A Modern Catechism

If I ask you how old the world is you should know the answer.  If I ask you how long modern man has existed you should know the answer.  If I ask you the unit of the measurement of light you should know the answer.  But you don’t.  The story of the modern world is not a story.  Since the story consists in facts about the nature of reality, facts of physics, of medicine, biology and so on and a fact by itself is inert.  No consequences are implied by it beyond a kind of take it or leave it indifference.  If I don’t know how old the earth is, what difference does it make?  60 million years?  60 billion?  Concerning the basic facts of the world about us then, why bother knowing their catechism if sense has to come from circumstantial need? What is the story of no story?

Tags: Fact, Narrative, Postmodernism