Of course, people have always disagreed, but I am speaking to foundational presuppositions, something higher than mundane political discourse or like matters. For example, the belief in God or gods necessitates a belief in the metaphysical and transcendental -- something greater than man itself and certainly greater than the individual. A shared ethnos and group history passed down from generation to generation also emphasizing something greater than the individual. I am not suggesting that the individual has no place among the many, but that there are consequences and that people today cannot escape the last few centuries of individualist 'framing.' To even question this is modern day heresy.
"I think therefore I am" reverses tradition by placing epistemology before metaphysics whilst appealing to many higher things merely taken for granted and yet simply taken as axiomatic. And later, an external metaphysical world and its truth is replaced by abstract mental categories of one's own mind.
Solipsism itself completely undermines truth and the pursuit and value of. Democracy, with its pros and cons, is inherently a revolutionary tool that promotes relativism since something can oscilate endlessly between being ethical or unethical, true or false. An overarching metanarrative regarding ethics does not exist like it used to, being that it has basically been replaced by subjective preferences without any need for justification. Also, consider that most people today are caught in the assumption that truth is arrived at through an ongoing dialectical process: one opinion conflicts with another, and a compromise is considered to the sensible thing to do; it may be a 'middleground fallacy' but it repeats ad infinitum.
We live in a world where things are commonly asserted to be no more than 'social constructs' as dictated by those in power. Power is often seen through a Marxist lens as being oppressive, where once hierarchy or levels of power was simply the norm. Gender being an expression of its biology is now wholly divorced from its 'fascist' biological 'binary' origin; you apparently are whatever you believe you are. Men are women are apparently no different, and everyone is equal. The idea that the 'nature' of a lion vs a bear vs a human is evident can now commonly give way to nominalism. The so-called 'fascist' boundaries of nature once upon a time discovered are dissolving more and more everyday with new 'understandings.'
But the cognitive dissonance that results is astounding.
If you consider Jordan Peterson as one of endless examples, a man whom I have mixed views on. He is critical of post-modernism, and rightfully so it is a destructive force without a solution that leads to chaos. His presuppositions primarily come from modernism, but he fails to realize that his modernism with its utopic idealism is what undid pre-modernism; yet, he looks to pre-modernism (ancient cultures, religion) for some kind of answer for the failings of modernism. His worldview is a syncretic buffet table of beliefs that are incoherently tied together, and often seen through unverifiable subjective psychoanalysis.
God is dead and we have killed him... We can selfishly rescue ourselves from nihilism with existentialism and liberate ourselves from any restraints, but are we truly better off worshipping ourselves? I can't help but think were are on a downward trend.
Ok, so now you’ve moved the goalposts quite convenienly. We started with a historical assertion that societies once possessed a “unifying worldview,” and that claim does not survive contact with history. It was DOA.
Trying to recast it as “shared metaphysical presuppositions” does not fix the problem, because belief in transcendence has never implied agreement about truth, ethics, authority, or meaning.
Theological history is overwhelmingly a history of disagreement: schisms, heresies, wars, political maneuvering, sectarian conflict, reformations, and dissent driven underground by force. The Papal State itself functioned for centuries as a territorial power, maintaining standing armies and waging wars to acquire land, resources, and consolidate influence through alliances. Popes sanctioned violence, political assassinations, and coercion in the service of power, wealth and control of resources rather than unity.
Papal offices were also frequently shaped by elite financial and political interests, with powerful banking families such as the Medici exerting decisive influence over papal selection and policy, including bribing Cardinals to select the Pope they wanted that was either a family member or a close ally that would continue their banking relationship. This happened multiple times and is not a historical aberration; it is evidence that religion often operated as a governing and control mechanism, not as a source of shared moral consensus.
What you describe as unity was not consensus but enforced orthodoxy. When deviation is punished, silence looks like agreement, but the existence of secret worship, underground movements, and repeated religious fractures shows disagreement was always present.
Are you seriously trying to claim that people would speak out and disagree just as much today if they knew punishment for this was being burned at the stake, crucification, or various other methods of torture like it was back then?
Isn’t it enough to note that many of the most brutal torture techniques ever devised were used to enforce religious orthodoxy and compel denunciation of “heretical” beliefs? That history alone makes clear that apparent unity came not from shared conviction, but from fear of extreme punishment. The argument that humanity was somehow "unified" under religion back in the day seems absurd when you realize the lengths they had to go through to create this facade.
And let's not even get into why the Church of England exists or was created in the first place, shall we?
Disagreement is also not solipsism, and pluralism is not relativism. Democracy is not a theory of truth; it is a governance mechanism for societies that lack moral unanimity, which they always have.
Appeals to pre-modern metaphysical certainty confuse unquestioned authority with coherence. Ethics were never governed by a single metanarrative; competing moral frameworks have always existed, with one temporarily dominant through power, whether it was just "flexed" to gain adherence or actually used to force it.
Religion historically functioned as a powerful system of social control, producing order and compliance, not genuine unity, while structurally dividing people into in-groups and out-groups: The saved vs. the damned, the true believers vs. the infidels, the God-fearing people vs. the wicked and evil, etc.
What has changed is not that people stopped believing in higher things, but that fewer institutions can silence competing interpretations and still call the result “unity.” Human disagreement is not a failure of modernity; it is the default state of complex societies.
