>We are constantly asking our brains to grasp at complex topics and distill down at least our own perception of them to something manageable.

Considering "DON'T TREAD ON ME"[1] is a meme that goes back all the way to 1776, the human desire to simplify what is needlessly complicated is nothing new and certainly nothing unexpected even today. This is especially so for Joe Average who more than likely is simply way too busy already with more pressing affairs to daily life.

>Now, when many may challenge that notion of consistent progress of the world toward a brighter future, letting somebody else do it just doesn’t seem so right.

This too is "older than history"[2]. A common (misattributed?) quote from Mark Twain goes that "If you don't read the newspapers, you are uninformed. If you do read them, you are misinformed."[3]

It has always been preferable to have a healthy appetite for critical thought and to be skeptical of everything. Critical thought is how you form your own opinions, your own beliefs, your own ideals and goals in life, your own identity. And indeed, the discipline of science is predicated on putting forth hypotheses and testing them; that is questioning how the world works and whether our current understanding stands up to questioning.

What was ridiculous was the deference to higher authority without regard. Noone has the time nor capacity to question and understand everything, especially Joe Average, but to then fundamentally give up your own freedom of thought and defer it to "some group of people who would make it their life careers and ... trust them" is what was and is ridiculous. The widely derided NPC meme starts becoming less of a meme if you trust someone to tell you how to think. Around these parts we call that programming: Telling computers how to think and what to do.

>we now live in a time ... that understanding the full complexity of every topic that might cross your path is not only possible, but somehow, expected.

Personally as a millenial (age mid-30s), I grew up on a healthy course of being taught to think for myself. Essentially, that is a natural conclusion to being taught that we should strive to truly understand the world around us.

>Still, clear answers don’t seem ahead of us

The answer is actually simple: Use experts (not "experts" like some pundit on television or a political office holder, actual real experts out in the field who know their stuff and speak objectively) as a potential guide (not an authority!) towards striving to better understand the world around you.

We quite literally have a limited capacity to care[4], we must pick and choose what we concern ourselves with even as we strive to understand. Logically then, we should first strive to understand the world around us because that's what is immediately relevant to our daily lives.

Progressivism today cares so much about things that are faraway and irrelevant to your daily life, and because you have a limited capacity to care that leaves you unable to care for the people and things in your life. That is simply stupid.

Understand the people around you, not some faceless entity on the other side of your continent/island or even the planet you hear on social media. Understand the society around you, not some construct you will probably never even travel to.

Understand the world around you, your life, and you might realize that life and the world are actually pretty nice.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Tread_on_Me

[2]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OlderThanTheyThi...

[3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/QuotesPorn/comments/exkeku/if_you_d...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number