If you think about it almost all of human experience is in the past, meaning that except for what's happening right this moment, everything else is in the past. Sure one could argue that it doesn't take into account the future. The thing is at least right now we can't perceived the future, only the past and present. Essentially 1% of our life takes place now while the other 99% has already happened. That would mean nearly all we think about is from memory. Memory shapes who we are and what we do and even what we will do. The strange thing about memory though is that it's not always what really happened, it's just what we think happened. In a sense we're creating our own reality even if it's not what "officially" happened. It doesn't really matter if it's what really happened, it's what we believed happened and short of a time machine, there usually isn't much that can cause us to unremember a specific memory. I think it would be interesting if people could somehow compare memories of the same event. That blue care was actually teal. This person said this with a certain inflection rather than that with a different emphasis. Seeing that comparison could potentially alter how we move forward through life. Then again sometimes you want to remember your own way. Fred Madison hated video cameras because he wanted to remember things how he remembered, which wasn't necessarily the way they happened. I don't know if there's anything wrong with that kind of thinking.
What causes us to remember specific moments over others? I know that technically everything we experience is stored in that hard drive we call a brain. Most of us lack the ability to recall it whenever we want. There are those with a "photographic" memory but even that has its limitations. Maybe there's a mental trigger that causes something to stay in short-term memory long enough that it's effectively put on the top of the pile of memories that we access when we go into long-term storage. And what's even more strange is that it's not always a voluntary thing to remember something vividly or easily. Things we want to remember fade away and stuff we wish we could forget lurks in the corner, waiting for when we least expect it. Tell yourself you're going to remember this moment. Or really any moment. You can try to force yourself to recall it later but how much do you really remember? What were you wearing. What did you smell or feel? Even if you remember the moment, it's the specifics that get away from us. Do we have to force ourselves to remember a memory? Even when we do that we can't always bring back something we want to recall. Sure trauma is a good way to cement something into your memory. I would imagine that there must be something the opposite of trauma that causes you to remember very good things.
A long time ago I heard a story about how some scientist had a person's skull open. The person was awake and willing to try this experiment where electrodes were placed on various sections of the brain. A mild electrical current was sent to that area and the person was suddenly remembering things from their past in a way that was almost like reliving them. They could smell specific things and hear tiny little nuances around them. The electrical stimulus was taken away and the memory faded back into the brain. That lead everyone to believe that even if we can't remember something, the brain has stored it away somewhere. For what purpose no one really knows. Or why if that information is being stored, then how come we can't retrieve it whenever we want. It's possible that the brain acts as something of a gatekeeper or hall monitor, making sure that only certain things are allowed into our consciousness. Without it we could be overwhelmed by all the information. As I said before, about 99% of our experiences are in the past. That's a lot of memories, no matter how old you happen to be. It's been said that we only use a fraction of our brain and maybe that's technically true because a lot of our brain function is out of our immediate use. Think of it as a kind of active reserve. It's working in the background and is essential for several things, but if we were to try and take over we would potentially fall down into a gasping heap because we lack the mental prowess to control both memories and anatomical functions at the same time.
Still if those memories are there and our brains are constantly recording everything we perceive (and many things we don't) then could that mean given time and practice we could have a better way of remembering things? Also is it possible that we're passing that information along when we pass our genes to the next generation? Sure you get things like eye color from your parents, but think about all the other things you get as well. Maybe you got your father's temper or your mother's love for reading. Those things could be attributed to growing up around people who had those traits already so you're more likely to take them on. What if though it's more than just your environment that shapes your personality? What if in some way their memories are also transferred over, even if it's in a fraction of their original state? It could be a sort of genetic memory. The movie Altered States kind of touched on this idea that on a genetic level we remember everything our ancestors did, going all the way back to ancient man. If that were possible then each of us possesses the collective memory of everyone who came before us, even if it's only stored in our cells somewhere. So think about that the next time you can't remember someones phone number. It's up there, stashed away with a millennium of information, we just don't have the right indexing system to quickly pull it off the shelf. Maybe one day we will.
