Modern complacency is limitless

Modern complacency is limitless: we suppose ourselves more enlightened, more profound than all the centuries behind us, forgetting that the teaching of a Buddha confronted thousands of beings with the problem of nothingness, a problem we imagine we have discovered because we have changed its terms and introduced a touch of erudition into it. But what Western thinker would survive a comparison with a Buddhist monk? We lose ourselves in texts and terminologies: meditation is a datum unknown to modern philosophy. If we want to keep some intellectual decency, enthusiasm for civilization must be banished from our mind, as well as the superstition of History. As for the great problems, we have no advantage over our ancestors or our more recent predecessors: men have always known everything, at least in what concerns the Essential; modern philosophy adds nothing to Chinese, Hindu, or Greek philosophy. Moreover, there cannot be a new problem, despite our naïvete or our infatuation which would like to persuade us to the contrary.

Cioran, A Short History of Decay
translation: Richard Howard