Parallel lives
What a 2nd-century AD Roman historian can teach us about role-modelling, growth and sense of self.
The pervasive sense of alienation in the urban West may lead people to think they are living parallel lives.
For the ancients, the best individuals that society had to offer had been living parallel but convergent lives.
Where we see a vacuum of meaning, the ancient civilizations saw a role-modelling opportunity, as data point of intelligibility.