I think about this a lot, because I feel it too. Some of it seems to be a result of these "higher callings" becoming just jobs. The closest example is how I'm often perplexed that so many people with "computer science" and specializations in software "engineering" seem so... clueless. Not all, but a lot. At a certain point I met a few people who were old electrical engineers that worked in computers. They knew more about software and seemed more like "engineers" and it was because there was no "computer science" when they came up. They were electrical engineers that ended up in computers because it was interesting to them. To them it was a higher calling. To the new school, it is a job. There's still genuinely curious people and those that have the "call" but they're mixed in with people who just heard this shit pays well. And since these things are now integrated into society, the pool is extra diluted.

And that doesn't even start in on the parts perverted by our present stage of capitalism and the monsters at the top of it. So uh, it's nuanced, but yeah it feels like it sucks - there are people trying though.