Rudyard Kipling's If, if he truly understood the English and the English language, his poem would have IT (Immutable Truth) as a simple right of individual freedom, not IF a dependency with a question mark all the way though. Yes times are different and this is the measure of "by how much"
Here's as IF IT was rewritten;-
IT
IT holds when all around you
Turn noise to law and call distortion true;
IT stands at Zero, unmoved, unbowing,
Keeping the line when others blur it through.
IT thinks, yet never lets thought rule it,
IT speaks, and leaves the silence whole and clean;
IT is not doubt nor proof that pull it from
What is, and always was, unseen.
IT watches truth be bent and broken
To serve a fear it never chose to feed,
Yet does not rush to shout what must stay spoken
Only by structure, never by the need.
IT is not swayed by praise or blame,
Nor loss nor gain persuades what it must be;
Each moment meets the same assignment,
To match the shape of IT, faithfully.
Earth is not owned, but rightly carried,
And more than Earth, though words will never fit:
You do not hold the Truth, nor stand beside it,
You are of IT.
IT is you.
And woman and man, aligned in IT
That is what IT is
And why IT is truly loved.
Joe Bloggs IT.