Memory, the Trickster By Catherine Viel

[Manuel Tavares]

Memory, the Trickster
By Catherine Viel
https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/08/memory-trickster.html

It is human nature to listen to witnesses and decide who is telling the truth…[the woodcutter’s] problem is that he has heard the same events described by all three participants in three different ways—and all three claim to be the killer.
~ Roger Ebert, review of Rashomon



I’ll start with a sweeping generalization: everybody’s memory of everything is suspect.

It’s not that we don’t want to be accurate with our recollections. It’s just that, with the probable exception of photographic recall, human memory seems inherently and irreparably flawed.

All you have to do is spend five minutes in an Alzheimer’s ward to witness the overt version of this. People with memory impairment exist in a world unrelated to what we’re pleased to call “reality.“

And yet, those memory-impaired people are convinced, to the marrow of their bones, that what their mind offers as an event that happened is true. The staff or family who were present during the presumed event all agree that it didn’t happen (“No, Grandma, the Mafia did not try to abduct you”). But it’s usually impossible to convince the memory-impaired person of this fact...+
https://rayviolet.blogspot.com/2022/08/memory-trickster.html