That’s what basically all of history has been, honestly. Our problem (or salvation, depending on how you look at it) will be that everyone’s random opinion is archived and will be viewable by our descendants. Previous generations had the advantage that their most asinine, pigheaded, and ludicrous ideas were filtered by history, since the more serious minds didn’t record in documents how a sizable portion of us were the absolute worst.
Comment on Knowledge is... power?
STRIKINGdebate2@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s likely that people were selectively documenting information since the beginning of time.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
PugJesus@kbin.social 11 months ago
Previous generations had the advantage that their most asinine, pigheaded, and ludicrous ideas were filtered by history, since the more serious minds didn’t record in documents how a sizable portion of us were the absolute worst.
You may be overestimating ancient writers.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Perhaps. We have few examples of the daily ramblings of ancient peoples, though, and tend to view those times through the lens of the likes of Socrates, Homer, and Shakespeare rather than their insulting, bodily explicit graffiti or their tabloid fodder.
PugJesus@kbin.social 11 months ago
Okay but have you read Shakespeare? Or, for the Roman graffiti you referenced, Plautus? Or Suetonius if you want some good tabloid fodder? They're similarly crude, and while there is a much higher level of literacy and wordplay, it's... not that much different at its core. Even that graffiti, funny enough, has an example in the other direction - there are instances of graffiti in Pompeii which demonstrate a knowledge of classical literature amongst the urban masses.
My point in the end is simply that history is written by writers, and writers are not necessarily less inisane, less gullible, or less prejudiced than the general population.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 11 months ago
Yes, but not necessarily maliciously. No one person, no matter how good they are at being objective, can possibly see and hear and experience everything. Most of what historians wrote down would have been second or third hand information at best.
I usually assume that there’s a lot of telephone-game style information passing built into any written record.