Of all the ways in which self-knowledge may be fostered, perhaps one of the greatest is a person’s ability to discern how they view the past, at every time of life and every age; if that is so, what kind of memory can be ascribed to this girl in the second row? Maybe she has no memory except that of the previous summer, almost bereft of images – the incorporation of a missing body, a man’s.
Carr - “The Night of the Gun, “People remember what they can live with more often than how they lived.” - remembered his friend as the shooter, not himself - process of reporting and externally studying his own life
“Revisionist historians such as Howard Zinn and James Loewen have argued that American history texts have been whitewashed so thoroughly that they don’t count as history anymore. They represent ***determined forgetting***—an erasure of what is shameful from our national memory banks so that history can function as a unifying, patriotic myth.”
But what is far more extraordinary even than this is the fact that our knowledge comes and goes as well: we gain some pieces 208a of information and lose others. The implication of this is not just that we don’t remain the same for ever as far as our knowledge is concerned either, but that exactly the same thing happens to every single item of information. What we call ‘practice’, for instance, exists because knowledge leaks away. Forgetfulness is the leakage of information, and practice is the repeated renewal of vanishing information in one’s memory, which preserves the knowledge. This is what makes the knowledge appear to be the same as before. ‘“The point is that the continued existence of any mortal creature does not involve its remaining absolutely unchanging for all time—only gods do that. Instead, as its attributes pass away and age, they leave behind a new b generation of attributes which resemble the old ones. - symposium diotima 208
“Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, a deep and boundless manifoldness, O my God, and this thing is the mind, and this am I myself, ” said St. Augustine (Augustine 1853, 196)
Solomon Shrevesky - the man who remembered everything trying to forget - writing things down and trying to burn the embers, 'He went further and started to discard and then burn the slips of paper on which he had jotted down things he wished to forget. Here for the first time we have evidence of something we shall have occasion to return to later in this account: that S.'s richly figurative imagination was not sharply eut off from reality; rather, he turned to objects in the extemal world when he needed a means to work out some mental operation.
The "magical act of burning" he tried proved of no use to him. And after he had bumed a piece of paper with some numbers he wanted to forget and discovered he could still see traces of the numbers on the charred embers, he was desperate' - mind of a mnenomist - page 70
According to psychologist Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory, this happens because we don’t have access to our inner thoughts and feelings. We look to our actions to tell us who we are. This helps explain why research shows that volunteering is one of the most reliable ways to boost our happiness. Volunteers consistently see higher levels of happiness and self-esteem than non-volunteers, because when they’re done, they look at their actions and think, I’m spending my time helping people. I must be pretty generous after all! - Logan ury, making ourselves known to ourselves
Rovelli - White Holes - Memory as a product of disequilibrium - as a movement from one disequilibrium to another, more balanced state, with a trace of the former being left on the second, which is in turn, in time, erased. Once equilibrium is reached, there is no way to attest to the former disequilibrium.
Of all the ways in which self-knowledge may be fostered, perhaps one of the greatest is a person’s ability to discern how they view the past, at every time of life and every age; if that is so, what kind of memory can be ascribed to this girl in the second row? Maybe she has no memory except that of the previous summer, almost bereft of images – the incorporation of a missing body, a man’s.
WATCH MEMENTO
Susceptibility of memory - Chapter 8 - The storytelling animal
Carr - “The Night of the Gun, “People remember what they can live with more often than how they lived.” - remembered his friend as the shooter, not himself - process of reporting and externally studying his own life
“Revisionist historians such as Howard Zinn and James Loewen have argued that American history texts have been whitewashed so thoroughly that they don’t count as history anymore. They represent ***determined forgetting***—an erasure of what is shameful from our national memory banks so that history can function as a unifying, patriotic myth.”
Excerpt From
The Storytelling Animal
Jonathan Gottschall
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=0
This material may be protected by copyright.
But what is far more extraordinary even than this is the fact that our knowledge comes and goes as well: we gain some pieces 208a of information and lose others. The implication of this is not just that we don’t remain the same for ever as far as our knowledge is concerned either, but that exactly the same thing happens to every single item of information. What we call ‘practice’, for instance, exists because knowledge leaks away. Forgetfulness is the leakage of information, and practice is the repeated renewal of vanishing information in one’s memory, which preserves the knowledge. This is what makes the knowledge appear to be the same as before. ‘“The point is that the continued existence of any mortal creature does not involve its remaining absolutely unchanging for all time—only gods do that. Instead, as its attributes pass away and age, they leave behind a new b generation of attributes which resemble the old ones. - symposium diotima 208
“Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, a deep and boundless manifoldness, O my God, and this thing is the mind, and this am I myself, ” said St. Augustine (Augustine 1853, 196)
Solomon Shrevesky - the man who remembered everything trying to forget - writing things down and trying to burn the embers, 'He went further and started to discard and then burn the slips of paper on which he had jotted down things he wished to forget. Here for the first time we have evidence of something we shall have occasion to return to later in this account: that S.'s richly figurative imagination was not sharply eut off from reality; rather, he turned to objects in the extemal world when he needed a means to work out some mental operation.
The "magical act of burning" he tried proved of no use to him. And after he had bumed a piece of paper with some numbers he wanted to forget and discovered he could still see traces of the numbers on the charred embers, he was desperate' - mind of a mnenomist - page 70
According to psychologist Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory, this happens because we don’t have access to our inner thoughts and feelings. We look to our actions to tell us who we are. This helps explain why research shows that volunteering is one of the most reliable ways to boost our happiness. Volunteers consistently see higher levels of happiness and self-esteem than non-volunteers, because when they’re done, they look at their actions and think, I’m spending my time helping people. I must be pretty generous after all! - Logan ury, making ourselves known to ourselves
Rovelli - White Holes - Memory as a product of disequilibrium - as a movement from one disequilibrium to another, more balanced state, with a trace of the former being left on the second, which is in turn, in time, erased. Once equilibrium is reached, there is no way to attest to the former disequilibrium.
The information stored in every moment comes from the information implicit in past disequilibrium