Well some sorts of "lesslessness" (my own proud verbal invention) literally is as old as Homer! In the
Iliad there's an old graybeard man named Nestor who's in love with his own voice and unfathomable wisdom and often complaining about "the youth of today"; among other things he complains about is contemporary standards of heroism and bravery:
"When I was young long time ago then we had real heros!!! But the youngsters of today, the young Achaean warriors like Achilleus - they're nothing compared to the heroes of my youth!"
In Aristofanes comedy
The Clouds we find that contemporary - remember contemporary in this case being 423 BCE - male youth are only interested in growing their peckers and balls as large as possible and getting their asses wide from being fucked by adult men; no, the male youth of yesteryear was something different! They didn't care about pecker size, they didn't desire getting their asses pummeled!
Soooooooooo - the rhetoric of contemporary "lesslessness" isn't particularly contemporary at all...
:cheers: