My Memories

To be conscious is to have memories. To be free is to reflect on the limitations of freedom.

In this writing I am attempting to become more free by reflecting on my memories and the way they've governed my life.

Memory, it turns out, has become an important vein in my thinking that has led me more places than I would have guessed. This is due in large to Henri Bergson's odd little book Matter and Memory. Bergson is an impressive yet unfashionable thinker. I could not have anticipated the places he has allowed me to go.

Using his ideas as a starting point, I would like to reflect both on memory in general and on my memories in particular. In doing so I will be reflecting on my past behavior and trying to understand how it was connected to my sense of the past, my memories.

We begin with one of the central claims of Matter and Memory: Memory is not not singular but dual. If we think carefully, that is to say, we discover that we do not possess a ubiqutous mental faculty called 'memory' that allows us to recall the past with ease. We find, rather, that memory has two distinct faces, one that is intimately tied to the temporal, mental, and particular, and another that is spatial, bodily, and general. To demonstrate this dual character of memory Bergson asks us to reflect on what it means to learn something 'by heart'. When we learn, for example, to recite a poem by heart, we gain a mechanical ability to deliver that poem on a moments notice. We can simply stand up and rattle the whole thing off. This form of memory that allows us to recite a poem by heart, is atemporal, meaning that it is no longer tied to the specific periods in time in which we recited the poem out loud to memorize it. This memory, instead, is generalized: it exists in us as something separate from all of the individual moments in time in which we were actually reading the poem. Memory, for Bergson, thus does two things: It "ends in the record of the past in the form of motor habits" and also "retains the image of the situations through which is has successively travelled, and lays them side by side in the order in which they took place" (Bergson, Matter and Memory, Digireads, 2010). In other words, our memory has both the character of being particular by retaining images of the actual moment in time in which we perform an activity, and of being general by converting all of those particular instances into a generalized motor habit. The former, as I said, is temporal or mental in it's functioning, while the other is spatial or bodily.

I would like to lend an example from my own experience: barista work. Anyone who spent much time reflecting on the life of a barista, as I have, could tell you that barista work is largely a matter of habit and muscle memory. It is a profession built of incredibly simple and repetitive motions that must be precisely replicated. In order to become consistent, baristas practice practice practice. We repeat our motions over and over again. Constantly tamping, pulling, steaming, pouring. The goal of this training and practice is to forget the individual case in favor of a generalized set of motor habits. Thus I could step up to an espresso machine right now and would have a whole arsenal of motor habits that would aid me in my work. Yet, if I reflect, I can stop and think of dozens of particular instances in which I made not merely a drink but that particular drink. This general muscle memory, in other words, rests on a foundation of particular instances.

These are the two faces of memory. Look into your own mind and you will find that you have them both there. You have a slew of particular, temporally bound memories, and you have a more general , atemporal set of ideas or dispositions that have been distilled from those particular experiences.

That memory should function in such a dual manner, according to Bergson, is explained by the practical orientation of life. To live is to be oriented towards doing. Thus all functions of life, from the body to the mind, are pointed towards action. This is no less true of memory. That we naturally distill general lessons from our particular experiences is not surprising. Memory, after all, is a faculty of the mind that is also oriented towards action.

Memory, in the two senses we are discussing, aids us in our quest to act by augmenting our perception of the world. What is it that keeps the world from presenting itself to us an incomprehensible jumble of images? Why am I able to discern this table, this kitchen, this beer bottle, and this computer in front of me? Because I have memories of experiencing them in the past: I've dealt with many tables and many beers and therefore don't need to look at them or think about them with the same kind of intensity that I did when I saw them for the first time. Imagine what a child's experience must be like. It must be just an endless series of images, incomprehensible and confusing. Only when the child has accumulated much experience of looking and acting will images start to become coherent and sensical. In other words, not until a child has accumulated an adequate store of memories can it begin to act consciously in the world. Thus Bergson argues that "there is no perception which is not full of memories" (Ibid., 17). Everywhere we look and everything we do, we are seeing the world through memory colored shades.

The implication of this and the crucial conclusion is this: Memory tends to supplant perception. It is often more economical to allow the residue of experience to stand in for the labor of detailed attention in the present. "In most cases," Bergson writes, "these memories supplant our actual perceptions, of which we then retain only a few hints, thus using them merely as 'signs' that recall to us former images" (Ibid.). Here we would do well to reflect on the Buddhist lauding of the child for actually 'seeing a ball roll across the floor', whereas an adult often lets their concept of the ball and the floor stand in for actual observation. We could equally say that we let our memory of a ball rolling across the floor stand in for the actual seeing.

Is this not true of us in our own lives? How many of us actually look carefully and closely at every door, every bus, every barista that we encounter? Do we not simply let our 'understanding' and our memories do that work for us? It is in no way vital to my activity right now that I look closely at this table in front of me. I know what a table is. I've seen them hundreds of times. I remember them. Yet, if I look closely at this table I discover all the blemishes on it, all the cracks and scratches that are not present if I let my memories of tables stand in for my actual observing of it.

Good. We've established several points.

(1) Memory is dual. One aspect of it is particular and temporal, another is general and atemporal.

(2) Memory is intimately linked with the need for action.

(3) Perception restricts itself based on it's orientation towards action, and thus tends to substitute  the memory of things for the actual observation of said things.

The next thing that we must note is that human perception is not primarily visual, but narrative. Human action, that is to say, is not conducted or understood simply by how things look, hear, sound, or whatever. Human action is conducted and understood by means of thinking. Thought and intention, those self-evident activities of the human mind, are always the arbiters or human action. To 'perceive intentional action' then is to perceive thought. Thought, moreover, is not perceived by means of the senses, but by means of narrative or story. I've spent much time writing about this elsewhere and don't care to go into it now. But if you doubt that human action is only intelligible, 'perceived', in the form of a narrative please go see R.G. Collingwood's The Idea of History, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, Jonathan Gottschall's The Storytelling Animal. Or just pause and reflect on your own life. How do your own actions assume meaning? How do you justify your own actions to yourself? You do it by telling a story that has a past, present, and a future. We are made of stories.

If perception is structured by memory, then, we cannot avoid the conclusion that our narrative perception of ourselves and those around us are shaped by memory. I bet that if we reflect on our lives we will see that we find a duality in the narratives we use to perceive the world just like we will find in our memories. We will find that we tell certain stories about ourselves that are particular and temporal, (such as that one time on September 7th 2011 where I gave two weeks notice at my job) and others that are general and atemporal (like the idea that I am a solitary person or a loner). The former example is something that actually happened to me, something that I did without a doubt. The latter, however, is a conjecture or generalization that has been distilled from particular events in my life.

That general habits or general narratives should arise out of particular events is totally understandable. Of course the temporally specific form of memory tends to give way to the atemporal general kind of memory. It is simply more practical. Nature, of course, favors general, bodily, spatialized memory. Living beings thrive far more from being able to distill generalizations from their specific experiences than from being able to dwell and reflect on particular events. The former trumps the latter.

Bergson knew damn well, however, that humans are not purely practical beings. We acquired a sense for reflection, for thinking, for theoretical and contemplative living. If we wish to live a thoughtful life, we must take a step back from the realm of action and thus from generalized forms of memory. Instead, we ought to sit with our particular memories, understanding them for what they were in their particular time, refusing to generalize them into lessons or doctrines for action.

Having arrived at this point, understanding that human perception is fundamentally narrative, and that it is influenced by memory in the way described above, I feel I am in a good position to reflect on my two forms of memory.

I begin with a simple admission: I have to learned to hate myself.

Somehow during the course of my life I experienced enough pain, and I saw myself as the cause of this pain, that I began to think that there was something wrong with me. That I was 'broken' or unlovable or 'damaged' in one way or another.

I was always a sensitive, nay, a fragile child. Overrun and bullied by my own feelings. I remember walking into my first preschool with my mother, seeing children playing all kinds of games, screaming running shouting. I remember the fear I felt at the idea of joining them. I remember the boy in school everyone called 'Timmy the cry baby' and how deeply thankful I was that he was identified as such and not me. It could have been me, and I was grateful to have that attention directed towards him and not me. I remember the deep anxiety I felt in 4th grade, when I would wake up crying, not wanting to go to school, not wanting to get on my bike to meet the neighbors for our daily ride.

Fear, it turns out, was the governing emotion of my childhood. I don't even know why! My parents loved me and did everything they could to take care of me! Perhaps they were too soft with me? Too easy on me? I don't know. I don't know how this happened to me.

I remember knocking a bunch of my teeth out in first grade. Receiving special attention for this damage I'd done to myself. The conversations about fixing it. 'Fixing it'. Something to be fixed, I understand. But also something to accept and understand.

I remember being in middle school and how fearful I was that my girlfriend would break up with me. What other people would think of me.

I can recall countless particular instances of feeling inadequate and fearful. It's as if though I was already resigned to being fearful, broken, wounded.

I felt so much fear, and still feel fear, at the idea of having to face this life. I've got to live the whole god damn thing? And we suspect that it doesn't mean anything in the big picture?

I can recall so many individual particular instances in which I felt afraid, felt inadequate, felt out of place or strange.

Being the living thing I am, I took those particular memories and I generalized them. I converted them from individual instances of things that happened to me and I turned them into a story about what I am. I am not just a being that experienced these things, I am a being that was made for these kinds of experiences. I am not a being of possibilities who happens to have struggled in different elements of my life, I am a being made to be afraid and alone.

At some point in my life I arrived at this conclusion: I am not a being that has experienced pain and loneliness at certain moments in my life, I am a being made for lonesome suffering.

Ha. When I began to realize that I was living this story I could hardly believe it. It couldn't be.

Yet it is true.

The more I reflected on my past the more I realized how much my experiences had passed through the prism of that narrative. Events that should have been minor pains or difficulties turned into devastating events: a girl breaks up with me, I don't get a job, I am not welcome in a certain setting. Yet these things would devastate me. And they devastated me not simply because they were painful experiences but because they were evidence and corroboration for the story I was secretly living in which I was an unlovable and broken being.

My generalized memories, the narrative arc I'd distilled from them, in which I was broken, had become dominant, and all of my particular experiences were now being interpreted in their light.

There was no room for particular experiences to be particular experiences. Particular experiences could only function as further evidence for the story of a damaged and unlovable being.

Funny shit, right?

In doing this writing, by claiming that I have been a slave to the story I've been unconsciously living, I am trying to carve out a new space for the future. I look back and I see nothing but restrictions on my freedom and my ability to experience new things. I have been so deeply dominated by my particular memories and the general narrative I've culled from them that I've had such a reduced capacity for new experiences.

I'm calling you out, generalized narrative.

I'm here to reclaim my particularized experiences.

Here it goes.