No going "back"

I don't get it.. what is this thing that we are supposed to be protecting? Should "we" stand up to protect the "thing" so things could get back the way they "were"?

Wasn't the problem exactly that things were the way they were?

There is no going back, there is only going forward and adapting to what's to come. Life has never been about going back, things never were the "way they used to be", things never used to "be" anything, we have constantly been moving forward, evolving to towards something. Things never have stayed the "same". The "same" people are referring to wasn't "same" at any point. The "same" the "good old days" don't exist. 

The past wasn't good enough for women, then it wasn't good enough for men, the impending future won't be good enough for women. I mean to what point in time do we want to get back to, since that point will eventually lead to the next? Humans have always been living in exceptional times, at one point there has never been a radio before, then humans experienced a point in time when the television came to be, never in the history of humans has there been such a device. And then computers, now we live in a point of time where we have the internet, NEVER at any point in the recorded human history there has been an internet, just think about, never. Never before have people entertained themselves with over abundance of cat videos, never, that has never existed before. Like movies, those never existed before they did, and we won't be entertaining ourselves with them when the next medium comes along. Things will never be the same, there is no going back. 

So we can't apply frameworks from the past to make things right, without getting rid of the technology we've achieved, and those frameworks will eventually lead back here. That is why we invent new things, because staying still doesn't work, the way things "were" never worked, that's why we moved on. Things will never work, only adapting works. 

"Be water my friend" and all that..