“Forget everything that you were taught at school,” he hears a person entering college. “Forget everything that you were taught at the institute,” they say to him at his first job. “Forget everything you knew about your profession,” can be heard at professional development seminars. And somewhere at this moment you are overwhelmed by an acute sense of paradox: what should you remember in this life ?!
The paradoxes associated with memory are one of the most eerie and obscure ones both for society as a whole and for each person individually. There are so many stereotypes, misconceptions and fears mixed in here that it will be difficult to untangle this tangle in one article. But we will at least try. So forget everything you know about memory! Just kidding…
The theme of memories is one of the most acute and painful in the human psyche, because they are an integral part of our "I". It is not surprising that thoughts of losing them, especially intentional ones, are perceived with hostility, even if these memories consist of actually outdated information that will not be useful in a new place. For example, at school a person studied computer science on ancient computers with an installed DOS operating system, at the institute there were old machines with Windows 98, and at work they brought up brand new laptops with a "ten". Is it worth it to carefully store information about how to handle operating systems that will not be used anywhere else, ever? But you didn’t guess, it’s worth it, at least in order to understand the general principles of the software. Unless the rules for handling floppy disks (since we're talking about memory) will no longer be useful to you, but at least you can explain to young people why the "save" icon looks so strange. In the age of flash memory and cloud storage, all that remains is to sigh nostalgically, remembering the rumble of a floppy disk in the drive … However, we digress.
By the way, humans, unlike machines, have a built-in mechanism that obligingly erases unnecessary memories without any reminders or instructions from our superiors - this is our own brain.
The dictate of the brain
Another extremely paradoxical statement, rushing to us from every program or article about the human body, is that our brain is a supercomputer capable of storing huge amounts of data. It’s especially fun to hear when you rush around the room, desperately trying to remember where you put your keys, phone, or tie. And the "supercomputer" at this time over and over again plays a stupid song, heard a couple of days ago and since then firmly engraved in the memory … But do not rush to accuse journalists and scientists of incompetence, in fact, the statement is true. The only problem is that our subconscious mind decides for itself what information to keep and what information to discard, and we do not order it in this. An example of lost keys, as well as agonizing attempts to remember whether you closed the door and turned off the water before leaving the apartment,not entirely honest - these are more likely system failures than evidence of its failure.
More serious things are details of past events that are gradually erased from memory, leaving only sensations and emotions. There are sayings: "Time heals" or "The morning is wiser than the evening," but both of them literally translate as: "When we fall asleep, the brain erases our memory." Paradox, damn it. The brain must store information, not destroy! But this is only at first glance.
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False feelings
There are two phenomena - eidetic memory and hypermnesia, both of which relate to the ability to memorize mountains of information, and then recall it when the opportunity arises. Sounds amazing, right? You read a book, watched a film - and at any moment you can recall any passage. However, the fee for this is much higher than it might seem, since the memory mechanism is much more confused than the hard drive of the same computer. People with perfect memories are often literally trapped in their own memories, over and over again reliving events that happened years ago. They realize that today the past is irrelevant, but the brain still slips unnecessary associations and fragments of memories, making them experience strong emotions and go crazy. That is why in ordinary - non-exclusive - people, memories of the past are smoothed out with each new day, sometimes dissolving without a trace. This is a normal healthy phenomenon, allowing you to move on and keep only the most important things in memory. Although, of course, an unpleasant paradox is also associated with this mechanism. Where can we go without it?
There is such an ambush as false memories, because of them, by the way, testimony in courts is not decisive. Not only that, having seen an event, we can misinterpret it and it will remain in our initially incorrect format, but the brain also helpfully corrects memories at its discretion! And it would be okay to do this when it comes to the color of a tracksuit bought a couple of years ago, but the memories can be more serious. An experiment was carried out: psychologists asked about the moment of acquaintance of couples who had just met, and a year later - those who then separated. Newly met people said only good things about their partners, and those who parted confidently stated that "from the very beginning they understood that something was wrong." Hearing their "testimony" a year ago, they were greatly surprised:memory suggested something completely different …
Remember all
In fairness, it must be said that the phrase “Forget everything you have been taught” is rarely used in the name of a good cause. With the highest probability, the one who utters it is simply building up his authority in front of newcomers, exaggerating the importance of future information. And in general, how does he know what exactly you were taught at school (university), maybe just what you need? Fortunately, this paradox is relatively easy to avoid, no one demands to report on the "forgotten", maximum assimilation of new knowledge. The problem will arise only with the next "step" and the possible requirement to forget everything that came before it.
We are not able to lose our memory "at the behest", but due to illness it is completely. Amnesia can occur due to damage to the head, and hence the brain, but dementia, which sometimes comes with age, is much worse. Alzheimer's disease is virtually untreatable, and losing almost all of your personality under its influence is truly a terrible fate. True, there is also a little encouraging news: studies have shown that memories do not actually disappear, access to them is simply "blocked". If we find a way to restore connections in the brain, it will be possible to restore memory to people, although this is already a task of a completely different scale.
Computer brains, self-erasing memories, diseases of ideal memory - human consciousness is one big paradox. One gets the feeling that our “I” is not the owner in it, but at best it rents a room while someone else makes decisions. But don't worry, everyone has it. Sometimes it is useful to forget everything that was before, but only if it is necessary in order to go into the future.
Sergey EVTUSHENKO