A terrific essay, Johanna. Lissauer's poem and Germany's consequent disavowal of it are stunning, and their implications chilling. Thanks for the incisive look at memory and its accelerating disappearance -- it's something more people need to understand.
We''ve had it in the US with Covid, the response, then everyone's reaction to it.
I thought people who called for the internment of the unvaccinated were lying by saying they never said it. They simply dissolved that memory apparently?
I"m sure there some from the other political side, as well.
My mother-in-law, who refused to meet me before I married her son, now talks about how she "welcomed me into the family." Memory holing is real, especially when people who think they can't make a mistake actually DO.
Hoo boy. I'd add my two cents about personal memory-holing except that my spouse and I have entirely different recollections about how certain arguments went down . . . either he's gaslighting, I am, or we're both just nuts.
When it concerns an intense debate with a man and woman I am entirely convinced they remember very different things, with entirely different software, and can NOT see them the same, live, or as memories.
It's very popular to act as if we are running the same software, but we ARE NOT!
My wife effortlessly remembers things connected to the calendar. As does her mom. I struggle.
Yet, I can remember geography or travel things and she truly struggles to read a map and can NOT place entire nations or states, spacially.
A terrific essay, Johanna. Lissauer's poem and Germany's consequent disavowal of it are stunning, and their implications chilling. Thanks for the incisive look at memory and its accelerating disappearance -- it's something more people need to understand.
We''ve had it in the US with Covid, the response, then everyone's reaction to it.
I thought people who called for the internment of the unvaccinated were lying by saying they never said it. They simply dissolved that memory apparently?
I"m sure there some from the other political side, as well.
My mother-in-law, who refused to meet me before I married her son, now talks about how she "welcomed me into the family." Memory holing is real, especially when people who think they can't make a mistake actually DO.
I guess so. My grown children certainly have different memories than me. Some make me better, some worse.
I'm slowly learning we remember different things but we also CHOOSE to remember different things.
(I hate mean old women and am glad my MIL was sweet. Actually I also hate mean old men, but expect them to be mean! lol )
Hoo boy. I'd add my two cents about personal memory-holing except that my spouse and I have entirely different recollections about how certain arguments went down . . . either he's gaslighting, I am, or we're both just nuts.
When it concerns an intense debate with a man and woman I am entirely convinced they remember very different things, with entirely different software, and can NOT see them the same, live, or as memories.
It's very popular to act as if we are running the same software, but we ARE NOT!
My wife effortlessly remembers things connected to the calendar. As does her mom. I struggle.
Yet, I can remember geography or travel things and she truly struggles to read a map and can NOT place entire nations or states, spacially.
We are not the same at all.
😂
‘Any fact that tries to find a foothold in working memory gets washed away in the great flow of digital diarrhea.’ 👏
Thanks, Adrian and my apologies for the visual!
Johanna, I live for such word collisions.