The idea of Enlightenment has intrigued me ever since a conversation I had when I was working with the UN in a third world country.

The conversation was with a lady from an African country and she was talking about her tribe. She said she was from the enlightened tribe. My initial reaction was to question her belief in her own superior enlightenment. My subsequent reaction was to question my own level of enlightenment and ask what right I had to question hers.

My feeling is that enlightenment (or whatever metaphysical term you want to use) can only be gained following a long period of introspection and study requiring isolation, peace and calm, something that is sadly lacking in most parts of the modern world. Claiming that we are more enlightened than the ancients where such conditions only required finding the proverbial mountain cave is a bit of a stretch.

Scientific knowledge != enlightenment.

I would argue that ancient peoples were much more intelligent on average than people today. It is obvious to me that even in the past few generations, each subsequent generation has been less intelligent, more narrow minded, and overall less robust than previous generations. I personally knew many people who were born in the 19th century and I could not say that my generation is in any way superior to theirs. We may know more stuff, but we are far less wise. Reading ancient authors only reinforces how simple and unenlightened we are compared to them.

It is a very unpopular view, of course, because it is threatening to the self-esteem of my contemporaries who believe that all of the social changes and scientific advances in the past century or so have put us on the cusp of some permanent state of enlightenment. I am sure that we are rather on the cusp of great disaster. No one really likes to think that, but the evidence is pretty obvious in my opinion.

An argument made on such vague terms is easy to make. You never qualified how you measure intelligence, nor which people you're talking about (those who in the past who were wealthy and well-written enough to leave records vs the 'common clay' of today,) nor have you said which cultures you believe to be on the cusp of collapse, nor any prediction of the cause of such obviously imminent disaster. And of course, no proof that it would be a disaster, rather than a mere rebirth.

So I would argue that the provider of such an unenlightened exposition is not in a position to be giving such analysis in a meaningful way.

Also remember that when you are comparing your generation to a younger one, you have the leg-up of an entire generation of knowledge and experience that they don't have. But they may gain that in time.

If you are concluding that your kids' generation, and your grandchildren's generation are each successively less intelligent, please take a moment to reflect if that's a generational issue, or just an age issue. Kids do dumb stuff... are you sure that you or your peers weren't doing equivalently dumb things at that age?

Late reply, but no, I didn't really have the younger generations in mind when I said this. I was thinking of my generation compared to my parents' and grandparents' generations. Heck, even comparing presidents from the last 40 years to those we had a century ago reveals a decline -- not that I'm a fan of Woodrow Wilson or Warren Harding.

Oddly, I think one thing in support of your claim is that modern people do better at IQ tests. I've read that if we calibrated correctly, then populations from a few generations ago would have absurdly low median scores -- as if they had actual mental conditions.

But that can't be right measurement. Any test that took a normal person from 1900 at found them to so lacking in intelligence that they can't function in normal life is clearly missing some part of their intelligence. And perhaps that missing something is what you would describe as broad mindedness and robustness.

> ... we are more enlightened.

We have always believed that.

Not really.

All through the European middle ages people regularly believed (rightly!) that the ancients were wiser than them. Of course they still believed themselves superior because they were Christian -- and were partially right about that too.

Do you have an example of that? I can find examples of things like ancestral worship, but I can't think of any where they felt their ancestors were more enlightened? I'm sure there are individual examples but, as a general statement, I can't really think of a society that was suggesting they go back and do what their ancestors used to do.

Not do what they do, but think like they thought. Many medieval authors wrote from the perspective that the ancients were much more intelligent and knowledgeable than they. The Renaissance, for example, was sparked by the discovery of ancient Greek manuscripts a couple of centuries earlier. As those ideas were reintroduced, there was astonishing intellectual discovery and growth in Italy and then throughout Europe.

I'm not really able to think of any of those medieval authors who thought that way. I'm sure there are examples, but I can't think of any. It seems that, at least in practice, we've pretty much always felt we were the apex of morality and knowledge. That's, I would guess, why broad changes are the exception, slow, difficult, or violent.

I guess I probably should have written something longer and with some caveats.