I've always seen the appeal of ancient Greek culture in the West as a cultural bedrock on which Christianity and Enlightenment built upon. The very fact that we consider democracy as the best political system shows that clearly the ideas resonated with us from a historical and cultural point of view.
However, in the modern age it seems like metamodernism has become king, and that is something that does not play well with ancient greek culture and its derivatives. I am a firm believer that the crisis of the West is a cultural crisis where the departure from the ideas that shaped us, lead us into this kind of metamodern nihilism that everyone sees around them.
Ancient greek ideas and philosophy are still relatively unspoiled from modern institutions (except Democracy of course, but thats another point), which means that reviving some of the ethos found there could actually help us find some purpose again.
I also see deconstruction, nihilism and post-modernism as an abused tool. It was understandable after the non-sensical WWII. Many people do not know, but pre-WW2 people believed heavily in the perfection of mankind through technology and other means (such as architecture and so on)
This was not only a thing in Nazism where this is very apparent, but it was a kind of embedded in that time.
Ofcourse after the wars, people kind of embraced this post modernist, brutalistic and nihilistic, or non sense attitude. Take the Cobra and Dada movements in art, the book the Lord of the Flies, Brutalism of Corbusier.
Πάν μέτρον άριστον. As they used to say. Everything in moderation. All of those things you mention arise on a societal level when the values that were once the guiding principle disappear. My thesis is that capitalism is eating itself by neglecting to appropriately allocate resources in cultural progression, instead it focuses solely on efficiency, and technological advancement.
Wouldn't be far fetched for the humans of our age to be seen as the generation of hubris by a less technologically advanced but ultimately surviving culture in the future.
We need to get our shit together and offer the people in the west a vision worth living for, or we will all happily turn into AI-made paperclips
However, in the modern age it seems like metamodernism has become king, and that is something that does not play well with ancient greek culture and its derivatives. I am a firm believer that the crisis of the West is a cultural crisis where the departure from the ideas that shaped us, lead us into this kind of metamodern nihilism that everyone sees around them.
Ancient greek ideas and philosophy are still relatively unspoiled from modern institutions (except Democracy of course, but thats another point), which means that reviving some of the ethos found there could actually help us find some purpose again.