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Elucidation is universally available but the revelations I am seeking are clustered together in remote regions of the media, the interweb and or already locked deep within my subconscious. It has been interesting trying to bring some from the netherworld back to my conscious world.
Last nite while I was in bed on the threshold of my dream state I was reading National Geographic, one of my favorite magazines. I am constantly puzzled by how some their articles relate to geography but do not question the wisdom of the editor. The particular article that I was reading is conveniently located at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/11/memory/foer-text.html.
In the days before Guttenberg memory was held in extreme esteem. People who were most likely geniuses in the first place were gauged brilliant by their ability to remember important and mundane information. Before the advent of the printing press and books memory was a precious asset.
From the article: “… the art of memory was codified with an extensive set of rules and instructions by the likes of Cicero and Quintilian and in countless medieval memory treatises. Students were taught not only what to remember but also techniques for how to remember it. In fact, there are long traditions of memory training in many cultures. The Jewish Talmud, embedded with mnemonics—techniques for preserving memories—was passed down orally for centuries. Koranic memorization is still considered a supreme achievement among devout Muslims. Traditional West African griots and South Slavic bards recount colossal epics entirely from memory.”
“But over the past millennium, many of us have undergone a profound shift. We've gradually replaced our internal memory with what psychologists refer to as external memory, a vast superstructure of technological crutches that we've invented so that we don't have to store information in our brains. We've gone, you might say, from remembering everything to remembering awfully little. We have photographs to record our experiences, calendars to keep track of our schedules, books (and now the Internet) to store our collective knowledge, and Post-it notes for our scribbles. What have the implications of this outsourcing of memory been for ourselves and for our society? Has something been lost?”
From my point of view the answer to the last question is a most definite yes! And the answer to the initial question is yet to be seen although I feel more and more a victim of those implications. There is no longer a nun standing over me with a meter stick demanding that I recite the multiplication tables or the homework assignment that I was to commit to memory. Father Fiore is not ready to smack me in the back of the head because I cannot recall the entirety of Caesar that we needed to know for the test.
I truly have become a victim of my memory crutches that more and more frequently are not adequate… those that I and the majority of society have implemented as a substitution for the real thing. Much of my memory is still stored in my computer despite my best attempts to retrieve it and store it properly.
Unlike ‘AJ’ in the article I do not seek to have a perfect memory of my entire past even though it might be entirely within my reach as believed by Florida State University Psychology professor K. Anders Ericsson. Again from that article: “Remembering everything is both maddening and lonely for AJ. ‘I remember good, which is very comforting. But I also remember bad—and every bad choice,’ she says. ‘And I really don't give myself a break. There are all these forks in the road, moments you have to make a choice, and then it's ten years later, and I'm still beating myself up over them. I don't forgive myself for a lot of things. Your memory is the way it is to protect you. I feel like it just hasn't protected me. I would love just for five minutes to be a simple person and not have all this stuff in my head. "Most people have called what I have a gift,’ AJ says, ‘but I call it a burden.’”
I intend to come back to this article again. Now, what I feel needs focusing on is how memory tools are not specifically taught as part of our educational system. Surely little aids to memory are shared by mentors, parent and teachers to students. There seems to be a dearth of how they fit into the big picture for surely memory is more than just a very detailed picture of our experiences.
Since old age, dementia and possibly Alzheimer's disease could affect us all maybe it is not a magic chemical cure or even ginkgo biloba that we should be searching for and relying upon. Could mental memory workouts started at a very young age and continued through life be as or more successful in staving off loss of memory or the inevitable onset of the inability to remember as well as we used to? Instead of relying on science to take up the slack and find the right combination of molecules to ingest couldn’t we just seek out the process of remembering and memory? Instead of trying to reverse the decline would sidestepping the need for chemicals be even better?
Throughout the history of mankind it seems that it is always the easiest way out that is sought as the primary solution to a problem instead of a structured and well designed strategy to totally avoid the problem instead. In medicine, the intervention after the fact receives far more attention and research dollars than the prevention model.
I am hoping in my own case it is not too late for intervention of memory calisthenics to be useful and/or successful. I hope I can remember some of the tricks the nuns tried to teach me to remember because I am not looking forward to daily molecular supplements being added to my medicine cabinet and alimentary tract.
DakotaDawg recommends (and I think I remember the article well enough to concur) that all concerned visit the URL listed above and read it. In case medical intervention becomes necessary and I act even more like a drooling idiot please point me in the right direction and hand me the correct bottle of pills.
I should have paid better attention to Cicero in high school… all I remember of my Latin is "Veni, vidi, vici.” , “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.” and “Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae.” Like Caesar, Vera Zvonareva professes the same except the “Vini, vidi, vici.” part.
© steven d philbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 09/13/2010
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