Hurry, we're living in a glorious new era where man's relationship to learning is changing! I somehow feel a new sense of individualism based on my capacity for reason. No, in fact most people in Europe were totally unaware of the Renaissance because its art and learning affected a tiny sliver of the European population. Like, life expectancy in many areas of Europe actually went down during the Renaissance. Art and learning of the Renaissance didn't filter down to most people the way that technology does today. And really the Renaissance was only experienced by the richest of the rich and those people, like painters, who served them. I mean, there were some commercial opportunities, like for framing paintings or binding books, but the vast majority of Europeans still lived on farms either as free peasants or tenants.