Yeah, elite in some respects, but that doesn't make "modernity" a utopia. I agree there's a downside of the "age of reason," and I've critiqued modernism in other articles. For one thing, the technological progress may wreck the ecosystems.

But the revolutions of secular humanism eventually freed women and the slaves. The stagnation of conservative societies wasn't going to be so revolutionary. And reason shows us our existential position in nature, without religious delusions.

The fact that modernism was often "born in bloody revolution" is largely the fault of the entrenched powers in premodern societies who didn't want to compete fairly or relinquish their ill-gotten power and wealth.