The wisdom of the old traditions

THE MODERN WORLD IS ON autopilot. We busy ourselves with frivolous entertainment — chain-dating included — and the fanatical pursuit of material gain. We slog away, neglecting family and friends, and burn ourselves out young. Rarely, if ever, do we stop and ask ourselves the simple question: “why?”

This, Sohrab Ahmari believes, is no coincidence. Modernity, he argues in , is not some triumph of technological progress, but a coping mechanism: a series of shallow tricks to distract ourselves from the big existential questions we no longer know how to answer. The “modern world,” he writes, “is an illusion, the product of a determined resolution not to confront the fundamental dilemmas of what it means to be fully human.” Beneath the