I don’t think that is going to work – certainly not at the level of the whole of society, and probably not for most individual either. Everybody is different. For some people it isn’t necessary to intellectually connect everything up – they are happy just not understanding the theoretical stuff. But most of us do need some sort of model which makes sense.
In fact, Nagel talks about this quite a lot in Mind and Cosmos. Humans are driven to try to find a model of reality which includes ourselves – and not just a model that works from our subjective perspective, but a “big picture”. We have an unquenchable thirst for transcendent knowledge, and unless we can convince ourselves that it all adds up then we aren’t able to let it go. This is the direct opposite to Colin McGinn’s “mysterianism” – the idea that human minds just aren’t capable of understanding consciousness and other deep mysteries of the cosmos, so we should just accept this and get on with living.
I see no reason to give up, not least because I think we’re on the verge of a major breakthrough. And I am not really talking about my own ideas here – I am talking about a world-changing paradigm shift in multiple areas. I think the paradigm shift represented by 2R is now inevitable – it may not look like it right now, but in 1895 nobody could have imagined quantum mechanics or the Great War happening.
And yes the PO is eternal. It has always been and always will be.