Adding an even older, non-Western data point to your Babylon example: a Kyoto shopkeeper, Ishida Baigan, was teaching nearly the same list in 1739 — honesty, diligence, frugality, plus "find your proper vocation" (shokubun), independently, with no contact with the Western tradition.
Two civilizations re-deriving the same short list from scratch is about the strongest version of your point — "outdated" just isn't the right axis for it.
This can't be stated often enough. Society, diet, education and technology changes, but we've biologically had the same makeup for thousands of, if not more, years.
Just because they're dead doesn't mean they were idiots. This is the young person's folly.
Then again, this attitude may be a substantial cause of what we define as progress. Gray areas are hard to figure out.
Many things in the world are radically different, and the economy especially is a different beast. The point about avoiding debt for example, is hardly relevant for businesses (even if it's generally good advice for personal debts.
It wasn't true even then. Leverage has been an accelerator for a long time. Precious few of the world's largest businesses were built out of single pocket book.
Is the advice from The Richest Man in Babylon, published in 1926, out of date?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Richest_Man_in_Babylon
Avoiding greed, envy, the hedonic treadmill, etc, will never not be good advice.
Adding an even older, non-Western data point to your Babylon example: a Kyoto shopkeeper, Ishida Baigan, was teaching nearly the same list in 1739 — honesty, diligence, frugality, plus "find your proper vocation" (shokubun), independently, with no contact with the Western tradition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishida_Baigan
Two civilizations re-deriving the same short list from scratch is about the strongest version of your point — "outdated" just isn't the right axis for it.
Because people now are so wildly different from people 150 years ago? We are exactly the same, with slightly shinier toys.
This can't be stated often enough. Society, diet, education and technology changes, but we've biologically had the same makeup for thousands of, if not more, years.
Just because they're dead doesn't mean they were idiots. This is the young person's folly.
Then again, this attitude may be a substantial cause of what we define as progress. Gray areas are hard to figure out.
I don’t know where to even begin, if you don’t see any difference between 1880 and 2026.
Many things in the world are radically different, and the economy especially is a different beast. The point about avoiding debt for example, is hardly relevant for businesses (even if it's generally good advice for personal debts.
It wasn't true even then. Leverage has been an accelerator for a long time. Precious few of the world's largest businesses were built out of single pocket book.