Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
Our experience of death has been totally revolutionized by science and medicine. It's gone from a capricious and incomprehensible god that strikes down half of your children in their most vulnerable years and everyone else randomly, to a mechanism we understand and successfully fight, and one that we've, for the most part, pushed back to the elderly years.
Pain - it turns out that physical pain can mostly be alleviated by molecules of 10-40 atoms or so. A fact of nature suddenly, once you understand the particular proteins behind it, becomes quite malleable.
Fear - was fear of the wiles of nature - not enough rain, too much rain, an evil spirit causes your crops to wilt - and then you just die. Fear of wildlife, random bands of raiders, plague. All of that is, if you're an upper-middle-class person in a western country, pretty much gone! Your fears are of doing poorly in school or at work, not doing well socially or with women, maybe having a medical emergency that doesn't fit through the bureaucracy. Of not having purpose or community. Or exaggerated simulacra of past fears that inflame the passions - fear of school shootings, fear of murders, fear of climate collapse, fear of islamic terrorism.
It isn't just knowledge they lacked, it's our whole economic and technological environment. They lacked knowledge too, though - not just scientific knowledge, but organizational knowledge, what it's like in a world where overt religious mystification is absent from the engines of the economy, little things like how to "court" women when the stakes are 'good sex, emotional connection, and shared experiences' rather than 'rather than 'navigating strong social rails, family and economic interests, and religious duty'.
... of course, I agree that old books have a lot of value, they're not pointless, so I agree with you as much as OP. For everything I mentioned as different, there are many more similarities. But I do think old books are missing a lot that modern writings and people have, core elements of the human condition sure are different today, and your comment seems to overstate the extent to which they're equivalent, or there hasn't been definable progress.
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