This ``nonsense," he says, reflects ``the difficulty intellectuals habitually have in distinguishing between the state of their minds and the state of the world." And it reflects what has been called ``the parochialism of the present," which Harries says is ``a condition resulting from a combination of ignorance of history and an egotistical insistence on exaggerating the importance of events that more or less directly involve oneself. I have been looking for the expression of these ideas in words and here they are.
I have noticed that the educated ignorant (yes, it is possible) invariably take it as a given that anything they don't know anything useful about is not only unimportant but irrelevant.
And tend to be quite vocal about it.
But then, that is the primary characteristic of ignorance.
See #5.