You do have a point. What I was thinking after I posted is how if a doctor told you to get a vaccine, that was really taken for granted, where as now it’s not.
People have not changed, but culture, education, mass media, and standards for discourse have. There are likely many causes. The replacement of traditional media by the free-for-alls of FB, reddit, and YT is undoubtedly one of these causes . Perhaps the relativism on truth encouraged by a postmodernist zeitgeist is another.
Perhaps. Good points all, and I’d particularly emphasize the wide availability of information (of varying quality), example of people deciding things for themselves, easy availability of direct advice, and other aspects of online communities which give people the confidence to make their own choices, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. This kind of alternative to expert authority didn’t exist previously.
So, there is a crisis of authority. What is the authoritative word/interpretation? How can this be determined? Then throw in some Marxist thinking that everyhthing is just a matter of power and oppression - and any authoratative claim is seen as oppression - and you have the ingredients for the chaos/disorder we now see.
However, to be honest, the post-modern critique of modernism’s claims of objectivity are not easily answered.
Responding to the postmodernist critique is beyond my pay grade.
I was making the orthogonal point that you state in the previous paragraph of you post.
FWIW, coincidently the political philosophy podcast just released an episode with Dale Martin, who calls himself a “postmodernist Christian”. That was a new category for me, although I suspect not for someone of your background…