Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and
everyone is writing a book. Marcus Tullius Cicero (Roman
philosopher, statesman and orator – b. 3 January, 106BCE)* So,
it seems that even two thousand years ago parents despaired that
their kids’ generation would be the downfall of society, that
everything that they’d worked for would be swept aside by the
narcissism and self-importance of the ‘modern youth’. What does
this tell us? Simply, that people are the same now as they’ve
ever been. The same things drive them to behave the way they do
now as they ever did – lust, greed, power, fear, love. But
there’s more. Look at the last part of the quote: ‘…everyone is
writing a book.’ Really? More than two thousand years ago,
people were reading books, laying them down when they’d finished
and saying to themselves – and each other – ‘Huh! I could do
that!’ Of course, the publishing mechanisms were very different
then. The printing press was still more than 1,500 years away,
e-readers more than five hundred