Another factor that seems to me to be equally important is the great myth and rationale of 'the modern,' that it places dynamite at the foot of old error and levels its shrines and monuments. Contempt for the past surely accounts for a consistent failure to consult it.
Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self
chronological-snobbery, history