Pseudohistory

I am currently reading about world history.  I am currently reading A History of the World by Andrew Marr.  The previous read was What Happened in Prehistory by Peter Neal Peregrine.  My next book will be History of the World from 20th to 21st Century by J. A. S. Grenville.

I came across a topic which I wanted to see about what Youtube had for documentaries about it.  During the search, I located a video Things archaeologists won't touch.  The video was of a "lecture" by a guy who was positing that we had far more advanced beings on earth than archaeologists are willing to admit.  The presenter showed a number of things with alternative explanations which I already knew were debunked.  But one thing which I saw was reminiscent of The Indiana Jones' Crystal Skull movie.  The presenter showed a photograph of a collection of elongated skulls.  That sparked my interest.  I did not think much of it when the Indiana Jones movie portrayed it since all of the Indiana Jones movies take huge liberties with the portrayal of archaeology.  But I wanted to find out what the supposedly real elongated skulls were about.

So I googled elongated skulls.  In addition to Snopes' page about it, a Wikipedia article and other more scholarly resources came up for "artificial cranial deformation".  It turns out that the skulls in the Youtube presentation showed examples of something still being done in modern times.  The elongated skulls occur when infants' heads are wrapped tightly or otherwise bound.  There are even living examples of this.

So here is another person who is promoting pseudohistory where more accurate history is readily available.  I would think that the readily available access to scholarly information would lessen the amount of bogus portrayals of history.  But pseudoscience is clearly still a thing.  This guy was even going so far as to condemn archaeologists for their more careful approaches to interpreting evidence.

The topic about elongated sculls is a case where there is a crossfire of misinformation.  We have a mainstream and other movies which portray the elongated skulls as aliens.  A casual Youtube search for some people might then land them on the "Things archaeologists won't touch" video.  Then some of these people will quote the guy in the video as if he is supplying factual information.

This reinforces my negative view of the "creative licence" often taken regarding historical accuracy in movies and TV.  The Crystal Skull movie basically took an existing fake history and expanded it into a full movie.  This, in turn, can influence some people to do a casual search which lands them on the pseudohistorical articles.  Then the fakery is perpetuated.

Speaking of historical fakery, Some of the replies to the debunking comments to the aforementioned "lecture" referenced the Starchild skull.  Some people have latched onto that as further proof of aliens.  But it doesn't take much research to location tests done on the skull and a well documented medical condition which even has modern photographs of children with skulls like the Starchild skull.

Alternate Facts

A member of Trump's staff went on a national news program and discussed what she claimed were alternate facts.  To the host's credit, he challenged her definition of alternate facts.  Trump and others are increasingly mixing things up regarding the definition of a fact or truth.  In this case, it was about the size of the Inauguration  crowd.  Here's my take.  The facts of an event are what really happened.  The event's impact on people may be relative and sometimes even peoples' impact on an event.  And peoples' perception of the events may vary.  But what really happened doesn't have alternatives.  The alternatives are people's interpretations and perceptions of the facts.  A goal is to get the interpretations and perceptions in line with actual facts.  But that doesn't appear to be Trump's goal.

In Trump's case, he wants the facts of things to match his perception of reality. Period.  It doesn't matter what really happened.  His version is the only acceptable version of facts which others can accept.

Star Wars Inspired Rebellion Against Bad Fiction

The Star Wars to which my title refers is The Force Awakens.  Although the original 3 movies have their physics and character flaws, I liked the stories well enough to let them go.  I can even watch the prequels without too many cringes, although they compound physics issues with very flawed personality portrayals.

But The Force Awakens went too far.  It had more physics issues, more personality issues, rehashed plot points of the previous movies.  The powers that be decided to oversimplify the future of the series by doing a violent reset. One of the key figures in the new movies did a similar thing with Star Trek.  I am hard pressed to decide which is the worse reset.  I do not want to go into details regarding the issues with the new directions of these 2 series.  There is plenty said on IMDB and YouTube.  I am actually endeavoring to minimize my memory of those resets.  In Star Trek's case, I rewatched and reread my Star Trek collection.  I wasn't as big of a Star Wars fan so I only had the 6 movies and a couple of books.  So I was willing to watch The Force Awakens even after it was disclosed that it would go into an entirely different direction than the Expanded Universe of the books.  But my opinion of SW: TFA was low enough where I decided to get a bunch of the old stories to overwrite what I watched.

Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I am not fanatical about maintaining continuity with what has been previously written or filmed. One of the things which religion taught me is to not take fiction too seriously.

In some ways, the bad fiction of the new Star Trek and Star Wars has similarities with how filmmakers treat source material in general.  I am OK with films which stray from the story in the source material if the fictional story is better or the historical events more accurate. But too many movies with differing story lines have also been inferior.  To me, this actually becomes an ethical issue when portraying historical events.  Too many people accept the fictional portrayals of history, sometimes even about important events.  Even politicians are using this tendency.  Some politicians get elected because of their fictions.

But there are problems with even some original stories.  Yet even people who agree with me on some of these criticisms will still watch shoddy stories because of attractive visuals or exciting action sequences.  But I've had enough of crappy stories or bad historical portrayals.  My feelings have been further reinforced by the election of Donald Trump for U.S. President.  He made almost an art form out of false statements and excessive use of adjectives and adverbs over substance.  Yet enough people bought what he was saying for him to win the electoral vote.  Fuck, even some liberals voted for him.

Too many people believe things based on the tone of someone's voice or other superficial elements.  Too many people believe what's written because it feels a certain way.  Too many people accept bad fiction masquerading as history.  And there are simply too many bad stories in general.

But there is also a lot of good stuff.  And there can be more if we force the powers that be to do better.  I call for a rebellion against the dark forces used by bad storytellers and pseudohistory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/02/yes-donald-trump-lies-a-lot-and-news-organizations-should-say-so/?utm_term=.398a9ddc6d44