Born 4 BC
Died AD 65
Absolutely incredible that his words can speak to someone 2000 years later and make them feel something in the core of their essence. Thanks for sharing this really helped me with some things this morning.
Absolutely incredible that his words can speak to someone 2000 years later and make them feel something in the core of their essence. Thanks for sharing this really helped me with some things this morning.
There's also a hilarious passage about a wealthy guy who gets carried everywhere, and becomes so numbed by luxury that he can't tell whether he's sitting down or not.
I find texts written by my conationals a century or 2 ago already hard to relate to, also modern ones written by people from cultures very different from mine.
We've been debating the nature versus nurture question since philosophy was a concrete concept with no visible light at the end of the tunnel. Many people, myself included, would strongly disagree with the latter half of that statement.
In your earlier comment you seemed to be in perfect agreement:
> Human nature may not have changed
This echoes my sentiment that nurture may change from one generation to the next but nature stays the same. Our traits that stubbornly stay the same probably come from our nature, while the ones that change easier over generations or centuries come from nurture. This isn't about which one is more important in defining you. Fresh out of the womb humans have probably been the same for many, many millennia. Like x86 CPUs running newer and newer software.
It seems to me that human nature has changed quite a lot in the last few hundred years. Examples would be the change in how we view other humans, slavery is regarded as barbaric now, we have the declaration of human rights and equality for women and people of different sexuality etc.
2,000 years is very little time on a genetic timescale, I wouldn't expect to see many changes. Some, sure, but not much.
If you take a number of modern humans and put them in a Bronze Age setting you will get Bronze Age humans. Our genetics stayed pretty much the same and education just reigns in and steer our human nature.
There's no reason to debate "who would survive if the world was so-and-so" it's interesting, but not important in discussion what human nature means.
So, let's swap people from today and the earliest homo sapiens: Newborns with type 1 diabetes - Only the one from the past survives 5 year old healthy kids: - They'd probably do fine, assuming the one from today can adapt their immune system (and vice-versa). 10 year old healthy kids: - Probably already issues here, I'd not bet on the modern kid. 30 year old person: - Not betting on the modern one, might be they can integrate themselves into the group, but it might become apparat that they're not carrying their weight, and ousted. - The one from old, if they manage to learn our language, that'd be success, they'd probably end up in prison or an institution.