On Unintended Consequence of a Faulty Memory

Commentary, Life Lessons Comments (2)

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” – Abraham Lincoln

Humans have short memories but long remembrances….  by that we are able to “move on” from tragic circumstances (almost always) but because of that lack of a complete memory, we also lose the will to provide a solution when the immediacy of the danger is gone. Not having the ability to recall the problem in perfect detail also helps with the eventual nightmares.   All good things then.

It has been suggested that our patchwork memory is a result of actual genetic selection.   We don’t remember every single detail, nor all parts of lives because while  skill like perfect memory would be useful in modern day, but as I stated,  kinda useless when 200 days go by looking the same as it was in the far past.  

The problem is that we forget all too well. While the ability to forget a certain trauma or pain is beneficial, we also forget tragedies  and slights.  This, I would argue enables us to move on.   But the problem is we start to rewrite the memories and interpret them as we see fit.  Our brains lie to us.  Levee’s fail? Let’s fix them now. 2 years later we ask: “why do we need to fix the levee?  That flood was a one time deal.”     Remember the ethic cleansing of Rwanda.., Pol Pott? what about Stalin and Hitler?  All things we “know” happened, but the “it’s so long ago.” syndrome insulates us.   We can’t believe these things happened, yet, they happen over and over and over.   We forget history, and are doomed to repeat it.

Time heals all wounds, because we forget, and forgetting is good we know, yet, as I look around, I think i now know part of the reasons why humans like to default for the second best.., they have forgotten why they wanted top rate equipment or information, technology or skill.

There are others reasons not to have perfect recall. Most of our lives are lots of bad, sprinkled with small amounts of good.  This is true for soldiers.  If you know anyone with post traumatic stress, or have heard of it, the genetic selection for losing the exact memory of what happened to you becomes clear, and it is rather a god send.  Look at it from 30,000 BC.: Get your friend eaten by a bear and all you need to remember is friend dead, bear bad. You defiantly don’t want to remember, in perfect clarity how they were mauled, how they were rended, every path you took to run away and left them, etc.  The Neurologica Blog Also agrees.

We are able to forgive, because we can forget; and because we forget we forget we did not want follow thru or sometimes we are to blame, (it cost too much, it may never happened again, waste of time and resources);  We can forgive others who allowed the same things to happen to us again and again. (conveniently enough we have forgotten we didn’t want modifications to laws, or ground or some safety device.)  Worse yet, because we also can’t remember we were the ones that stopped progress we end up  rechecking and checking everything up to the point of a failure of institutional memory, and end up looking for someone , something to blame for it.  This is how a genetic aberration leads up to a social one.

We forget because it’s good for us as social creatures, and it helps us also forgot our failures when we screw up, but we presently want some accountability for mistakes, because we have forgotten that we are not perfect either and we sometimes don’t forgive others who forget either.  In the end, we are really just trusting in a kind of faith; faith that we are not getting our memories totally wrong.

I invite you to do some more reading. Not being a doctor myself, take a look at a Doctor explaining it.

OceansOfThought @ June 30, 2008