Mastery of knowledge does not require cognitive ability greater than anyone else, all that it requires is the ability to question facts, and avoid face value judgments. The failure to question results in casual acceptance, creating the "zombie mind" - a symptom where conformation bias reinforces false truths. Consider that society is defined and constructed out of collections of information: Media, politics, economics, technology, law, et.al. The blistering pace that information is generated only serves to propagate dissonant ideals which serve to diverge fact from fiction. While the mass presentation of ideology has become the lowest common denominator, the freedom of your choices -e.g. republican hipsters vs. democratic jocks, are not actually choices at all. While each facet of society might seem to be a whole and apart from each other, these fractures are synthetic as they all have strong similarities on a granular level.
So the question is: Are you a zombie??