In public discourse, metaphysics is important - but hardly anything else is

Whenever I mention (and this happens A Lot) that is is non-optional that mainstream modern people should explicitly discover and critique their own fundamental assumptions (i.e. we need to do metaphysics); the response comes that most people just can't do this. 

It isn't true. Masses or ordinary people have done metaphysics at many times and places in human history, and this is recorded. Of course they didn't so it in the exact way that modern people would - but they did it. 

Much of this was in terms of religion and theology. It was complained, for example, that the streets of Constantinople were at one point clogged with masses of people arguing about the fundamental nature of Jesus Christ. 

But even as recently as the middle 20th century, there was a lot of public mainstream debate in journalism and books (also novels, plays, movies) concerning "existentialism" or the nature of reality -- to the point that such discussion was part of fashionable youth cults such as the Beats and Hippies. 

None of this went anywhere much, because it didn't go deep enough and got mixed-up with institutional imperatives and incentives. However, the record shows that people can and did discuss fundamental assumptions in a way that almost never happened in the past several decades - so that people have come to believe it is nigh impossible!

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Yet things have indeed changed, with the corruption and collapse of public and institutional discourse; which is now rotted by corruption and dishonesty to the point that it does more harm than good. 

In the past, it made some kind of sense to claim that stuff like science, education, law, economics and the like were important; but now these are important mostly for the harm they inflict and the malign brainwashing induced by participation. 

What this means is that  not only is metaphysics important, but it has become just-about the Only important thing - in public discourse. 

The rest of public discourse in 2025 is light-entertainment at best - passing the time between our birth and death-annihilation in a more-or-less pleasant or exciting fashion; but the norm is that these social domains are a cancer on human existence and Western civilization.   

It's time people stopped making excuses! Most people consume vast quantities of their finite resources and money, and their limited life-energies, on malign trivialities or futile self-aggrandisements. 

It's time more people started doing what they must do... 

"Must", at any rate, if this mortal life is not to have been a literal waste of time; leading on to a post-mortal existence in which such people have - on the basis of their own unexamined and false assumptions - chosen something much worse than this life.