Heading backwards?

By nearly all accounts, most medieval folk were not only not literate, they were filled with superstition which encouraged their horrible oppression by their rulers and other authorities.  In the end, it was the printing press and the advent of inexpensive publishing that made a case for and encouraged the education of all the classes.  In the end, it was information, objective information, that changed the playing field and gave rise to an educated and large middle class.  While some might place the Church on the part of the oppressors, the Church also fostered and encouraged the education of everyone.  Luther himself was a champion of such.  

Oddly enough, we have plenty of educational institutions but compared to the other eras our people are remarkably illiterate.  Yes, they are able to read but choose not to.  They have traded the historic curriculum emphasizing logic, rhetoric, literature, history, languages, science, and math for studies in subjects invented every day to please a whining segment of the society.  They cannot read cursive, write little and when they do in text fashion rather than in long sentences formed by grammar, and they get just about all their information in minuscule little tidbits designed to appeal to emotion rather than fact or reason.

As a result, we live with superstition in the form conspiracy theories and an unhealthy fear that leads us to hide behind our screens and choose digital things over real and physical things -- including relationships.  We are easily oppressed by those who taunt us and appeal to our fears without having to prove the truth of what they say or its historicity.  The strange he said/she said that passes for fact and truth on the internet has made us as a people easy to manipulate -- witness how we succumbed to our fears in the pandemic and gave into things that later proved to be lies and deceptions.  Still, we have not learned much.  We are only one media hyped pseudo pandemic away from giving up all our liberty and common sense all over again.

We live in the tyranny and oppression not of leaders but of emotion.  We see everything through the lens of how it makes us feel and in this prison of our emotions and desires we presume that shouting at each other or unfriending each other on media passes for a real conversation or a debate.  Our fear of being contradicted or someone having the audacity to reject our truth has led us to live within the artificial fortress of those who are of like mind or feeling or fear as we are.  We are sure we never offend but we are also confident that nearly everyone and anything is offense to us if for no other reason than we don't like what they say.

We have moved backwards and become more like the illiterate people of the past who were oppressed and manipulated by nearly everything but truth and fact.  We are more like the uneducated and suspicious peasant class of centuries ago than we are the modern man free to think, speak, listen, and engage on the level of fact and truth.  Could this be the inevitable outcome of an education that does not teach and truth that is not founded on fact?  Could it be that we have turned our schools into social laboratories instead of institutions which not only teach but instill a real love of learning?  Can anyone really be called educated who does not read anything longer than a tweet or who hides behind the curtain of visual learning because he or she is too lazy to read or think?  Maybe we are headed for another dark age but if that is true, we are the culprits and have brought on ourselves the prison from what generations and history have worked to set us free.