Time denial, rooted in a very human combination of pride and existential dread, is perhaps the most common and forgivable form of what might be called chronophobia.

But there are other, more toxic varieties that work together with the less harmful kind to create a prevalent, stubborn, and dangerous temporal illiteracy in our society.

We in the twenty-first century would be shocked if an educated adult were unable to identify the continents on a world map, yet we are quite comfortable with widespread ignorance about anything but the most superficial highlights from the planet's long history: perhaps the Bering Strait, dinosaurs, or Pangaea.

Most humans have no sense of temporal proportion ─ the durations of the great chapters in Earth's history, the rates of change during previous intervals of environmental instability, the intrinsic timescales of "natural capital" like groundwater systems.

As a species, we have a childlike disinterest and partial disbelief in the time before our appearance on Earth.

With no appetite for stories lacking humans, many people simply can't be bothered with natural history.