I agree that precious little occurred in terms of technological advancement. However, I think it’s a more tendentious claim with respect to cultural achievement

I agree that precious little occurred in terms of technological advancement. However, I think it’s a more tendentious claim with respect to cultural achievement. For example, all the great epic poems of the Western tradition predate the Enlightenment (although there have been notable failed/incomplete epics since then). In terms of Humanism, it’s unclear to me that we’re doing better than our far less technologically sophisticated ancestors. That aside, my broader concern is with our civilizational stability. We are still too close to and to involved in the events of the past two years to achieve any kind of objectivity, but I am increasingly concerned that, at least in the American context, things are not going to work out. Between worsening climate change, an incipient and solidifying neo-Fascist mass movement, the disinformational chaos of social media, the mass death of a pandemic, and an increasingly sclerotic US hegemony, our civilization is experiencing profound pressures of the sort which historically presaged extended periods of violence and chaos. I hope that I am completely wrong, but it’s difficult to read the stories (and for that matter the crueler comments) of r/HermanCainAward and not come away with the conclusion that social media has broken our society to the tune of 2000 unvaccinated dead per day and counting.