Comment by throw0101a
1 day ago
Is the advice from The Richest Man in Babylon, published in 1926, out of date?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Two civilizations re-deriving the same short list from scratch is about the strongest version of your point — "outdated" just isn't the right axis for it.