Greg:
I suggest that your interesting "Tale of Two Cities" can teach us much. To compare them, though, we need to isolate them as they truly are isolated: by 500 years' separation. This means that the discoveries and benefits of Chicago can't enrich Sena; or, put another way, Sena can't be a beneficiary or parasite to Chicago's achievements.
First, Sena would have had an average life expectancy of what, 30-35 years? That means maybe 15 adult years compared to the 60+ years of adulthood the average person in Chicago enjoys. They would have to endure pain and disease and injury without much relief and in a state of baffled dread. They would watch their children die of unknown, untreatable causes, and would endure a feeling of utter helplessness in the face of many things people in Chicago have the means of coping with and overcoming. Personal example/anecdote, since you like those: You probably remember when I was diagnosed with leukemia. I thought it meant I was a goner. During treatment I asked my oncologist "how long ago would this have been a total death sentence?" He said "1960." By then I was 13 years old and had learned to think of leukemia as certain death, as did my mother and most of my contemporaries. Well, in Sena it would always have brought death, within about 30 days if untreated. And they wouldn't even understand what happened.
A second point: people in Chicago are free, if they so choose, to go and live the Rousseavian bliss of Sena should that appeal to them. They don't choose it, but they could. Who are you and I to tell them what they should do, or which lifestyle is best for them? The people of Sena, like today's people of third world countries, will almost always choose to relocate to or trade with the modern world in order to improve their condition; but in your example they had no such choice. Maybe long life and avoidance of suffering are dissipative to us; but who has the Puritan right to impose such values on others as they live their lives?
Third: The people of Sena and the people of Chicago really confront the same human condition: we know to do right but fail to do it. We choose to do wrong instead. Neither Greek thinkers nor Enlightenment thinkers had any kind of decent explanation about that, since doing wrong is ultimately self-destructive. In either of these environments we can use the resources available either to improve our lot and that of those we care about; or to coerce, defraud, and lord it over each other. We can strut in pride for our few years or submit to our creator. But in Chicago they do have great resources; and they don't just spend them on A/C and Old Navy clothes; their level of care for the sick, and its efficacy, demonstrate positive things humans can do for one another. In either city humans can have lives of meaning and joy or of isolation and bitterness.
Fourth: you've been beating on me for my foundations in "Enlightenment" thinking. OK, the topic you've brought to the table is economic in nature, and Economics was developed in the Enlightenment era. What concepts are we dealing with, and do they somehow lose meaning if we try to apply Scriptural values to them? Economics is a reasoned approach to the facts of Scarcity and the Choices required by it. Neither Enlightenment thinkers, nor Adam Smith, nor Capitalists invented scarcity or reason. Both are discussed in the Bible. Scarcity is always with us--it just refers to things that have meaningful limits, such as material resources or time. These limits force us to make the best choices we can, and there's nothing Enlightenment about that. Finally, liberating people from those who would oppress them or exploit them against their will is the basis for Lockian and Jeffersonion thinking, and traces back, right through Natural Law and into Scripture. Some of our somewhat-secular founders would have agreed fully, e.g. Locke, Jefferson, Franklin. The fact that these gents didn't offer a clear Christian testimony doesn't disqualify their thinking if it is sound. And the fact that it's focused on material things is defined by their concern with hunger and the need for clothing, shelter, and medical care--all material concerns. To try and "rise above" these to more "spiritual" things is a needless dualism. Suffering is suffering. God made us whole.
Fifth: the individual. Yes, thinking of ourselves as individuals is in part a modern trait; although David appeared to think that way, as did Paul. But don't we have to stand before God, ultimately, as individuals, and take individual responsibility for the choices we've made? As I understand it, that's why we need to respond individually to Christ's mercy.
Look forward to your response--to the words above, but also to 2 thru 7.
Jack
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