And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are
And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are"
(Meat Loaf)
I just read the latest round up on the Bad Science blog and the part where Ben Goldacre talks about the unreliability of memory really struck a chord with me. A few weeks ago I was walking home from work along my regular route through the city centre when I noticed a building. Now we are not talking about a small building. The one I noticed was big. Huge. It towered up behind the other buildings and I stopped and looked at it with the bizarre notion in my head that I had never seen it before. It had clearly been there a long time. It wasn't a new building. "I wonder", I wondered, "how many times I have walked along here and failed completely to notice that?"
If anyone had asked me just an hour earlier if such a building existed I would have said, "No." If they had shown me a photograph I would have complimented them on their clever use of Photoshop.
Another illustration of the fallibility of our attention and of how we instantly forget almost everything we see is one any regular commuter is familiar with. How many times have you got to work and can't recall a single thing about the journey you have just made? The worrying thing is that this happens not just when you are in the mind-numbing environment of the bus, train or metro but also in the environment of the car where you could reasonably be assumed to be paying attention.
Of course this has more to do with focus than memory but it is interesting. (Well I think so.)
I have recently started posting various autobiographical poems about my childhood but I have to wonder how much of it is true, not because of my writing or the need to fit the scansion but because I'm not sure of what I remember. I've mentioned before that one of my earliest memories is of being with the other kids in the yard outside a pub where a relative was holding a wedding reception. I've also mentioned before that I don't actually know if I remember the event or remember remembering it later. I'm not even certain that it happened at all. Similarly with other memories from childhood: the swing behind the neighbours' garden, making a sand crocodile, getting lost in the market and running home. At least I have independent verification of the last one as it was favourite story of my mother's throughout her life.
Another incident occurs to me to demonstrate the utter betrayal our memories are capable of. My mother died in 1998 and was followed a few years later by her sister, my aunt. At my aunt's funeral one her sons read a eulogy and told a story of how his mother had once given the "kiss of life" to a dieing goldfish using a straw. As he said it simultaneously my brother and I turned to look at each other. Both of us remember this as having been our mother. My cousin and his brothers all remember it as having been their mother. It's beyond unlikely that that it happened twice and we are all correct so either two of us in my family or three of them in their family have identical but wrong memories.
I suppose the bottom line is that my autobiography may or may not be true and the fact that I remember it all won't make it any truer.
So now I'm going to end this post and start a new one with a new post in my autobiographical series.
If anyone had asked me just an hour earlier if such a building existed I would have said, "No." If they had shown me a photograph I would have complimented them on their clever use of Photoshop.
Another illustration of the fallibility of our attention and of how we instantly forget almost everything we see is one any regular commuter is familiar with. How many times have you got to work and can't recall a single thing about the journey you have just made? The worrying thing is that this happens not just when you are in the mind-numbing environment of the bus, train or metro but also in the environment of the car where you could reasonably be assumed to be paying attention.
Of course this has more to do with focus than memory but it is interesting. (Well I think so.)
I have recently started posting various autobiographical poems about my childhood but I have to wonder how much of it is true, not because of my writing or the need to fit the scansion but because I'm not sure of what I remember. I've mentioned before that one of my earliest memories is of being with the other kids in the yard outside a pub where a relative was holding a wedding reception. I've also mentioned before that I don't actually know if I remember the event or remember remembering it later. I'm not even certain that it happened at all. Similarly with other memories from childhood: the swing behind the neighbours' garden, making a sand crocodile, getting lost in the market and running home. At least I have independent verification of the last one as it was favourite story of my mother's throughout her life.
Another incident occurs to me to demonstrate the utter betrayal our memories are capable of. My mother died in 1998 and was followed a few years later by her sister, my aunt. At my aunt's funeral one her sons read a eulogy and told a story of how his mother had once given the "kiss of life" to a dieing goldfish using a straw. As he said it simultaneously my brother and I turned to look at each other. Both of us remember this as having been our mother. My cousin and his brothers all remember it as having been their mother. It's beyond unlikely that that it happened twice and we are all correct so either two of us in my family or three of them in their family have identical but wrong memories.
I suppose the bottom line is that my autobiography may or may not be true and the fact that I remember it all won't make it any truer.
So now I'm going to end this post and start a new one with a new post in my autobiographical series.
