|
Originally Posted by wufwugy
An essential ingredient of our old moral stories is that they work. The archetypes have been passed down for many thousands of years, possibly because their lessons stand the test of time.
Do they work? As evidenced by what?
What specific morals from what specific stories have worked?
What do you mean by asserting they "work?"
What does the 2nd sentence mean? Possibly... (, but possibly not, so...)
Originally Posted by wufwugy
As to what they say about what you guys are discussing, I don't know. But they probably say something, and it's probably of a wisdom developed with lots of trial and error.
Are you asserting that what feels right to you is going to be shown by the data, while not looking at the data?
Even if you're right (not saying you are), in what way does "developed with lots of trial and error" imply good quality results?
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Note: the stuff modern people like about the modern world came out of the Renaissance and Enlightenment (reason, humanism, individualism, etc.), and those were a reversion to the classics. The idea that we may be linearly progressing out of the ways of our ancestry may be folly.
Stuff modern people like and why they like it is as subjective as anything comes, man.
Are you trying to incite a discussion about the nuances of why any statement which groups so many people's subjectivity under one banner will always be false?
A reversion to the classics? Hmm. So these classics were a thing, then people moved away from that thing, to a different thing, and they came back to the classics.
Seems like if the classics had it all sewn up, there would have been no side-track to anything else.
***
There's good stuff to interpret from old stories. There's a connection to people who lived eons before you facing similar difficult choices, finding love, failing at it, and finding new love.. etc.
There's also ridiculously bad stuff in old stories. The Bible is full of rape stories, the old Greek tragedies are full of rape stories, etc.
I agree broadly that there are common threads to humanity, but I don't agree that simply because something is old, it has intrinsic value, or that the value it claimed to have when it was originated is still the value it has today.
|