We lived at least in a consensus reality world, where most people with some basic education agreed on most things that were obviously true, and most people had a shared sense of the fuzzy boundaries of fact and opinion.
We now do not, and it has nothing to do with power systems [0] and everything to do with a newfound facility to mislead at scale, which states and individuals alike will use.
[0] except that elements of one power system —- west coast tech firms —- are inventing the very tools of this destruction of consensus.
Mosura is correct, there was never a consensus reality world. Consensus post-domestication is built from coercion into centers. This requires a steady diet of myth or religion that explains phenomena. If you think consensus is agreeing that this particular god made that lightning, then consensus is ultimately devolutionary. Myth is unfortunately the basis for causality: this statement stands in for the correlational phenomena we're witnessing. Once we were subsumed by myth, status and hierarchy became dominant to truth statements. Look at everything you see here, status controls statements and their validity. There's never a correlational reality accessible through cause and effect statements competing for domination. The myth never solves the phenomena, but kicks it downstream into what appear to be more accurate forms like news. But if you study news, history, law etc, these are mythic constructions that embed cause and effect locally, rather than solve the initial phenomena (like murder).
We have to face truth constructions are lures in folk science societies like ours, they are not valid. Science is not understood (correlational thinking) or accepted b a majority of the population anywhere on this planet.
> most people with some basic education agreed on most things that were obviously true
Indoctrination.
Part of it is to make you not see it for what it is.
Do you have examples of lies that the majority was indoctrinated to believe?
Religion.
The fact there is intense disagreement about what is “obviously true” between countries shows that this is still happening.
The beliefs of the masses are simply shaped to suit political interests.
Concrete example: “boys should be circumcised”. If the answer was objectively obvious to educated people why does the US have such a different position on it than Europe?
Any mythic/causal statement (lightning causes fire) is a lie of folk science.
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Belief in western liberalism and democracy