"Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky. The Time Wanderers (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

reasoning ones -- and all this with a constant unsatisfiable sense of
hunger.

Every new individual appears as a creation of syntectic art he is
created by physiologists, geneticists, engineers, psychologists,
estheticians, teachers, and philosophers of Monocosm. This process will
definitely take up several Earth decades, and, naturally, is the most
engrossing and respected san of activity of the Wanderers. Contemporary
humanity does not know of any analog for this kind of art, if one does not
count the very rare instances of Great Love.

Create Without Destroying! That is the motto of the Monocosm.

The Monocosm cannot consider its path of development and its modus
vivendi to be the only true path. Pain and despair elicit pictures of
separated minds that had not matured to become part of it. It must wait
until reason within the framework of evolution of the first order develops
to the state of an all-planet socium. For it is only after that that you can
interfere with biostructure, with the aim of preparing the bearer of
intelligence to the transformation into the monocosmic organism of a
Wanderer. For the intervention of the Wanderers into the fates of separated
civilizations can yield nothing worthwhile.

A significant situation: the Progressors of Earth strive to speed up
the historical process of creating more developed social structures in
suffering civilizations. Thereby, they are preparing new reserves of
material for the future work of Monocosm.

We now know of three civilizations that consider themselves happy.

The Leonidians. An extremely ancient civilization (at least three
hundred thousand years old, no matter what the late Pak Hin maintained).
This is a model of a "slow" civilization; they are frozen in unity with
nature.

The Tagorians. A civilization of hypertrophied foresight. Three-fourths
of all their strength is directed to studying the harmful consequences that
might arise from a discovery, invention, or new technological progress. This
civilization seems strange to us only because we cannot understand the
interest in avoiding harmful consequences, or how much intellectual and
emotional satisfaction it can give. Slowing down progress is as amusing as
creating it -- it all depends on your starting point and your upbringing. As
a result, their only transportation is public; they have no aviation at all,
and their communication lines are very well developed.

The third civilization is ours, and now we understand precisely in our
lives why the Wanderers must interfere. We are moving. We are moving, and
therefore we might make a mistake in the direction of our movement.

Nowadays, no one remembers the "asskickers" who tried to force progress