this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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I am pretty amazed by the amount of "no"s in this thread so let me throw put some reasoning - this will be from a western perspective since that's what I am.
Most adults have completed a secondary education and are both fluent and literate - if you graduated from high school you've learned about the scientific method and participated in rhetorical discussions using the Aristotle methods. The amount of people exposed to these teaching methods a hundred years ago were vanishingly few (and pretty exclusively white men).
There is a very good chance you've interacted at least casually with philosophy of action or the meaning of life - there's a significant portion of us that actively chose some sort of philosophical course in college. It's almost impossible to grow to adulthood without crossing paths with philosophy in some form (I just played the Talos Principal 2 which delves deep into existentialism - Black Mirror frequently features arguments about determinism and free will - your favorite weeb content probably even has a lot to say about philosophy: Jojo, Attack on Titan, Cowboy Bebop, even fucking Trigun goes hard into the identity of self and free will).
We're not exposed to complex philosophical concepts we're fucking drowning in them - Scifi as a genre (excluding pure action Scifi) is defined by the focus on philosophical questions... seriously, Battlestar Galactica is just a series of unanswerable interesting questions.
If twenty random modern humans were sent back to Aristotle's Lycaeum Aristotle would assume they were all practiced rhetoristicians even if they did have a lot of dumb ideas.
It's astonishingly easy to pull up a philosophy youtuber and go hog wild for a week so you can walk away with interesting questions.
Does that mean everyone is the platonic ideal of a philosopher king? Fuck no, humanity is diverse and idiots are just as present as ever... but while the idiots are loud the vast majority of people use logic and reason in their day to day.
What about 50 years ago?
I think we're still ahead - the internet has provided a lot of new learning opportunities. When I was a kid in the 90s I explored Encyclopedia Encarta - if I'd had access to Wikipedia it'd have been many times richer.
Considering that knowledge and technology accumulate I think it'd be hard to find a time where enlightenment has decreased at a global level - local examples are depressingly common though... Afghanistan in the 60s and 70s was far more enlightened than it is today. If you're unfamiliar with what's happened to the country please feel free to enjoy an extremely depressing afternoon of enlightenment courtesy of the internet - you could also watch The Kite Runner.
Afghanistan is an interesting point. I will watch Kite Runner.
I wonder if America is on the verge of its own "Afghanistan."
America is fucking boned politically but thankfully it's not nearly at the level of being turned into an active war zone by the USSR and the CIA - America won that war by the way... the Taliban was America's government of choice because communism bad.
Nah, America is full of smart people - a whole lot of idiots too - but a lot of smart people and plenty of money. Personally, I emigrated to Canada, but I think it's not yet time to sound the doom bells... be fucking careful though because it'd be really easy to get truly fucked.
it's also key to point out that a lot of smart people or people with a lot of money to hire smart people. Are weaponizing alot but still small amount and a loud group of dumb people for decades and what you're seeing is all that come to a head.
Read up on the National Association of Manufacturers and James William Fifield Jr. It will make your skin crawl and this was back in the 40's as a response to FDR.