In article <
20240120a@crcomp.net>, Don <
g@crcomp.net> wrote:
D wrote:
Don wrote:
James Nicoll wrote:
Five SF Stories Involving Memory Manipulation
Memories: inherently unreliable or subject to alteration according to need?
https://www.tor.com/2024/01/19/five-sf-stories-involving-memory-manipulation/ >>>
The Tor thread mentions "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale" (PKD).
Yet "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (Borges) multiplies mnemonic
manipulation to make it cover an entire planet:
Tlon's putative "primitive language" has now found its way
into our schools; the teaching of its harmonious history,
so full of stirring episodes, has obliterated the history
that presided over my childhood; in our memories a
fictitious past has now replaced our past, of which we know
nothing for certain-not even that it is false.
Interesting! Never thought of them together, but it makes perfect sense. I >> like both. Thank you for making that connection!
Thank you for your kind words.
Among other things, suppression and repression respectively refer to
either the conscious or unconscious exclusion of memories. And both
words coincidentally carry connotations of political tactics.
Orwellian memory holes appear intentional and suggest suppression
in the sense of both memorial and political.
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens,
you can bet it was planned that way."
Rhetorical question: isn't it impossible to understand political plans if >history has huge holes in it?
"The only thing new in the world is the history you do
not know."
Not memory manipulation exactly, or even history 'manipulation', but
RA Lafferty speculated in "Barnaby's Clock" that there is just too much
history for the time alotted to it, and something has to give:
"I have never discovered any historical event happening for
the first time," Barnaby said. "Either life imitates anecdote,
or very much more has happened than the bursting records
are allowed to show as happening. As far back as one can
track it, there is history: and I do not mean prehistory.
I doubt if there was ever such a time as prehistory. I doubt
that there was ever an uncivilized man. I also doubt that
there was ever any manlike creature who was not full man,
however unconventional the suit of hide that he wore.
"But when you try to compress a hundred thousand years of
history into six thousand years, something has to give.
When you try to compress a million years, it becomes
dangerous. An involuted number series, particularly when
applied to the spate of years, becomes a tightly coiled
spring of primordial spring-steel. When it recoils, look
out! There comes the revenge of things left out.
"Were there eight kings of the name of Henry in England,
or were there eighty? Never mind: someday it will be recorded
that there was only one, and the attributes of all of them
will be combined into his compressed and consensus story.
"There is a deep texture of art and literature (no matter
whether it is rock scratching or machine duplication) that
goes back over horizon after horizon. There is a deeper
texture to life itself that is tremendous in its material
and mental and psychic treasures. There are dialects now
that were once full vernaculars, towns now that were once
great cities, provinces that were nations. The foundations
and the lower stories of a culture or a building are commonly
broader than its upper stories. A structure does not balance
upside-down, standing on a point.
"A torch was once lighted and given to a man, not to a
beast. And it has been passed on from hand to hand while
the hills melted and rose again. What matter that some of
the hands were more hairy than others? It was always a man's
hand."
"It may be that you are balancing upside-down on your pointed
head, Barney," Harry O'Donovan told him.
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