a given that a hypothetical capitalist India/China would do to the Indigenous what Europeans did. It's a dice roll worth rolling.