Here's what I'm thinking

My main issue is that (E) says the implication "distorts history." My immediate reaction was: You can't distort history. History is what happened, it's unchangeable. I didn't choose E because it seemed like a trap answer where the right answer would say "distorts historical awareness".

But I think I finally figured out how the LSAT is using the word. It's like a funhouse mirror. A mirror "distorts my face" not by breaking my nose, but by misrepresenting it.

So, for the conclusion ("people's awareness is distorted") to be true, the narrative has to act like that funhouse mirror. It must misrepresent reality. If the implication didn't distort history (if a few heroes actually did shape everything), then the narrative would be accurate, and people's historical awareness about the few heroes shaping history would be correct.

So (E) is the necessary assumption because it confirms the narrative is "lying" about the facts. If it weren't lying, people's awareness wouldn't be distorted.

That's why E has to say "history" instead of "historical awareness".

@DeirdreWillgohs I've been thinking about this for the past 30 minutes and still just can't wrap my head around the idea of historical awareness and history being synonymous.

Is is possible that they are still distinct in this question, but that the answer choice (E) makes a necessary connection between history and historical awareness by using the former term? Basically, for the conclusion "people's awareness is distorted" to be true, then history has to actually NOT be that way. If the implication didn't distort history (if a few heroes actually did shape everything in history), then people's awareness wouldn't be distorted- it would be correct. In this scenario, "distort" wouldn't mean "physically change", it means "to give a misleading or false account of". Saying that the narrative distorts history is just saying that it gives a false impression of history. When we have this information, we can conclude that popular historical awareness is distorted because of this narrative (which effectively connects conclusion and premise).

So (E) could be saying not that awareness of history = history, but that the narrative's failure to capture history is the cause of our distorted awareness.

I'm digging into this because normally different language like this is a huge trap. We see it in (A) with the shift from "view that there have been only a few..." vs "narratives implying... shaped all of history." Since the LSAT is usually so strict about term shifts, I really want to nail down why this specific shift is allowed. Any chance this way of thinking about it holds?

@yangevan2 I was also feeling frustrated by this and missed it the first time going through. It seems like E isn't necessarily outright wrong, but that A is a better choice...

E says that the private concept permits individuals to sell property. True? Yes. And also it says that the collective concept does not. True? We're unsure. The passage says that they can't sell their ownership of collective property, not that the group can't sell an item if they decide on it together.

Because we're not sure, I think it doesn't satisfy the prompt to prove that collective and private ownership do NOT differ in this way. We just don't know if they do or don't.

However, AC A is explicitly stated in the passage as NOT TRUE. "Canadian courts usually base decisions about ownership on a concept of private property, under which all forms of property are capable of being owned by individuals or by groups functioning legally as individuals." Meaning, groups can own property.

So BLF, I think that E is wrong only because we don't know for sure that they don't differ. Meanwhile, A is obviously a false statement based on the passage.

@anna_lucas1 although, does it technically say that the person finished the job? I think we assume so but I feel like A makes that a big part of the reason its morally wrong, instead of the focus being on the fact that they had agreed on no compensation if he did a bad job