Here’s Dennis Prager:
A radio talk show host for 29 years, I long ago began asking callers who made foolish comments what graduate school they attended. It takes higher education to learn to believe that America and Israel are villains, that men and women have essentially the same natures, that human nature is good, that ever-larger governments create wealth, etc.
Okay that woke you up, didn’t it?
His basic point, I think, is that we must be educated into some follies; most of us are just not smart enough to arrive at them by ourselves.
My basic theory: The world has always been a mess, but it is a more stable mess when the follies are the usual features of a human ecology. By contrast, follies arising from, for example, “the assured results of modern science” may be harder for a society to tolerate.
Beware of replacing stable common-sense prejudices with fantastic irrationalities. Or anyway, don’t be surprised by really weird evils flourishing alongside the usual run.