To see or not to see......

One of the (many) reasons that the Post Modernist trashes history is because they consider themselves (evolutionarily thinking) to be further down the ever increasing track of intelligence formation and therefore above all that has come before. An illusion that holds profound and disastrous consequences.
In fact if the bible is true (and I believe it is) we are actually 'devolving' in both physical and mental capacity and it appears neuro-science backs me up in this assumption.

Discover magazine claims that the size of human brain is gradually decreasing for the past 20,000 years.“Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimetres to 1,350 cubic centimetres, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball,” according to a Daily Mail report quoting Kathleen McAuliffe in Discover magazine.
 

What is so very tragic is that they sacrifice the vast stores of knowledge accumulated by other clever people over generations and that they do it all for an illusion. The truly intelligent like Newton acknowledged that it was not by their intelligence alone that brilliant men (and women) made huge advancements, but it was by standing on the shoulders of those who went before them.

Take for example Blaise Pascal. One of histories most creative geniuses. I love his perspicacious take on the modern human condition and in particular this extract about the way we ferret out amusements to occupy our every waking minute because we hate having to think to deeply.

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he faces his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness. And at once there wells up from the depths of his soul boredom, gloom, depression, chagrin, resentment, despair.

Pascal says there are two ways people avoid thinking about such matters: diversion and indifference. Regarding diversion, he says we fill up our time with relatively useless activities simply to avoid facing the truth of our wretchedness. "The natural misfortune of our mortality and weakness is so miserable," he says, "that nothing can console us when we really think about it. . . . The only good thing for man, therefore, is to be diverted so that he will stop thinking about his circumstances." Business, gambling, and entertainment are examples of things which keep us busy in this way.

The other response to our condition is indifference. The most important question we can ask is What happens after death? Life is but a few short years, and death is forever. Our state after death should be of paramount importance, shouldn't it? But the attitude people take is this:

Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.

Pascal is appalled that people think this way, and he wants to shake people out of their stupor and make them think about eternity. Thus, the condition of man is his starting point for moving people toward a genuine knowledge of God.