Preservation

Wealthy people have a very bad tendency to rewrite history for their own benefit.

That is a detriment to our species. History should not be written by the conquerors; it harms us all.

Since we’ve suffered from near-total media capture, all our channels have become untrustworthy. That needs to change.

First, is that we need to promote unaffiliated voices whose primary concern is the truth, rather than profits, influence, or power. There are plenty of people out there who say things that are very close to reality. They are uncorrupted by other desires.

Many are not professional writers; they are just doing their best to work on their own simple blogs. They are clear, with little intent, rational thinking, and the fragments of reality that they glimpse are closer to the truth.

There should be a place where ordinary, everyday people can see these works and know that they are genuine. They have been vetted and preserved.

But we need more than that. Far more.

These writings need commentary. They will not be perfect and are even subject to change over time, as more of reality presents itself.

So the original postings should be preserved, and the authors should be allowed to submit edits, which appear alongside them. History gets recorded in black text on a white background.

Any sort of statements that may be in doubt are rendered with yellow backgrounds. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s not necessarily right either. As well, any text that is now known to be wrong is rendered with a red background. It should serve as a warning that the author did accidentally drift away from reality, from the truth, but it does not cast judgment on why they did it.

As links, there should be all sorts of commentary about the text. You can pick a yellow sentence and explore why it is not white. That commentary too is colored based on how it is received. There will be commentary on the commentary, turtles all the way down. A nested world whose complexity reflects our own.

In that way, you can read the original works, but can follow through on any sort of issues related to how well that work actually matches reality.

Obviously, to get this requires a large network of reviewers that are willing to dig into what is said and question it objectively. Within this group, there will be a lot of discussions, which are subject to the same treatment.

As time progresses, our colouring of certain works may change. Those changes should be examinable, and the reader should be able to question them as well. Things that we used to believe were true can sometimes be put in a more evolved light as we learn more. Things that we assumed may be wrong. Reality is immutable, but our perception of it is dynamic.

In that sense, the posts are the tip of the iceberg for much larger discussions and arguments underneath. If we get a community of people dedicated to finding and preserving the truth, this repository will be a trustworthy place to not only get to know reality better, but also to monitor the changes in the way we perceive it as a species.

On top of the words from individuals, we can add significant references from other places, where restrictive laws like copyright allow. If media or institutions donate works, they would be added here as well, and as much as we can get from the public space.

There should be no limits as to the content. It is whatever people feel is important enough to talk about at the time of writing, as it will represent our focus as societies and as a species.

The contributors will be voted in to be included. If you know of people who routinely say well-crafted things that are trustworthy, you can nominate them. If they agree to contribute, the words and images from their blogs will be copied by others into this site. It will archive them for posterity.

Some people will have a small number of works included; some may have their lifetime works there.

It’s worth noting that by opening commenting and fact-checking, some people may find it to be rather brutal. But the goal is not ad hominem attacks; rather, it is to take the words themselves and assess them for being truthful. As such, the posts will not be mostly red. This site is not a place to shame people writing for ulterior motives, just one to preserve the works that we mostly agree are truthful.

The site and repository should be funded with zero strings attached. It can be individuals, governments, or even companies, but it cannot be subject to any sort of restrictions other than that the money is applied to the setup and running of the site. The community, hopefully large and objective, will decide what to pursue. Someone who funded this work can never be allowed to use that as a means of having some works altered or deleted. Once something is preserved, it must stay that way. Changing it would betray the whole purpose of the effort.

Independent government funding, at a higher level like the UN, would be best. Maybe an international institute to gather together the funding that is itself hands-off from the site and the content. As a source of truth, this knowledge is ripe for corruption, so the highest priority would be preservation of what already exists, then ensuring access to the people. Adding to it is important, but only as a third priority.

Getting back to the intent, we have a period in our history where ordinary people can satiate their curiosity about our reality and are able to put some of what they learned into the public domain. This was a rare moment when information was not controlled by wealthy or powerful people. We’ve seen this ability get created, and now we see endless attempts to stop this from continuing. But because it had value, and it led to at least some small enlightenments in our world, it is a very worthy exercise to continue with. Lies only benefit the elite; the truth benefits everyone else. Our world gets better when it is no longer hostage to the whims of madmen.