You know you can still do all those things in the first parenthetical and not do all those things in the second, right? "Modern civilization" (its institutions

You know you can still do all those things in the first parenthetical and not do all those things in the second, right? "Modern civilization" (its institutions, medicine, economies, etc) doesn't demand any of those latter ones, nor does it preclude any of the former. Your choice to lean more into one set than the other is just a personal one, akin to fashion. If the latter are encouraged by anything, it's just by act of media and misguided education. I assure you that you can still be an intellectually stimulated and commercially successful engineer (or whatever) while adhering pretty much entirely to the first set, which many do, and it's actually a quite pleasant, stable, and easy way to live.