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In December last year, I changed my last name. Or rather, I ‘augmented’ it, by including my mother’s surname before my father’s—the latter, given to me at birth by default: legal, cultural, political, moral, and practical default.

Whenever we do things by default, there’s also a reason to be vigilant. In the unexamined, injustices can thrive. Of course, unexamined habits are useful and indeed necessary. But it doesn’t hurt to bring them to our attention from time to time. If they’re good, they can slip back into what we do not question.

The Russian war on Ukraine woke us up to the fact that most of us are historically illiterate about most of the world, most of the time. Was Ukraine a creation of Lenin, as Mr Putin would have it? As one commentator put it, with an average audience you can easily string together a narrative, strew in some correct historical facts, leave out others just as correct and salient, and have everyone nodding at your profound expertise. My philosophical question is, what do we want to do with history? Can we use it as a force for the good and avoid the toxic uses?