Mini-Feature: If Your Memory was Wiped, what Would You Be?
americanmind.substack.com
If all your memories were erased, what kind of person would you be? This question hits at the heart of what we are. Lurking underneath it is whether or not we purely material, and if so is our "kind of person" something we could to some degree in principle switch out and update like software? Erase our memory, erase our person? Or is there a deeper question here: without memory, can we function at all? It seems apparent that a very young child begins to ascertain universals via some form of memory as they sense the world around them. If
Did you ever see reruns of that old TV show The Prisoner? He woke up with amnesia every day. Sort of. It was an odd show.
You might want to look up that quote by Kierkegaard about the importance of forgetting.
For many years I complained that Americans had no sense of history. But in recent years I saw a good side to this. Contrast us with Europeans and others who fight wars for hundreds of years for reasons which have been lost, reasons which weren't all that great to begin with. Foreigners carry lots of baggage that Americans don't. "Get over it" strikes me as a healthy American way to live. How to do it is another matter...
"If Your Memory was Wiped, what Would You Be?"
A Democrat.
Did you ever see reruns of that old TV show The Prisoner? He woke up with amnesia every day. Sort of. It was an odd show.
You might want to look up that quote by Kierkegaard about the importance of forgetting.
For many years I complained that Americans had no sense of history. But in recent years I saw a good side to this. Contrast us with Europeans and others who fight wars for hundreds of years for reasons which have been lost, reasons which weren't all that great to begin with. Foreigners carry lots of baggage that Americans don't. "Get over it" strikes me as a healthy American way to live. How to do it is another matter...