Collective memory and accurate record-keeping are as vital to groups as to individuals

Evidence

The group, no less than the individual, needs some form of collective memory and record. Even running a business or selling a commodity requires the keeping of records, preferably accurate. A balance-sheet, for example, is a historical narrative. If it is missing or inaccurate, the enterprise faces grave dangers; if it is fraudulent, those dangers include indictment. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1821

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the knowledge-management framing of this entire pipeline — why custodianship of records and memory matters as an institutional function. — connects to: A nation sustains itself through shared memory plus present-day will to live together — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 65
• SEED: Angle: ‘A balance-sheet is a historical narrative’ — the idea that accounting is a genre of historiography, and corporate fraud is a form of historical falsification.