Memory

On Ancestry

"If the past is replayed too fast, life seems futile, and humanity resembles water flowing from a tap, straight down the drain. A film of history for today needs to be in slow motion, showing every person who ever lived as a star, though dimly visible in a night sky, a history still unexplored" - Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity

A call to action. Time to explore these unexplored histories together.

"Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living", so claimed Arthur C Clarke in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Population growth over the past 40 years means that, on average. we each only have about 15 ghosts to meet (i.e. 107bn/7bn). A buddy system for all the dead would surely yield fascination, cultural understanding and perhaps, just perhaps, a sense of us all being children of those two parents, 50,000+ years ago.

This wouldn't solve all problems, of course, as close family members tend to fall out more than most, but still, it might help lessen racial discrimination, encourage empathy for the economically disadvantaged and bring us just that little bit closer together.

"And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching" - Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Halcyon In Kaleidoscope

posted on 4 February 2012

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Global

On Proust

After the BBC recently opened up its archives of In Our Time, meaning that podcasts are now available right back to 1998, my listening experiences - typically while driving or running - have been further enriched by the availability of dozens of older editions, many on subjects that intrigue me, but about which in truth I know little. In such a vein, I came to the In Our Time episode about Marcel Proust.

As the programme notes make clear, 'À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel. Proust's stylistic innovation, sensory exploration and fascination with memory were to influence a whole body of thinkers, and innumerable critics and novelists since. But how did he succeed in creating a 3000 page novel with such an artistic coherence?'

Listening to the programme, I was immediately fascinated by concepts such as involuntary memory, which resonates with what I often feel, particularly when in the hypnopompic state, but other questions popped into my head too: is the novel really about the past, the present or the future? is it universal, in both time and space, in terms of its relevance and appeal? has anyone else ever written quite like Proust and if not, why not?

Only one way to find out, I suppose...avoid becoming yet another coffee-table Proustian and tackle the real thing...so I'll try and revisit this post with my own thoughts (and of course, memories) in 3000 pages time. À bientôt (I hope!)

Halcyon In Kaleidoscope

posted on 12 October 2011

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On Forgetting

In his "end of remembering", Joshua Foer argued that once upon a time remembering was everything, whereas, today, we have mountains of documents, the web and smartphones to store our memories. Foer asks: how can we adapt to a new reality in which most memories are stored outside the brain?

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has gone further, arguing for the "virtue" of forgetting and warning that there is a growing range of social concerns connected with the fact that our technology is remembering every little detail, all the time (listen here). As Evgeny Morizov already made clear when writing about the "dark side of the internet", perhaps if and when "they" come knocking, we shouldn't say that we weren't warned...