Memory is fiction

A recurring theme in some of my recent reading has been the nature of subjective time. Among other insights, that the past and the future are delusions, created by the mind. This is a little easier to grasp for the future. Any ideas we have about what is going to happen is clearly fiction. But the past feels more “real.” It happened. I remember it. But that’s fiction as well.

“A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it. The more you remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes. The larger moral of the experiment is that memory is a ceaseless process, not a repository of inert information. It shows us that every time we remember anything, the neuronal structure of the memory is delicately transformed, or reconsolidated.” — The Frontal Cortex

This reminds me of the scene in Blade Runner when Rachel discovers her memories are implanted. A disturbing thought because (for most of us) we ARE our memories.

But if that’s not really so, if our memories are fiction, who are we? Probably not who we think.

Watching the news to get high

That’s what I’ve been doing. For years. I didn’t realize it until reading this post by David Cain. The post is eerily close to the view of my friend Henry. A little more spiritual, perhaps, but they’ve wound up at the same place.

“A few years ago I quit watching the news, because I realized I only did it to get high. It felt good to feel outrage sometimes. It felt good to take up and defend certain mental positions about social issues, to hate people who did bad things. It also felt comforting to have some socially-acceptable TV to watch after dinner.

I did it because I was attracted to it, not because it actually gave me any advantages or improved my quality of life. When I think of all those hours spent watching the news, it’s hard to figure out quite what I gained in exchange. Those volumes of information about O.J. Simpson, Sarah Palin or any other Outrage of the Month haven’t done me a lick of good since the moment I absorbed it.

Because it was gratifying, I never had any incentive to examine what it was doing for me or what it cost me. In any case, I would tell myself I was “staying informed” like any responsible citizen, as the typical argument goes, but it was really a fairly useless indulgence that just made some part of me feel good at the time.”

So many of the things I do every day are mindless. I do them without being aware of doing them, certainly unaware of why I am doing them.

I’m going to try to skip the evening news to which I have so long been addicted. That’s a half-hour a day. An extra week each year? Wish me luck.

Present. Silent. Paperless.

Every year Chris Brogan comes up with three words as his “guiding pillars” for what to focus on in the coming year.

“Instead of resolutions, which don’t usually help me very much, I work hard on using these words as a lighthouse for my actions and efforts.”

I like that. I’ve never been one for resolutions because… well, because I lack resolve. But his post prompted me to pick three words to guide me in the coming year.

Presence. To be fully present, “in the now” as the new-agers say. I’ve been working on this for a while and it’s easily the most challenging thing I have undertaken.

Silence. Somewhere there’s a post in which I fantasize about going 24 hours without speaking. No, I have not accomplished that. Yet. Frequent reviews of Scott Adams’ Wiki Ignorance Test is helping. This is a tough one because it has much to do with ego and the need to be noticed.

Paperless. This one is actually within striking distance. I have a couple of junk-filled drawers at work the contents of which I plan to scan/discard. Eliminating paper is part of a larger –less tangible goal– of having few ‘things’ in my life.

UPDATE: I spent a couple of hours at the office getting rid of paper. Hauled 2 or 3 boxes to the dumpster. All that’s left are some archival docs and I’ll get those scanned and up on Google Docs tomorrow. I’ll keep a pad of post-it notes but the beloved yellow legal pads went back to the supply closet.

While tossing, I found a quaint list of  “silent interrupters” (from Entrepreneur Magazine – August 1989):

  1. Multiple calendars – keep all activities recorded in one calendar system
  2. Open fils are a distraction. Keep them closed.
  3. Phone messages and reminders – scraps of paper strewn on a desk are easily lost. Use a “To Do” list.
  4. Business cards should be alphabetized and filed
  5. “Someday” files should not be in sight
  6. Reading matter should be filed in one place and read at a specific time.
  7. In-box material should be reviewed daily and the contents thrown out, delegated, filed or acted upon. Keep the box out of sight.
  8. Reference books should be organized and out of sight.
  9. Multiple card files should be consolidated into one file. Input frequently called numbers into memory phones or a reference book/box.
  10. Pens, staplers, and tape dispensers should be in a drawer and out of sight.

Once I’ve convinced myself I can eliminate paper from my work office, I’ll tackle the files at home.

Reason to believe

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
This bit of wisdom is attributed to the Buddha. I wonder why this never came up in school (public or Sunday).

The next thing

David Cain has soared to the top of my must-read list. His latest post has made my day richer and I hope it does the same for you. Here’s a taste:

“As I very slowly get a little better at managing the “stuff” in life, I am getting markedly better at being okay with everything’s eternally-half-done status. I’m getting better at coexisting peacefully with stuff that needs fixing, problems I don’t know how to handle, opportunities I am mismanaging, and even my anxious moods. Peace with anxiety. Anxiety, with peace. Somehow.

Now and then I can sit right in the middle of all of my uncertain and unfinished business and relax in the knowledge that everything really is in its right place. Strangely, the more I’m okay with everything being not quite okay, the better I am at moving the little things along to a place where they do feel okay. Make sense? Not really? That’s okay.”

I’m reminded of a trip from Des Moines to Jefferson City. Greg Brown (now our CEO) was at the wheel and working hard to pass slower cars on the two-lane highway. It dawned me that he was trying get to the “front of the line.” His face confirmed this when I mentioned it. Greg and I are older and wiser now.

Kevin Kelly loves technology

The full quote (by MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle) is: “We think with the objects we love, and we love the objects we think with.” I came across it near the end of Kevin Kelly’s new book, What Technology Wants. (More on that in a later post.) Mr. Kelly beautifully captures my own feelings about technology:

“I am no longer embarrassed to admit that I love the internet. Or maybe it’s the  web. Whatever you want to call the place we go to while we are online, I think it is beautiful. People love places and will die to defend a place they love, as our sad history of wars proves. Our first encounters with the internet/web portrayed it as a very widely distributed electronic dynamo –a thing one plugs into– and that it is. But the internet as it has matured is closer to the technological equivalent of a place. An uncharted, almost feral territory where you can genuinely get lost. At times I’ve entered the web just to get lost. In that lovely surrender, the web swallows my certitude and delivers the unknown. Despite the purposeful design of hits human creators, the web is a wilderness. Its boundaries are unknown, unknowable, its mysteries uncountable. The bramble of intertwined ideas, links, documents, and images creates an otherness as thick as a jungle. The web smell like life. It knows so much. It has insinuated its tendrils of connection into everything, everywhere. The net is now vastly wider than I am, wider than I can imagine; in this way, while I am in it, it makes me bigger, too. I feel amputated when I am away from it.”

“In that lovely surrender, the web swallows my certitude and delivers the unknown.” Who can ask for more.

Scott Adams: “Shape Shifters”

“One idea we all share is the narrow view that ideas are not alive in any way we like to define such things. We believe ideas are our tools, not our masters. That is exactly what the Shape Shifters have programmed us to believe. While we know that the ideas in our head control our behavior, we have an idea that we can choose any path we like, so we are blind to the fact we are little more than milk cows for our non-corporeal overlords. Everything we humans do is in the service of creating a better environment for ideas to reproduce. We create more babies so there are more brains to fill with ideas. We write books, make movies, build schools, and expand the Internet, all to help the reproduction of ideas.”

Scott Adams: Immortality

“…we’re a simulated (programmed) world left behind by advanced humanoids that shed their bodies billions of years ago. Our simulated world is the closest they could come to immortality. They were romantics, much like ourselves, and couldn’t stand the thought of being separated from their loved ones for eternity. So in our programmed little world, when we feel a special connection to another, it’s because we knew that person when we were real, and the program allows us to feel it again as if new. Thus, when you meet your soul mate, it is a reunion of sorts. And it will happen over and over, in each subsequent life the program provides for you.”

Scott Adams concludes an interesting post on stress with this lovely take on reality.