There was an era where storytelling was just about failures - drama and comedy. And often this was from one's own fault, and they would spiral all the way down despite best efforts. But religion, probably Christianity, flipped that and storytelling became about people who failed on their own weakness and then repented and became successful.
18th century Economics also changed the mindset of society a lot. It was no longer about stuff you had or would steal from others. It was about productivity. Suddenly wealth was measure in GNP/GDP and not gold.
But there are some really good stuff in the classics. I love Aristotle's stuff. It's reverse Blinkist - a summary of it is actually longer than the original books.
Also because old stuff is flawed, it's good practice to criticize them. Instead of blindly opposing something, bring up where the author is uninformed, misinformed, or illogical. Sometimes you know something is missing but can't articulate it, and that's a good study on where the missing piece is. Something written thousands of years ago is bound to have lots of missing pieces.