Life used to be more authentic

What's been missing from most modern cultures since the onset of the Enlightenment has been a certain passionate way of being, a Zorba-like quality that made life feel like it was being lived. Values used to matter to members of traditional societies in a way that was more immediate, more authentic, more heart-felt, more virtuous and more fulfilling than what passes for conviction in modernist societies. Modernity threatens the depth and rawness of life which seems to have come easier in the traditional, spiritual, religious societies of the ancient world.