Pandora's Democracy: Mass Politics and the Cult of the Lesser Evil

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/13/disgusted-with-politics-blame-geoffrey-cowan-00135381

there's an ancient philosopher of stoicism discussed on an episode of Ex Urbe Ad Astra dealing with Evil, Complicity, and the Ethics of Time Travel who says that no one can be called happy until the end of the time since until then it remains possible that out of some well intentioned seed of moral action a genocide or world war might someday grow, as a unintended consequence or even counter-reaction to the good initially foreseen and intended in the action of the planting.