> Does our collective thinking get stuck at the level of an emo high-schooler?

Our society has come to equate contrarian thought with independent thought, but the aren't the same thing. Worse we've simultaneously stopped training young minds to think properly.

Telling someone to think for themselves without first teaching them HOW to do that, doesn't just halt progress it puts it into retreat.

We need to start teaching young people to trust those who know more than they do, and how to tell who those people are. Further, we should teach them how to reason before we admonish them to do it for themselves.

Until we manage those two things we will be a society that distrusts everything we can't understand, and understands very little.