[ipnon]

Before the 18th century most people could not read. Literacy rates began rising dramatically starting in the 17th century with the invention of the printing press and the proliferation of reading materials that it spawned. By the third quarter of the 18th century, an extraordinary milestone was passed in France. For the first time in history more people could read than could not. The commoners of Paris were obsessed with the plays, novels and essays of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot. The satire and wit of these thinkers inspired a new form of popular discourse we now call critical thinking. Commoners from rich merchants to petty artisans started examining and discovering the contradictions and injustices endemic to their lot in life. The idea of privilege came from this tempest of new ideas. While the hierarchy of power and its unequal treatment are as old as time, this newly educated population was for the first time able to see this hierarchy of power for what it is: an inherited system of control based on fraudulent claims to divinity that is inherently unfair and unjust.