More than 200 years ago - in Britain first - a new consciousness emerged at about the time the Industrial Revolution got going. Its philosopher was Coleridge, but the influence did not come from him (his prose-work is extremely difficult to understand and has never been much read), but rather Coleridge was an articulation of it.
However, things did not unfold at all as they were intended. (Intended or destined by God, I mean.)
The intention was that Men would move to a fully-integrated world-view, but for the first time via thinking that is conscious, alert, purposive - a unity taking place in the realm of thinking which would itself be thinking of great clarity, rigour, honesty, sincerity etc. - thinking from the true self and unbounded in its scope and validity.
Divine thinking - albeit very much partially and selectively. Free thinking - the thinking of self-aware in-essence-divine agents.
Instead, and ever since; all the ingredients for the intended consciousness can be found in modern culture and experience - but scattered, detached, and many of them denied.
The dark powers have achieved this - they could not prevent the elements emerging (God's work), but they succeeded in creating a world in which thought is ultra-fragmented - a thought-disordered world (to use a psychiatric term).
In public life, thought is in micro-units called sound bites - each of which individually makes no sense, but the joining of which is not even attempted; and the same applies to the 'professional' worlds such as law, science, academia...
Thought is done and presented and operates in tiny systems - micro-specialisms; each detached from all other systems, and the noticing or joining of these meaningless units is not attempted - people have not just got-used-to this, but believe it is vital in some quasi-ethical, actually-superstitious, way (although in another way, they don't believe anything is vital).
In sum, they are socially, personally, existentially afraid of the consequences of dot-joining. It is taboo.
So modernity is dots, and the dots are not joined - and the fact of not joining is not even noticed or aggressively insisted-upon - people just move from one dot to another; inhabiting each micro-thought-world in sequence, each one being utterly dominant for a moment... then some other dot takes-over.
But most of the dots are denied, unnoticed, ridiculed or carefully ignored - I mean anything spiritual, anything real and religious - the whole world of things like dreams and intuitions.
Materialist dot joiners are ultra radicals and conspiracy theorists - but they typically despise the spiritual and religious dots, and the unmade connections between them: they are highly-selective dot-joiners, which is so distorted as to satisfy the dark powers almost as much as mainstream denial of coherence.
These are dots that are not only un-joined, but denied - and after all - each of the dots is indeed, strictly, meaningless - so it is easy to deny the reality or importance of any single one of them, if that is wanted, or convenient.
So - this is our situation. Around us we have all the 'ingredients' of that new and more purposive/ alert/ cognitive form of engaged and unified consciousness - but as mere disconnected dots; half of which we ignore and the other half of which we assiduously refuse even to attempt connecting.
The great hope is that if, or when, we eventually start noticing and connecting - we will break free and move forward to a higher and more god-like way of being - while mortal and yet on earth.
If we do not notice and connect - life will continue to be meaningless, purposeless - there will be no real knowledge, no real reality - and we shall succumb to hedonism en route to despair.
But the solution is in our own hands... or rather minds.