Hieroglyphs, Tablets, Scrolls, and Books. Four things that have one thing in common, documentation. As a software engineer, we are taught to document our work (although very few of us actually do). The documentation is there for a few reasons, but the primary purpose is to explain how something works or what was the goal that it was meant to achieve. When we leave out documentation, it's left up to the next engineer to attempt to decipher and determine their own take of the goal and/or purpose that was intended. Sometimes, that gets misinterpreted, and the new engineer discards the code and replaces it with what they think was actually intended. This happens more often than not and over time, the code base becomes a kluge.
History is full of "kluges" and is also said to be "written by the victors". Without going into specific examples (there are thousands of them), we all know that historians document an event, and it is generally swayed toward one way or another. It is very rarely non-biased and usually opinionated. During the Middle Ages, your goal was to appease the king. Any document (official or not) or story regarding an event usually included praise for the king or stating how he was the one responsible for the victory of this or that. The result is an incomplete (or false even) embellishment of the truth. In my book, we call that deceit.
Going to cut this thought short today and get right to the point. Where do we draw the line? What do we believe? Who or what can we trust? Since the dawn of the internet, we are bombarded with information overload and are expected to accept what we read with a grain of salt since there is no "truth" authority. Social media and so-called "news" sites inundate us with headlines crafted to draw our attention and bend our "ear". Over the last decade, the information contained in these pieces or posts is generally misleading. Since I have this platform, I can post articles here saying that I was the queen of Egypt in 339 BCE. Well, that's not true because first, Egypt doesn't have kings/queens (or at least they don't call them kings or queens), they call them pharaohs. Second, if you look at "reputable" sources, we know that in 339 BCE, Artaxerxes III was the pharaoh in Egypt (referenced here, and oh my do we need to discuss Egypt). My point being, anyone has the ability and access to post things on the internet and with enough resources, can "buy" reputation so that their word is taken as gospel.
I was going to end this by making the point that today's youth are bombarded with "the truth" and anyone can make any claim and that trend is growing since there are no consequences. With this model, more and more people are becoming less truthful and are filling the minds of our next generation with ideas that have the potential to destroy our modern civilized society as we know it. So, what do we do? How do we combat this trend and correct the measures taken to deceive the next "greatest generation"? It's easy! It starts with you. It's your responsibility to ensure that your children (and any child that engages with your children) focus on telling the truth no matter the cost. Sometimes, the truth hurts, but that pain is worth it in the long run.