I was talking to a young couple on the cruise and we decided that cruise ships are the alternative to Burning Man for +45 foodie set. The atmosphere is all very open and happy — very peace and love. Pretty much everyone gets along, smiles, dances, sings, and suspends self-consciousness for the duration of the cruise.
Feelings of peace and love flow easier when everyone is being pampered and well fed; and this can only happen because there is a huge staff that makes it all happen. For the roughly 2000 passengers of this cruise, there are 700 staffers.
This is a remarkably similar to the ratio of freemen to slaves in most ancient societies. Therefore, I speculate that a cruise ship society may be a little microcosm of how the ancient cities worked. No wonder the ruling classes had the leisure time to contemplate philosophy.
Of course, even today the truly wealthy have staff to coordinate every aspect of daily life, but if you are middle class (like me) a cruise ship or resort is really the only time where you can experience this type of lifestyle. All I can say is that it is not surprising that the ruling classes want to hold on to this power – by force, if necessary. So peace and love had its limits.