Putting aside our political slants, one might ask when exactly in the history of human civilization has any fraction of humanity ever consistently demonstrated that they were willing to devote themselves to the sole pursuit of "the arts and sciences, pure creativity and discovery" for any significant length of time?

If such instances existed, did those noble pursuits come without costs? To either themselves or others?

Say they did manage to exist in harmony with other civilizations (who may not have had any such lofty ideals or pursuits) then how long did they manage to keep doing so? [1] [2]

How long did they survive?

How long did their inventions or works of knowledge survive, in their intended forms?

In fact the evidence is to the contrary that when humans are bequeathed with a surfeit of riches and time to devote, they indulged in decadence, degeneracy and if nothing else sloth.

At which time, they were quickly wiped off by their geopolitical peers who placed a higher importance on self-preservation than they did on arts, science & discovery.

We like to think we have ridden ourselves from the shortsightedness of those older, less-prudent & ill-advised civilizations.

But really, on balance, have we?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples

[2] http://www.ancient.eu/Sea_Peoples/