Thursday, December 04, 2003
MEMORY
"....we owe to memory almost all that we have or are; that our ideas and conceptions are its work, and that our everyday perception, thought and movement is derived from this source. memory collects the countless phenomena of our existence into a single whole... our consciousness would be broken up into as many fragments as we had lived seconds but for the binding and unifying force of memory."
Herring, 1920
Memory is for taken for granted, except for when it doesn't work - a name, a book, what you said in anger last night. Stop for a moment, think. Try to imagine a world without memory.... friends and family would be strangers; nobody would be able to communicate with each other: they couldn't remember words or things that had happened; society would be uneducated; personal identity and self-awareness would not exist. What is your name? Where do you live? What are your hobbies ? Do you have any brothers or sisters? How old are you? Memory, in essence, is life.
