Speak, Memory
“There
is, it seems, no mechanism in the mind or the brain for ensuring the truth, or
at least the veridical character, of our recollections. We have no direct
access to historical truth, and what we feel or assert to be true depends as
much on our imagination as our senses. There is no way by which the events of
the world can be directly transmitted or recorded in our brains; they are
experienced and constructed in a highly subjective way, which is different in
every individual to begin with, and differently reinterpreted or re-experienced
whenever they are recollected. (The neuroscientist Gerald M. Edelman often
speaks of perceiving as “creating,” and remembering as “recreating” or
“recategorizing.”) Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories
we tell each other, and ourselves—the stories we continually recatorgorize and
refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows
from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain. The wonder is that
aberrations of a gross sort are relatively rare, and that, for the most part,
our memories are relatively solid and reliable.
We, as
human beings, are landed with memory systems that have fallibilities, frailties,
and imperfections—but also great flexibility and creativity. Confusion over
sources or indifference to them can be a paradoxical strength: if we could tag
the sources of all our knowledge, we would be overwhelmed with irrelevant
information.
Indifference
to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others
say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were
primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear into other minds, to
assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into
and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This
sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all
out knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusive
ours. Memory is dialogic and arises from intercourse of minds.”[1]
