Greta wrote: ↑April 8th, 2018, 5:13 pm
We are not quite on the same page but you raise an interesting point about the relationship of our philosophies with the changing pressures of our increasingly socially controlled environment - well, in some ways, as it's less controlled in others.
No, it's more controlled in every way. There is a pretense, and much protestation, of individuality, and there is a greater variety of entertainments, but all of the entertainments, as well as the political system, education, work ethic, fashion, advertising, the uniformity of consumer goods, all press the citizen into a stackable, replaceable cube. The control is ubiquitous and insidious.
The moderns haven't ignored the ancients' wisdom - religion and meditation practices are very common.
Religion is one of the conforming philosophies. The main source and bulwark of black/white, good/evil, reward/punishment systems.
My point was just that people are more specialised today stemming from to productivity innovations by Frederick Taylor, Henry Ford and others. There is no valid direct comparison between ancient and modern societies because the structure is different.
What are the structural differences between modern New York and Ancient Thebes? Same classes, same identity-by-function, same freeloaders at the top and slaves at the bottom, same threatening deities and pie-in-the-sky.
Today there are very few polymaths, all-rounders and generalists.
They were always pretty thin on the ground. Some of their work survived, so we don't know about the millions whose names were not recorded; the peasants, galley slaves, tin-smiths, navvies, charcoal-burners, olive-pressers, kitchenmaids... The absolute numbers have grown; the ratios stay the same since the first walled city. There have been very few free, original people, ever.
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit atrocities. - Voltaire