Are people more enlightened today than they were 100 years ago?

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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.

Define enlightened. I think people might be more informed in certain cases, but not more enlightened.
- Not the definition but an historical definition.
  A philosophical movement of the 1700s that emphasized the use of reason to scrutinize previously accepted doctrines and traditions and that brought about many humanitarian reforms.
  
  Then the answer is absolutely not.

Yes, but the internet makes it easier to see all the idiocy.

I know I am. I wasn't even born 100 years ago.
- See, I didn't even know that about you. I'm more enlightened than I was 10 seconds ago!

things are way better for women and minorities than they ever were.... which is saying something as things are still comparatively bad

Looking at widespread corruption and material worship, I'd say they are about the same.

I feel like answering this would give different answers for pretty much every category you could define.

In general, probably.
Locally, depends on the locality
- Never underestimate the number of dumb as bricks idiots out there - but even the most dedicated luddite would probably recognize the name Nietzsche from some goth phase in middle school.

No they're obese.
- 3 comedy points.

People have access to more information, but less access to tough life lessons, and therefore less experience (ranging from survival skills, to applied political science, etc.).
Is being "enlightened" mean you have more (possibly fake) information, or does it mean having more life experience? You decide...

define enlightened using your own words not via a google search
- Me, I'm specifically referring to the enlightenment. Now I would say that some of their ideas haven't aged well but that is kind of a hat on a hat. The following summarizes it better then my dopey ass ever could:
  Use of reason to scrutinize previously accepted doctrines and traditions and to bring about humanitarian reforms
  
  in regards to that definition then: yeah, I'd say people are, on the whole, more enlightened than they were a century ago. the scientific method is more thoroughly accepted/baked in at a societal level, and the mass adoption of digital communication facilitates a greater sense of community.... though the resulting communities are often at odds with each other.

I doubt it.
The fact we all interact with cyberspace, using more high level functions to navigate rather than interacting with the physical world, means we are less integrated and present than before.

They are educated more. The opposite of enlightenment.
- Why the downvoting?
  People of today know a lot about everything. Yet we still have wars, pointless diseases born out of ignorance, discrimination beyond belief, causing people to even want to undergo surgery to escape, so much hate.
  We know so many things, and we ignore it all. The opposite of enlightenment. We live in ignorance. And we celebrate ignorance.
  Healthy at any weight, right? Fuck evidence to the contrary.

39 comments