The polymath gentleman scholar who pursued & learned the key points in those fundamental subjects over a lifetime would be functionally becoming familiar with a

The polymath gentleman scholar who pursued & learned the key points in those fundamental subjects over a lifetime would be functionally becoming familiar with a much greater percentage of the total publications up to that point than we could ever accomplish today. A difference like night and day, or a significant percentage of academic literature studied versus an insignificant percentage resulting from the same intensity of lifetime study. Well this is just academic knowledge. Which is a tremendous advantage, but when you include everything else known about western civilization at the time, there's a much lesser percentage difference. And when you bring in the whole world, we're in the same state of confusion as 300 years ago. You have to go back a lot closer to the cave man for us to be much more fully baffled. Even though there sure are a lot more people now spending lifetimes making things un-necessarily complex, it's been pretty gonzo the whole time. I would also say we may now just be more aware of our complete misunderstanding. I think it applies to emerging complexity not much differently than it did in antiquity. Regardless of what you are saturated with, anything more is an overload. Note: it's just the greatest recession this century. So far. Well, probably until now. The century's still young. Plenty of people saw 2008 coming, even more knew it was inevitable, and way way more than that FELT a downturn like that was going to happen sooner rather than later.