All alone with the Memory
Sitting in the Sherman with my laptop doing work; Beck's Guerero is paying over the speakers and I have a strong memory recall to Div III when in_vino and I holed ourselves up in the Bridge and attempted to stay on target. There's been several articles as of late in the NYTimes about memory, multitasking, and music, which argue that too many distractions aren't good for your brain or your work output (conversely there was another that talked about how different external stimuli actually help you learn information, in that when you read an article in one place, then read it later in a completely different surrounding, your brain treats each experience as a new one, instead of the same one). But none of them talked about the emotional component to memory. When I heard Beck's album, I thought back to a specific year, which then made me think about what I was doing at the time. When I subsequently pulled out my laptop and set a coffee next to it, my brain told my body that it was time to work, to get going. I had done this very routine so many times that it became my automatic response; I suspect that if Andrew Bird's The Mysterious Production of Eggs came on next, I'd experience a similar response.
Yet if a different album came on, one that pulled up a completely different memory--say, Damien Rice's 9 or Bon Iver's For Emma Forever Ago--the likelihood that the emotional triggers would cause my brain to wander away from work would probably increase. I would have to fight against the the other, non-study memories, and keep telling myself that No, now was the time to work, not daydream or dwell upon things past. While this would (arguably) make a new memory for me to reference later, it's likely that the similar process would need to be repeated over and over again in order to completely supplant--or at the very least, co-exist--the dominant memory. It's very likely that I would just get fed up with the extra work, and instead return to Beck or even a more neutral artist or album, thereby preserving the original memory. There could also be an underlying psychological or emotional drive to preserve that memory, to crystallize the experience so that I can go back and remember--isn't this one of the points that Proust makes in Remembrance of Things Past? That we wish to remember things, no matter how painful, because they happened to us? But I digress a bit.
The point that I want to make with all this is that memory, produced by external stimuli, goes a very long way in influencing our behavior. I think that we, as humans, like to think that we make decisions in a rational way--we look at our world, see what people are doing, what the options are, and then decide what works best for us. Because of that, we tend to frown upon the role of memory in the decision making process. We get frustrated, say "why can't they see how damaging/irrational/stupid their actions are" when maybe the question we should be asking is "what memories are driving their actions?" But what could we possibly gain from incorporating an understanding of memory into something so complex (and different) as politics?
Currently, Hillary Clinton is meeting with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas in the hope of resurrecting the 1993 Oslo accords and, (as usual) the issue of Israeli settlements is at an impass. What if she were to ask questions like "Why do Israeli settlers keep trying to rebuild their homes in illegal territory?"; would that then cause her to think "perhaps the memory of their first home, the sense of promise or future it offered them" is a catalyst. Likewise, the question" why do Palestinians want their lands back after 60 years, land that many have never even seen with their own eyes" could hint at a memory of relatives telling what life was like pre 1948. If she (and the US at large) then tried to incorporate these memory ties into the policy making and negotiation process, it might not only allow a better understanding of each side (always a hurdle, no matter what the story or situation) but could allow for the creation of a fuller picture of the current scenario, which in turn, might lead to a new experience or breakthrough which would generate a new memory. If indeed we learn better from having multiple touch points and external context, then wouldn't this be taken into account and utilized? Perhaps I'm falling prey to my own (irrational) belief that humans are rational; if I hope that others to swallow this pill, I should recognize that a whole lot more is going to be needed from me first in order to overcome the power of memory.
Yet if a different album came on, one that pulled up a completely different memory--say, Damien Rice's 9 or Bon Iver's For Emma Forever Ago--the likelihood that the emotional triggers would cause my brain to wander away from work would probably increase. I would have to fight against the the other, non-study memories, and keep telling myself that No, now was the time to work, not daydream or dwell upon things past. While this would (arguably) make a new memory for me to reference later, it's likely that the similar process would need to be repeated over and over again in order to completely supplant--or at the very least, co-exist--the dominant memory. It's very likely that I would just get fed up with the extra work, and instead return to Beck or even a more neutral artist or album, thereby preserving the original memory. There could also be an underlying psychological or emotional drive to preserve that memory, to crystallize the experience so that I can go back and remember--isn't this one of the points that Proust makes in Remembrance of Things Past? That we wish to remember things, no matter how painful, because they happened to us? But I digress a bit.
The point that I want to make with all this is that memory, produced by external stimuli, goes a very long way in influencing our behavior. I think that we, as humans, like to think that we make decisions in a rational way--we look at our world, see what people are doing, what the options are, and then decide what works best for us. Because of that, we tend to frown upon the role of memory in the decision making process. We get frustrated, say "why can't they see how damaging/irrational/stupid their actions are" when maybe the question we should be asking is "what memories are driving their actions?" But what could we possibly gain from incorporating an understanding of memory into something so complex (and different) as politics?
Currently, Hillary Clinton is meeting with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas in the hope of resurrecting the 1993 Oslo accords and, (as usual) the issue of Israeli settlements is at an impass. What if she were to ask questions like "Why do Israeli settlers keep trying to rebuild their homes in illegal territory?"; would that then cause her to think "perhaps the memory of their first home, the sense of promise or future it offered them" is a catalyst. Likewise, the question" why do Palestinians want their lands back after 60 years, land that many have never even seen with their own eyes" could hint at a memory of relatives telling what life was like pre 1948. If she (and the US at large) then tried to incorporate these memory ties into the policy making and negotiation process, it might not only allow a better understanding of each side (always a hurdle, no matter what the story or situation) but could allow for the creation of a fuller picture of the current scenario, which in turn, might lead to a new experience or breakthrough which would generate a new memory. If indeed we learn better from having multiple touch points and external context, then wouldn't this be taken into account and utilized? Perhaps I'm falling prey to my own (irrational) belief that humans are rational; if I hope that others to swallow this pill, I should recognize that a whole lot more is going to be needed from me first in order to overcome the power of memory.