Recurring.

Discussion of early church history (1800s) in my religion class this morning served to reassert a belief I've already articulated. The 1800s are dead to me the same way the Mayan civilization and the Ottoman caliphate are dead. They exist outside my rationale for consciousness and my image of a coherent world; history that is not my own is stories and nothing else. I can see ruins, I can touch statues and stand on old city walls and unearth shards of pottery, but I cannot believe it is real in the same way I believe my life is real. I am a product of the cultural paradigms inside which I have developed and I cannot really fathom things differently. It's like trying to think in four dimensions. Trying to comprehend history comes off as an intellectual exercise rather than a belief that it was once reality. You can make things up and tell me they were true, had been true in Spain or the Congo or Australia, and I will imagine things like I imagine when you tell me the Nabateans carved Petra and Stalin slaughtered millions.