I know history isn’t most people’s favourite subject. In a world of Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram, it feels hard enough to keep up with what’s new, let alone what happened 500 years ago.
News headlines grab our attention. We read them on our commute. They’re pushed at us in our newsfeeds. If offered a choice between something ‘old’ and something ‘new’, nine times out of ten we will pick what’s ‘new’. But what if we’ve been tricked? What if we’ve been conditioned to get this completely the wrong way round? What if our obsession with the ‘news’ isn’t a sign of our cleverness, but of our foolishness?
— This article continues for ET members
