Why were people in the ancient world more intellectual, better

Which modern men?

>>2993045
because our public educational systems are shit

>>2993045
Your statement is incorrect, but I'll stick around to see the roleplaying posts

>>2993052
Great counter argument.

>>2993045
I bet their a lot of great writers undiscovered via the internet

however I can say without a doubt they were superior orators

>>2993057
>dude just accept my baseless assertions lmao

>>2993045
Because semitic religions were not mainstream back then

>>2993045
If you traveled back to the "ancient world" and managed to understand general speech you would be hard pressed to find any meaningful difference in behavioral patterns or thought processes between the average man of average intelligence and this ages most dull witted fool.

>>2993045
Because people tend to have a romanticized view of the past where people were smarter and more driven. Even back then, there were adults (under which lay Socrates, for example) that talked about how lazy the youths were and how they wouldn't amount to anything. We are probably just as intellectual, if not more, than the ancient man, the thing is, not enough time has passed for humanity to look back and see it.

Relativism was less prominent

They didn't have the modern post christian obsession with the idea of progress so they were able to write about subjects far more honestly.

>>2993045
Because:
1) you generally only see what the most educated sliver of populace wrote.
2) you're not interested in modern literature and philosophy
3) Stop shitting everywhere Secundus

People are right in saying that it was the upper class that wrote, but think about it. People like ourselves, who like history and philosophy, if there weren't any video games and internet around like in Ancient Rome, what would we do with our time? We would read books and become more knowledgeable, write letters to our intellectual friends, maybe write books ourselves.

You can't deny that the modern world is full of distractions, not least having to work for a shitty job instead of being an aristocratic NEET.

>>2994368
>This
Sometimes I wonder what would be of my life if not distracted by so many gadgets

>>2994368
The world has always been full of distractions. There are countless games you can play by yourself and others with nothing more than a ball or a stick. There are countless things to chat about with countless people. People have desires for sex and travel and resources which all help to distract people from doing the sort of things you describe

>>2993045
Regarding literature - relatively little ancient literature has survived at all. What survived was mostly the best of the best - what survived and isn't the best, isn't particularly well known to people who aren't actively delving into the era and studying it. So, let's say that a typical Greek tragedian wrote like 50 plays (I'm being generous here - the three great tragedians wrote 70-120 plays each). There have been many tragedians before and after the three great ones, for many, many centuries. Keep in mind that Rome continued the Greek tradition. And in the end, what do we have today? Those three Greeks (33 plays), one (1!) Roman (Seneca - 9 plays), some works of unknown authorship and fragments are all that remains of one millennium of writing - from Thespis until the fall of the Western Empire. Now, do you actually think that you can truly judge such an era against our own - an era that lasted a hundred years at most (depends on your definition of it) and whose works haven't been filtered nearly as well yet?

>>2993045

>more intellectual
>couldn't figure out how to harness electricity
>couldn't figure out calculus
>no TV, internet, video games, or even just radio

They were retarded anon.

>>2994770
>no TV, internet, video games, or even just radio
>thus more time to do research.