I remember reading that in Dialectic of Enlightenment, how a major point made by Adorno and Horkheimer was that the Enlightenment (and modernity as well) believes it has transcended mythology and superstition when in fact has only created mythology and superstitions of its own. Linear conceptions of history and progress assume that what follows from the previous generation will inevitably be better, smarter, more aware, and less prone to one-dimensional ways of thinking, when all the evidence we see today should indicate the reverse. Everything coming from my generation (I'm 27) seems to be nothing but solipsism and demands that others accept their "feels" as truth by way of moralistic emotional blackmail or something else with zero basis. There is little attempt to see beyond the surface level. It makes any kind of intellectual understanding impossible because everything is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction.

It's funny, because in Jewish theology it's very much the opposite: there's a notion of (and I don't know the Hebrew terminology so I apologize) the "degeneration of the generations" whereby the latter generations are said to be far lacking in wisdom and spirituality than the previous, and that everything becomes progressively worse until the messianic era arrives (this could have very well been what Walter Benjamin was channeling in the critique of progress in his Theses on History, which was apparently an influenced on Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of progress in DoE).

And honestly, I'm at the point where elitism (as it is today) appeals to me, even as an anarchist. I would not like to "sink to the level of the masses" through some kind of populist endeavor if that entails swimming in their shit.