A wonderful, thought-provoking piece.

The bit I was particularly interested was around education.
What appears to have happened in 'the West' is that education has been largely outward-focussed: sciences, maths, humanities, etc. Of course we can educate the people about all these ideas and theories, to enable engineers and technicians to build infrastructure, and cultivate artists, teachers, carers, doctors, and so on. And in doing so we have assumed that the better educated people are, then they will be equipped to make the best choices in a democratic system.

I haven't actually read the book, but I am aware of the concept that Noam Chomsky offered in Manufacturing Consent -- whereby we now have systems that 'manufacture' (implying that they're not natural) the reasoning for decisions to be accepted that under normal circumstances may not be tolerated by an 'educated' populace.

What's missing in education is the learning of 'self-gnosis'. The capacity for an individual to assess what they're own Values are, and to act (or not act) in a democracy accordingly. This is different to critical thinking, in that its not the capacity to analyse data (from external sources, although that also is a factor, just not wholly), but more to "know oneself" and make decisions on morals/ethics based not so much on what they've taught by others, or by what they've read, but by having an innate perception of what it means to them, without any of the filters of familial/social/political/cultural conditioning.

There are some very interesting socio-political theories that emerged in China around 3rd-4th centuries BCE that I feel fill in the gaps in this field, stuff we should at least be familiar with and start to integrate with all the Western ideas also. Confucius, in particular.

Again, great read. Thoroughly enjoyed it!!