[spicymapotofu]

The GP comment appears to not be saying anything which opposes the idea that new literature can interrogate our beliefs too. I think they're trying to point out that the new tech you're highlighting is on the object level, whereas the fundamental topics which make good literature stand the test of time are meta level - human nature. Yes, we trade digitally instead of physically, and yet tales of merchants long scattered remain pertinent.

The GP's frustration, I believe, lies in the fact that you've been presenting the trappings of modern society as if they're the bedrock of modern existence; as if the findings of a science article today act on the soul the same way as realizing a dead Russian wrote a cartoonish parody of the actual personality one has cultivated for twenty years (a reaction I see commonly!). All writing may share similarities, but not all writing is literature, and recognizing that distinction would resolve the disagreement you first posted.

Many analysts would say the limiting factor of Plato on today's audience was not the total population, but the shift in interpretations (and related, writing) which make it so difficult to translate. And still, classics departments are offering fresh takes on the works, even through the 20th century, radically shifting the meta-level conclusions that we teach as takeaways. I hope you can acknowledge that this is more due to the underlying human nature which the works speak to, rather than some inherent unending depth to the writing - and that literature as a field carries this interpretive depth as its activity, rather than just cobbling object-level tools to interrogate their premises.

[nathan_compton]

"lies in the fact that you've been presenting the trappings of modern society as if they're the bedrock of modern existence" Yeah, I am not.

[spicymapotofu]

Then you're moving the goalposts from what you've been arguing upthread.

[nathan_compton]

" Obviously books from the past can and do enlighten us about the present, and they don't literally have to talk about CNN to be clarifying about the nature of propaganda, but there are limits to what Plato can tell you about a world with 8 billion people in it." I wrote that in my first post. Nowhere do I suggest that the bed rock of the human condition obtains the contemporary. In almost literally every post I've made I refer to the value of classical knowledge and literature.