> At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge? Does a majority of the population think it worth while to take a good deal of trouble, in order to halt and, if possible, reverse the current drift toward totalitarian control of everything? In the United States and America is the prophetic image of the rest of the urban-industrial world as it will be a few years from now -- recent public opinion polls have revealed that an actual majority of young people in their teens, the voters of tomorrow, have no faith in democratic institutions, see no objection to the censorship of unpopular ideas, do not believe that government of the people by the people is possible and would be perfectly content, if they can continue to live in the style to which the boom has accustomed them, to be ruled, from above, by an oligarchy of assorted experts.
-- https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/index.html
It's not that we now have less risk for the things that were described by thinkers in the 20th century, it's that we became more complacent and cowardly, less ambitious and more comfortable, and are rationalizing it. We don't know more, we just are less able. We don't rise to the occasion, we pull it down into the gutter with us. This is the whimper our betters have seen coming.