I have a strong hypothesis that ‘all history is fiction’.
Atleast the kind of history which relies upon people to pass on the ‘records’ of what happened, either through oral or written form. Humans are emotional. So I am definitely not arguing the existence of dinosaurs.
The starting point for what I consider history is human memory. And human memory is unreliable.
Humans memory is not the way a computer stores record, precise and without bias. Humans retrieve memory in a contextual manner where the ongoing emotions colour the retrieved memory, of course the colouring varies.
Consider this thought experiment. Why is nostalgia so warm, happy and uplifting? even though we might have had some hard time but we still feel good to reminisce? It is because we, in the present, feel safe, and when we retrieve memories from a point of safety, they only bring out nice, warm feelings.
Now going back to history. Whenever I read about recorded history, and about what a certain historic figure was like and how a certain region in the world was like, and how a certain historic story unfolded, I cannot help but wonder the sanctity of those records. I mean, it was certainly some human historian who recorded all these episodes, either writing down on their own or passing on to others as stories. Chinese whispers, anyone ?
What are the chances that those stories went on the become myths and went through numerous revisions ? I would say it is highly likely.
But why does this matter?
I guess it matters so we do not take some parts of our history too seriously and ruin our present, or start fighting with each and trying to one-upping each other by buying into this history.
Who knows what really happened, how a certain personality really was, how certain people were, etc and honestly we will never know. What we can truly know is the present, and that is becoming history every passing second.
On life and time 