Below is a quote from Milan Kundera’s novel Ignorance. I think it could form a solid thesis even beyond the pages of a novel:

“The gigantic invisible broom that transforms, disfigures, erases landscapes has been at the job for millennia now, but its movements, which used to be slow, just barely perceptible, have sped up so much that I wonder: would an Odyssey even be conceivable today? Is the epic of the return even pertinent to our time? When Odysseus woke on Ithaca’s shore that morning, could he have listened in ecstasy to the music of the Great Return if the old olive tree had been felled and he recognized nothing around him?”