Comments on Greg's Post on Memory Dampening

I'm pleased to have Greg Caramenico guest blogging about a variety of topics, including memory modification. In this interesting post, Greg discusses the effects on collective memory of living in a world where it is possible to dampen or erase aspects of memory. Two comments:

(1) When analyzing these issues, I think it's helpful to distinguish the value of preserving the informational content of memories and the value of preserving the homage aspect of memory.

(2) If a substantial number of witnesses to an event take a drug to alter factual or emotional aspects of their memories, then even if we have sufficient technologies to record information about the event, it seems plausible that, in the long run, the event may get a different amount of attention than it otherwise would. Dispersing people throughout the world who share upsetting stories probably affects the total amount of attention an event receives.

On the other hand, there may be events that are so upsetting that people would ordinarily keep quiet about them. A memory dampening drug that eases the emotional intensity of a memory might actually lead to the event being discussed more frequently. The point, though, is that the meme-like qualities of an event may depend on how people's memories of an event are altered.

Comments

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Adam, your second comment hints at a phenomenon I call - for lack of a specific name - a "Diaspora effect." Whether this results in more accurate understanding of an event is uncertain, but for many dispersed groups it does focus attention on pivotal events in their national histories and sometimes sharpens the historical narrative about these events over time. I suspect that "national histories" (like the Persian, Jewish, Armenian ones) have a different effect on remembering when they're taught to a diaspora and shared in different cultures than in a home country where they're part of the educational system and referenced by the press and popular culture. If one compares the big events of French social memory (the stuff anthologized in Pierre Nora's books for instance) most of them share a certain abstraction or symbolic distance from emotion that's very different from the passion that people in diasporas express when writing about great events, great catastrophes, in their own histories.

I do wonder if reduced emotional intensity of "strong" memories would affect public discourse about traumatic events though.