Projecting an image of flawlessness

As people are more and more 'educated', I see an primal need for them to project an image of flawlessness. Yes, compared to the earlier generation, each new generation does know a lot more about a lot more things. But I feel that, since a major portion of their time is occupied by gathering this lot more information, they have little time to know what would probably give them more satisfaction and more fulfilment, even a sense of achievement. Each new generation devotes less and less time time of the knowledge of self. This could be the simple explanation to the rise of atheism and the fall of many a religion.

Today's generation has found a deep sense of achievement in talking about things which they are by no means an authority. Even when talking amongst ourselves, instead of making enquiries, we make statements. As if they were the grand truth. We do not seek more and more knowledge, but seek more and more opportunities to display our knowledge or ignorance thereof.

One of the cultures we have lost today is the art of argument and debate. We do not know when we have lost the argument. We do not know how to present arguments in an organised manner. We try to distort one aspect of the opponents speech and prove it to be false and hence try and make the inference that what they have said is entirely false. We take an analogy in that speech and start arguing about the analogy. We take a statement in the speech and test its corollary. 

For eg. When one person says 'all crows are black'. Today's smart argument is to say that, does that mean to say that you are suggesting that all black birds are crows."