Remodelling Memory For Life's Sake

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill - Alaska

Consciousness and life are very intertwined within the human psyche.

Sometimes, in order to extend life beyond the here and now, we use what we call memory, which is our personal version of our personal history.

"I have such fond memories" of thus and such is synonymous with "I had such a great life at that time" in my history.

Since we will do almost anything to stay alive, those fond memories which compose that great life we had, that life constructed from those memories, are often remodeled like an old house that may not look as good to us as it once did.

Social scientists and historians are aware of this phenomenon, especially when it has an impact on a larger segment of society:

... historians nowadays tend to be interested in different facets of memory, especially "collective memory" and its mirror image, forgetting. Among other things, we want to know how a society or community's memory of important events changes over time. Those changes often involve forgetting what we once knew -- or thought we knew.

For example, the Yale historian, David Blight, has shown that during the first 50 years after the Civil War, the majority of white Americans largely forgot the harshness of slavery and came to remember the institution as relatively benign. A southern, romanticized version of slavery took shape thanks to a proliferation local Civil War museums and the desire of political and cultural elites to forge reconciliation between the North and the South.

(Historians and Collective Memory). And there we have it, the remodeling of memory is sometimes called "forgetting."

Perhaps like, during a remodeling project, taking a wall out between two rooms to make one large room, where two rooms existed before.

It is for that reason we review Dredd Blog posts from time to time -- to see how this is working on some historical issues in the collective American mind.

On today's date in 2009 there were three Dredd Blog posts that we will review in today's post.

First, let's tie memory to life that was displayed in the post Death Penalty For Being Late.

In that case six people were executed on death row because their lawyers forgot to file their appellate briefs on time, one being only 20 minutes late.

The judge in a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals forgot that life is more than a clock and is worth more than she had thought it was when she said "sorry, you die, you are late."

Next there was the Spill Baby Spill! post about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska (in 1989), which has not completely been cleaned up yet, and the environment is still dead there in places, woefully absent of those fond memories of a previous life before Oil-Qaeda brought its terror to the North Country.

And finally, Garbage Garbage Garbage was a Dredd Blog post which shows that life in the ocean a few hundred miles south of the Exxon Valdez spill is only a fond memory, because "civilization" has filled the "gyre" with garbage.

Since that time five or so additional garbage gyres have been found in the oceans of the world.

Out of sight is out of mind and out of our lives, so "get that out of my sight" is tantamount to "get that out of my life."

But reality does not work that way, because by forgetting we have made extinct 200 species a day since 2009 (200 x 365.242 x 4 = 292,193 extinct species since then).

That is a lot of life and memory lost to remodeled history.

Related posts: On The Memorial Daze, Searching For Lost Iraq War Memories.

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Memory life as zeros and ones a la computer memory ...

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Zeros and Ones

Zeros and ones, zeros and ones
I’ll tell you things I never told anyone
Zeros and ones, zeros and ones, zeros and ones

Zeros and ones, zeros and ones
Where does it hurt? Who unplugged the sun?
Zeros and ones, zeros and ones, zeros and ones

Free me from this tangle of technology
Feed me with the heart of your humanity
Take me, do you like what you see
Be me, only you can turn the key

Zeros and ones, zeros and ones
Fun is fun, now the pain has just begun
Zeros and ones, zeros and ones, zeros and ones

Zeros and ones, zeros and ones
In your skin there is no place to run
Zeros and ones, zeros and ones, zeros and ones

“Heal me,” said the doctor to the patient
“Shield me,” cried the lawyer to the nun
“Hold me,” said the banker to the indigent
“Behold me,” said the servant with the gun

Zeros and ones, zeros and ones
I’ll tell you things I never told anyone
Zeros and ones, zeros and ones, zeros and ones

Zeros and ones, zeros and ones
In your skin there is no place to run
Zeros and ones … zeros and ones

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