Though I'm not sure how it relates to your book, an idea I've been thinking about is that the majority of Western citizens in the 20th century actually had enough education to be considered enlightened as individuals, but this intellectuality was psychologically corrupted somehow by incapacity to modify some archaic facets of culture accordingly, breeding various incarnations of disillusioned nihilism and eventually a decaying of collectivity, so initial Enlightenment-inspired institutional reforming has given way to a mere shell within which the reasons and valuations that originally legitimized it are rotting away. By this account, the cause of degeneration is not essentially fear of truth but rather the inability to operationalize progressive truth as social mechanism during a particular historical epoch, evolving into irresponsible, unprincipled abuse of truth and ultimately a rejection of sincere progressive advocacy. Not yet entirely convinced this assessment is accurate, but if it is, the examination of how abandoned rationales are being compensated for civically could be an interesting issue to address. Hopefully I stated that effectively enough.

It is interesting how the results of the "enlightenment" are claimed by one school of thought or another.
Perhaps you could start by saying what you think.
I don't have a particularly interesting point of view on this issue.
Maybe you do.

When you transcend, you enlighten :)