What Rhian says!
Alan B.

Are you reading older books to find out what makes people tick?
(the word 'tick' is out of place here, but I use it deliberately)
If so, are there not better ways?
Study present day people thoroughly?
Start with oneself?
Here we all are; alive, and ready to be examined in detail.
If our ancestors had not written books, would that mean we must remain ignorant of ourselves?
Of course not.
We can work with what we have.
Reading books written a long time ago can give us an insight in to how thinking has changed over time.
Which might be useful to know.
But better to use the time we have to detail the persons we are right now?
So what happened in the past is supportive information.
Only those who are alive now can live life now.
The dead are but a memory.
But reading about them can be a pleasant diversion from the present day.
Almost like a well written fictional story.
I used to think that scholarly persons, well versed in the classics, and able to read latin fluently, were remarkable men.
Now I think otherwise.
They live in a false dimension.
Life is about survival.
Life is about family.
Which of you can say the antics of your remarkably wise and aware great grand-daughter does not delight you?
And you won't find that degree of warmth in an old book.

Read "By Flood & Field" again & "The Journal of John Sweatman". Eye-openers !

Quite recently I knew a man who lived locally.
He was older than I.
He was 'learned'.
He was clever, resourceful, and aware.
He spent his days either listening to classical music, or reading endlessly of weighty volumes.
As a person, he was often mean, and he could be quite nasty to those close to him.
His personal habits were almost disgusting.
Suffice to say I would not eat at his house.
So one should not judge a person by the kind of books he reads.
That is most certainly not a good indicator.
And I don't think one becomes a good person merely by reading 'weighty' volumes.

as if it lives on!
diver dan,
The woke are perpetuating it !

The woke are perpetuating it !

The Protestant ethic my dear Watson, is an unfathomable distance from the Managerial woke traders in human souls me thinks.

They be modern day slave traders!

Their aspirations are Chieftain by nature. Very undemocratic indeed.