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Depending on who you talk to, the modern period can be considered to have started around the time of the French Revolution in the late 1700s. It marked a significant shift in philosophy in the world including industrial revolutions and scientific revolutions. Modernism was the dominant epistemology until the world wars proved it had massive glaring flaws, after which the postmodern period began which we're living in at the moment.

Premodern philosophy required people to be strong in order to survive in a fairly brutal world.

There are a number of ways this strength could manifest, depends on the time and place you're in, since premodern epistemology is in fact the second largest epistemology (the largest being pre-epistemological – and that's debatable since it is more pure biology/cognitive science than a specific epistemology, but I'm keeping with that notion as there's so much stuff built into us we don't even know what's there entirely), and the largest body of recorded philosophy, containing the vast majority of history's philosophies, but the ones that actually survived and thrived did require certain forms of strength.

In terms of greco-roman antiquity, the Spartans believed in martial strength above all, and as a society based on warrior-aristocrats on top and slaves on the bottom, they tended to have that sort of mentality. By contrast, the Athenians worshipped Athena, who was the God of war in terms of clever tactics as opposed to the main war god Ares who was the god of aggressive warfare, so strength was represented as being smarter than stronger -- though Athens too considered a strong body as important as a strong mind. Plato was called such because he had broad shoulders, and Greek philosophers often wrote of the important of a strong body. Athens ended up being the region that produced the philosophy we'd read for thousands of years, and part of that was because of this idea that strength means mental strength. Rome was a practical country, a lot like early America, so they cared more about actual martial prowess, and they tended to lionize strength -- if you wanted to rise in social status, you'd go to war and successfully war, although Rome also valued rhetorical skill and political skill as forms of strength, and figures such as Cicero rose to power through being well spoken, and excellent in politics.

In terms of imperial China, the Chinese Confucian ideal from around the axial age (So just before Christianity) held that people ought to do their best to cultivate wisdom and engage in continuous learning so you can rise to the occasion and fulfill your roles in society to achieve societal harmony. A good head of the household was strong morally, intellectually, and physically(though over time this last one was toned down to focus on wisdom). Neo-confuscianism was a much different philosophical system incorporating several major philosophies, but there was still strength in their philosophy -- for example, the bureaucrat exams in imperial china were some of the most broad forms of meritocracy and although it was unlikely because elite families had resources to produce elite students, a genius from some farming village could potentially become a bureaucrat and raise his entire family's status thereby.

The Mongol empire had very strong meritorious elements, which is why the mongol empire at its height was by far the largest empire in history to that point, all the way from east Asia, through modern-day Russia, and coming towards western Europe. It was an empire whose philosophy very much focused on merit and strength, and while they were ruthless enemies, they would often elevate competent people from the places the conquered -- the Yuan dynasty in China was Mongolian, but kept all the competent bureaucrats in place.

In Japan, people who were strong warriors were considered highly prized, and the samurai ended up being not just strong, but artistic and wise as well, at least in their ideal mythic form by the late medieval period. Ironically, integration into the modern world destroyed the samurai, who were replaced with conscripted armies as Japan rapidly modernized to prevent itself from sharing Imperial China's fate. This happened during the Meiji Restoration which essentially represented the modernization of Japan. I'm guessing that the shogunate collapsed once Commodore Perry proved that the samurai were incapable of defending the country. Just a few black ships collapsed a whole social class because they proved they weren't strong enough.

In terms of Christianity, the story of Jesus is inherently a story of the weakest people in society being strong in other ways. Jesus was not born someone of high classes like a king or a prince, and instead was born a carpenter, and in spite of that he ended up going toe to toe with the Roman Empire, as well as the Pharisees. The model he presents then is as someone of inherent moral and spiritual strength. Early Christianity was largely pacifist until about the 4th century under Constantine, as the Eastern Roman Empire really needed its people to want to fight the various groups trying to take their empire (who eventually succeeded much later). Later Christianity combined spiritual strength with martial strength in the ideal of chivalry, which successfully shifted the general culture of knights from mere brutes to well behaved warrior-aristocrats.

Islam was created by someone who was among other things a military leader who lived in a harsh desert, and so strength is highly prized in that ideology. Religions can be interpreted differently over time, but the Islamic golden age had the Islamic world as the most advanced technologically, highly liberal, excellent militarily, and philosophically, and it was only being beaten down first by the Mongolians and second by the west that they changed into the fundamentalist form we see today (though those strains existed before that point).

There were situations where strength stopped being part of the philosophy of a civilization, and often that marked the beginning of the downfall of that civilization, such as the fall of the western Roman empire, or the end of the Northern Song dynasty in China, or the 9th century invasions of modern-day India by Muslim conquerors.

As for the idea that animals are purely creatures of habit, that's a long discussion for another time, but it depends on the animal. Animals such as crows have been found to have high levels of problem solving ability (and they can be assholes too), and hunting isn't always so easy. The fact that we can understand how they think doesn't mean they don't think.

They're not even human beings, because human beings think for themselves. Even most animals think for themselves.

In premodern times, it was expected for a person to be strong, and while it was expected one would accept the given truths of the emperor or the oracle, it was also expected that one think for themselves to the extent that they would not be foolish. Even if you were taking truth as presented by a pastor or bishop, it was understood that theological truths were complex and layered, and that's why a pastor or a bishop was required.

In modern times, rationality was king, and it was always demanded that humans fully act as the rational beings the enlightenment incorrectly assumed we were. You were to follow the simpleminded modern ideology whatever it was, but that ideology was intended to be "rational" and often "scientific", and so you were expected to also be "rational" or scientific. To be irrational or hypocritical was a cardinal sin under rationalism, meaning that a modern man is intended to think for themselves, only rationally.

The postmodern eras we live in has reacted to modernism by claiming the grand narrative is that there is no grand narrative, the objective truth is that there is no objective truth, and that power is the only real thing. For fools like these, they might think that this means that no truth is real, and they should just switch to whatever they're told to believe this week, but in reality it also means that power is real, and to shut down your mind is to give up your power to whoever programmed you last is to give up whatever power you have as an individual and hand it to someone else (presumably someone more powerful, and since hierarchy is considered evil you're submitting to an oppressive hierarchy by refusing to think for yourself). Therefore, even under postmodernism, a man is intended to think for themselves perhaps more than ever to ensure they are making proper use of their own personal power.

In all eras, great men think, and ants don't.

For another animal example, I always like this one: They tested the intelligence of dogs and wolves. It turns out that the two have basically the same neuralogical structures and so if they have to they can both utilize intelligence to the same degree, but a dog will heel to its master and let the master do the thinking while it does the dog things, and a wolf will try to use its own intelligence first. If the dog's master dies, the dog had better learn to think like a wolf, or it will cease to exist.

Fitting, we live in a world where most people's entire bloodlines will cease to exist because they're doing as they're told instead of what's best for them. Population collapses in most countries. A near majority of women childless by 40. A supermajority of men childless by 40. And the ants keep following the path they've been laid.

I have shown that while each era of knowledge demands some adherence to current thought, each era also demands individuals think for themselves because in fact a man is not a piano key and a civilization of unthinking dogs is actually not very useful because while a dog can follow commands, it won't do the things it needs to survive without its masters orders. If you have a situation like today where the masters are powerful but have no care whatsoever for their dogs, then the dogs will die out.