What If History is Made Believe

One particular post caught my interest. After reading his post, I decided to take a hit at it to express my point of view on history. According to Warren Tan’s post about “Mystory,” he mentioned, “we can really only know for a fact what we see through our own experience.” But I feel that even if you do experience something, how can you really conclude if that something is a fact? I mean nothing is definite. For instance, I’ve taken an Abnormal Psychology course, and have learned many disorders that gives people illusions and wild imaginations that only they experience. In this case, can we say that people with disorders experience things that are real or factual? Also, certain drugs can alter people’s state of mind. So what if during the time of writing history or actually experiencing certain events in history, people are on drugs? Wouldn’t that change their perspective on things and in turn give false information that could have been added to our history? How can one really say what people see or hear or experience is indeed a fact? On the other hand, I agree that people tend to believe in things that they want to hear rather than things they do not. Most people would believe in things that they find interesting or curious about. Personally, I wouldn’t believe in something at first, but then at the same time, I would feel like, “hey you never know, anything is possible and start to think it may be true and thus start to believe in it. It’s like my curiosity takes over and then self fulfilling prophecy happens.

In addition, it is sad that we can only base our information on science with forming theories and then testing it or disproving it. It would be more convenient if we can get our information on history from another source. Maybe a higher power or even a really smart computer that can answer just about anything. But since those things do not exist or so we believe, we would have to stick to science and try to disprove theories. But even if we can disprove something, it doesn’t mean it is true because we cannot prove if things are true. This is what I learned in some psychology courses, that we cannot prove things; we only can disprove them. Thus, can one really say that the sun rises every morning and sets at night? There is no way to prove that this is true. Most of us just assume this is true because it seems to happen that way since the existence of humans. However, one cannot say that it is true simply because it had happened in the past. What happens in the future is another thing. What if one day, the sun does not rise and set like it normally does? So we can’t really conclude on that because we would not live long enough to find out. But then again, that reminds me of a phenomenon called, "the Midnight sun," (also see above image) where the sun does not rise and set everyday. But again, even in the midnight sun's phenomenon, we cannot conclude that this event happens all the time. However, we can say that it does happen. While the scientific method seems to be reliable, we cannot prove if something is in fact true. Would there ever be an alternative way in finding out the facts of history that would give us 100% accuracy? Conversely, wouldn’t it be amazing if there was some sort of higher power we can turn to for answers about our history? And what if that higher power really exist and is controlling our history and making us believe in certain things? But that would just be scary!

Moreover, another point in the post discussed, “buying a used car and not knowing if the facts written about the car is true or not,” reminded me of the movie, “Matilda.” This movie is about a little girl with powers and her dad is a mechanic, fixes old cars and is also a salesman who resells them with a really high price. The interesting thing is that he turns back the mileage on the cars and thus increases the value instantly. This particular scene in the movie made me think and question the real value of used cars. I mean it is a movie, but there are people who deceive others and disclose false information on used cars in order to sell. This made me shiver and wonder if there is a trusting place to buy a used car? Sometimes, it is scary to not know the “facts” about the things that we end up purchasing.

Nevertheless, I really enjoy reading this post because it makes me think, “what if everything in history is not true? Then what? It’s kind of crazy to really think about this and the effect it would really have on many people. I mean if everything recorded in history is false, then the majority of us would really start to freak out and wonder if the world we are living in is a safe and trusty place to live in. But then again you never know because anything is possible! Our history can be all true or it can be merely made believe. But that is something we may never find the answer to.