LIAM CHAI

Every time there is a war, there are winners and losers. Humanity’s history is filled with war after war, and each time we see the destruction of knowledge and culture.

• in 48 BC, burning of the Great Library of Alexandria
• In 1193, Nalanda University in India destroyed by Turkic Muslims
• The dissolution of monastic libraries across England in 1530 by Henry VIII.
• In WW2, the Japanese destroying libraries of the Chinese Universities Tsing Hua, Nan Kai, Tien Chin, He Pei and numerous others.
• The Khmer Rouge in 1976 destroying the National Library of Cambodia.

History is not fixed. It changes and arises relative to the one seeking to learn it. It arises in dependence upon who the victor is. Even today history is being written and rewritten, like in India where textbooks are being rewritten to change caste history.

What actually happened in the past? There is an answer to this question, but it is very hard to answer, if even possible. The inability to answer this question is a very big problem. If victors are the ones who write history, what do we not know about history?

For example I came across this video of a different version of the Allies in WW2, where the Japanese emperor made a deal with the U.S. government to protect the Japanese royal family and thousands of Japanese war criminals in return for a share of the over 100 billion dollars in gold, jewels, and other commodities that the Japanese had looted during the war. Conveniently this bit of history is not written in modern history textbooks because it paints the Allies, the victors, in a bad light.

Living in the UK, when I see a world map, the UK is in the centre. Maps in the US, the US is in the centre. Maps in China, China is in the centre.

A Universal Source of Truth

What happens to history when history cannot be changed or altered?

When a new power takes over a country, they begin writing history in their favour. When another power takes over, they erase the previous history and write history in their favour.

What happens when every time such a rewriting takes place, there is a record of it?

Where everything that ever takes place in the world is logged and immutably stored. Where history cannot be deleted by the victors. They will be able to write their own version of it, but the previous records cannot be burned or deleted by them.

What happens when crucially important data, like climate data, can never be fudged or changed by someone with their own agendas?

If we had an immutable record of things, wouldn’t the true version of history be much easier to know?

Would we still have a crisis in sensemaking?