This is because recollection is an act of inference, and inference, like its twin- deliberation- is unique to humans. I turned to Aristotle and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.Īristotle makes an odd distinction- between memory and recollection.Īll animals have memory, though not all recollect. The Problem Of Induction- there’s a better way to explain this, and you should try it.)īut I am more interested in memory in a broader sense of consciously resurrecting a moment from the past. we cannot entertain the possibility, at least philosophically, that every time you throw a bowl, it shatters. (David Hume philosophizes this more rigorously, and in one of the most mind-numbing moments of my undergrad when I read how he essentially argues that we cannot come to any conclusions about the unobserved simply on the basis of past experiences i.e. Because of a memory I have of seeing a dropped bowl shattering, I don’t drop bowls again. Like if I drop a bowl (Event) and it shatters (Consequence), I acquire a memory of it such that the Event will always be linked to its Consequence. Of course there are immediate consequences. In other words, what is the evolutionary purpose of memory? But I ask myself what good does it do them to remember so much when they can’t change a thing. You said cows recognize people who have hurt them in the past. But one of the cooler quotes from the book is about cows. WWVGS - What would Van Gogh say?Įlif Shafak in her sweet, unsubtle book 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World called memory like the trail of a drunken man- no one knows where the next step lies. And in 2015, a college student bought a 2$ recreation of Starry Nights off Amazon to decorate a wall that he felt too un-blue. The poor man who, in a delirium, sliced his ears off as a jealous gift to a sex-worker his mentor frequented, sold only 1 painting in his entire lifetime, The Red Vineyard At Arles (1888). The best example of this is Van Gogh himself. It’s ridiculous noh? We all harbour intentions to be great and to be remembered, but perhaps we forget that to be remembered we don’t need to be great, and to be great, we don’t need to be memorable. My reply to that would be the following, very depressing statement: People and things are remembered not because they are great, but just because they happen to, by chance, slip through the hands of oblivion and time, and land a spot in the present. The problem with this statement is it gives memory too much credit- as if there’s a sieve in my brain that filters out the great things that need to be remembered from the ones that don’t. The answer I have internalized, but am not convinced of, is the following - if you are meant to remember it, it will be remembered, and if you are meant to only remember how it made you feel, then that’s what you will remember. What the fuck was the point of The Daffodils?) Great! But I don’t remember poetry from high school- only how it made me feel. This question feels more immediate for film reviewers- when you watch a movie, how do you both relish and remember? When I asked critic Baradwaj Rangan this he infuriatingly told me that he just remembers it, the way he remembers poetry from High School. But the thing is, we can’t live our lives only reading and watching romantic comedies. So now you don’t have to worry about remembering anything for the future, because really, there isn’t much here. I suggested she read Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, an absolute babe of a book filled with romance, comedy, an American election, and a young British prince giving and receiving oral sex, that doesn’t lend itself to profundity. If we don’t remember what we read, what we learn, what is the point of reading, and learning? Last week, speaking to a friend, she tells me how reading is now stressful, because you have to both relish it in the present, and preserve it for the future.
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