I doubt there is anyone who has been disenchanted by their Times who has not wished to live in another time or another place. Hearkening back to a period of quietness, or simplicity and there are times when I have wondered where I would like to have been and in what age. Yet when I do I always come back to the same questions: would I like to live in a world where Plato has not thought about the world, where Shakespeare has not written about human ego, where Michelangelo has not carved human characteristics into marble. Do I want to live and never read the hundreds of minds that are open to me to read, to share their insights into life?
I find in every age many things that are admirable and even preferable to today but I cannot leave behind the history of thought. The great pain for every thinker in the world is not that we die, but that we will never know. Think of the things Aristotle would have loved to know that I know. Think of the things we will never know.
The human race is a builder; as much as chemicals build life, we build ideas. Some are very bad like infections but some are wonderful. I will never know all the wonderful ideas the human race will have, so I am loath to give up any of the ones I have inherited.