Wednesday, July 26, 2017

The Pros and Cons of using Wikipedia as a reference site

The good thing about Wikipedia is that it is there with something on almost every single subject that you can imagine. And anyone who wants to can update it any day they want to also.

This second statement is both good and bad because "Anyone" can change a site to be anything anytime. However, 1000 other anyones can also keep changing this site to anything they want too.

So, Wikipedia then becomes (majority rule) which is a little like "His Story" or history.

History isn't necessary true either. You notice history is written by the victors always. The people who lost the wars were killed or raped or both, their children were killed or raped or both and so the losers of conflicts were often just tortured and made fun of until they died horribly.

However, their stories were never told again because often even their children were killed or raped too. So, beyond about 1900 or before there is literally nothing you can be 100% sure of.

On top of this I believe that time and space is constantly being altered from the past, present and future every moment. So, history itself is constantly changing too despite what most people believe to the contrary.

So, what is the point of reporting the truth as we see it then?

My memories are real. your memories are real. your family's memories are real. maybe that's all we have to make sense of our lives in every moment. So, I believe we need to hang onto our memories and share them with our relatives and friends as long as we can. Because only in our memories are we still alive somehow. It's how we communicate with each other by sharing our stories (even though I still believe the past, present and future will always be changing every moment and every day.)

It's sort of like when people talk about the 1960s when they were not even there. Every year the story becomes more like a caricature rather than what it was actually like to live through it.

There was no internet then, there were not even DVRS or VCRS and barely any phone communication because outside of your city phone calls weren't free. So, the world was an entirely different place on every single level then. Communication is likely the biggest difference now worldwide.

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