What We Can Know

by Ian McEwan

At this early stage, the students are not convinced. They cannot believe that pre-Inundation people of a mere century ago were at all like themselves. Those ancients were ignorant, squalid and destructive louts. As one of the brighter students pointed out, surely they could have done something other than grow their economies and wage wars. Behind this, though never stated, is the notion that they deserved the mega-deaths they brought upon themselves. Most of our kids are well into their second year before they begin to accept that the men, women and children of the medium to distant past were once as real to themselves as we are. Until then, the students make little distinction between the tenth and twentieth centuries, between the Thirty Years War and the Third Sino-American War. Or between Mark Antony and Mark Twain.