And no, I am not hypocritically...

And no, I am not hypocritically tilting at my own “disturbing new trend”. In 1777 David Hume wrote, “The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature”. A century before him, Thomas Hobbes identified its source: “Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead”. People also blame the present out of historical ignorance and statistical illiteracy, and because they mistake changes in themselves—the responsibilities of adulthood, the vigilance of parenthood, the diminishments of ageing—with changes in the world.