I don’t mean what are the biological processes that constitute life. Rather, I mean, what is the essence of life in the philosophical sense? For instance, I do not mean breathing to exchange oxygen so much as I mean consuming information so as to satisfy vague and ambiguous desire.
Originally, I made this site because — I thought — it would be useful to organize a chronology of history, but as I previously mentioned, that was subverted fairly quickly. Now, I still have the initial desire, but I am less clear regarding how to express it. Whereas chronology may be helpful in some circumstances, you can easily convince me that, like William Gibson wrote, “the future” is not evenly distributed. I guess, I see now, it was naïve of me to think I would be able to simply establish an A then B then C type of narrative of history.
I think about a line from the movie “The Secret” often. I forget the exact wording, but it’s something like, “if you were born today, what would you want to be taught?” I guarantee that’s wrong, but the essence is right. I approach this site from the standpoint being helpful to the hypothetical future people, and it’s hard to do that when so much information is of dubious lineage.
What is really known? I don’t mean that in a solipsistic way. Rather, a lot of information right now at this moment is manipulated in order to facilitate certain narratives. I fully suspect that has happened at other times throughout history and that some fictitious narratives have survived, particularly when there was no real narrative that needed to be debunked for some other reason.
Going back to the title, it seems like American history basically began in the late 19th century and that certain information (speed of light, speed of sound, measurements of time and distance) was always inherent. This obviously is incorrect, but it seems true. Realistically, I am probably simply simply speaking as a descendent of European immigrants. I know the American south was willing to die for the right to own humans as slaves, and though that doesn’t really fit into my overall perception of history, I fully suspect it’s real. Moreover, I fully believe many many many people lived and died as slaves throughout Earth history. I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson on a video recently, and he seemed to suggest that some white (pink) people seemed to advocate for an alternate ancient history because they had a view informed by white supremacy. I sincerely hope I’m not doing that. Rather, I simply don’t trust humans to keep good records or to draw comprehensive conclusions from things like radio telescopes.