This is why pirates were wearing eye patches, to be able to enter the hull of the ship and see immediately without lighting up a candle. Fire is not a good idea inside a wooden ship filled with black powder.
This is one theory for why pirates wore eyepatches. We haven't found any historical evidence to confirm it. Meanwhile, we have at least a few documented cases of pirates wearing eyepatches for protecting a damaged eye.
I think the claim that the world is anti-intellectual is somewhat biased. I don't know if that's a sampling bias, a cognitive bias, or some other kind of bias. But one way or another, I feel like you're overblowing things.