The Unreliability of Memory

"We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and re-categorized with every act of recollection."  

- Oliver Sacks

There seems to be a great deal of controversy these days focused on believing or not believing the remembered experiences of people. And for those who are dealing with traumatic events in their past, this must be very frustrating to them. Frustrating indeed. For if we believe, or at least try to understand, what Dr. Sachs was saying in this quote, making any sense of the past should be viewed as problematic. To depend on what we have remembered many years ago has to be challenged by anyone who might have looked at what neuroscience has shown to be true.

Now I would never discount a memory with corroborating information about something that has happened in the past. With the new technologies of the hand-held phone that has every type of recording device on it, a memory can be called up many years later and reviewed by the person with audio and visual to support a claim. However, in my past it was unlikely that such evidence of support existed outside of those rare individuals who were consistent, dedicated, and truthful diarists.

Getting over the belief that human memory is somehow consistent with the working of a video recorder is something that needs to be considered if we are to fairly weigh and interpret memory. Leading psychologists such as Dr. Sachs have found that memories are reconstructed each time that they are "played' or recalled and that many fragments, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, are filled-in with convenient or inaccurate details.

So it is with great difficulty that I find myself doubting testimonials of those in an accusatory role as well of those who are denying accusations. In my humble opinion, trust should not be placed in people's memories when they are offering corroborating testimony as eyewitnesses as well. In these instances, we human beings are trying to reassemble what has been imprinted in a brains neurons. However, those neurons have been colored, altered and reinterpreted by life experience, trauma, physical changes, psychological impacts, and the list goes on.

The one time I sat on a jury it was one of the most awful experience in my life, and this was even before I put much thought in things like the reliability of memory.

So how will we judge or decide about a issue or person when faced with testimony relying on a human memory from the past. I don't have an easy answer. Go with the gut? I just don't know. 

I remember...

"On my cornice linger the ripe black grapes ungathered;

Children fill the groves with the echoes of their glee,

Gathering tawny chestnuts, and shouting when beside them

Drops the heavy fruit of the tall black-walnut tree." 

--William C. Bryant

I had to ride my bike down the road past his house to get to my friends house. It was the only route available. Four years older than me, he had salt and pepper hair before he even graduated high school. I suspected he would wait for me to ride by, and then throw the walnuts that fell from the tree in his front yard. At me on my bike. Black walnuts when they were still heavy and green. The longer those walnuts aged upon the ground, their outer husk starting to decompose, the more they stained and smelled when they painfully hit you. Exploding black and green and slimy. Sometimes his friends joined him in this pastime. He and his friends subsequently called me "walnut man" due to this exercise. 

I now have a walnut tree in my front yard, and I still can smell that sting of those walnuts all these years away when I pick them from the grass beneath the tree. 

He is a jail administrator in a northern Michigan county now, according to my mom.

"He was a nice boy", she told me over the phone.

Listen to Time

“Enjoy life freely, O Babur, for none enjoy it twice”.
--Babur, King of Kabul

Have you had a similar conversation with yourself like ancient Uzbekistanian Babur had during his life? I sure have, and I, like the king, need to remind myself to enjoy my time.

Also, I think that you can actually hear time when you really listen. You can hear whispers of memory. When you think of someone, can you hear what they sounded like? Is the voice of a person embedded in the brain as well as their physical image? When you look at a picture of lilacs, can’t you hear their rustle as well as smell their scent? I probably would sneeze.

Likewise, when I pet a dog, I feel every dog I have ever stroked. I really can't even control the urge to reach out and pet dogs. It's irresistible. I can smell the dog, the cedar shavings, the living companions of my past. I can see my children with puppies playing around them, sharing the joy of each other. Puppies enjoying children, children enjoying puppies. Hounds trailing game. Snow on the ground. Stiff winter breeze and the smell of December. I need to keep gathering these sensations for as long as I can.

So I am going to go out and continue to add memories, moments and experiences so that time will be captured. Why if a powerful ruler of a nation had to remind himself to enjoy life and not let it slip away, I can do the same.

Hear the voice of old Babur from across the ages.

My duty is to listen or his words would have been recorded in vain.