Allegra Bortoni, Grade 12
UWC Costa Rica
How sure can you be of what you know? Every Tuesday and Thursday for a couple of weeks the topic of memory was studied and principally questioned inside classroom eleven, home to the class of Theory of Knowledge. As you cross the door you’ll first encounter the teacher’s desk in front of a whiteboard and a couple of vertical and lateral filled-up bookshelves. When you have wholly entered the classroom you’ll notice the posters, upside-down maps (which are still geographically correct), and pictures that initially may seem to be put up for mainly decorative purposes, but they contain unexpected reflections and uncertainties.
The topic was first given a biological approach by understanding the connections within the brain parts and the general process by which memories are encoded, stored, and retrieved. However, such processes take place within different interconnected parts of the brain, and the procedure changes for the different types of memory. It was highlighted that in the transition between the stages of such processes, information loss and memory distortions occur naturally.
The teacher said that “it would take a day to remember a day, hence, it would take a lifetime to remember a lifetime”. Since human beings are receptive to massive amounts of visual, sensory, and intellectual information on a regular basis, the brain discards whatever it believes to be unuseful or irrelevant. It was said that the events and details we consider to be of major significance are shaped by our geographical, social, temporal, and cultural context.
After explaining this, the teacher went more deeply into the subject by providing a variety of examples. As teenagers, we may look back upon our childhood pictures and hold to memories that without the photographic register would have otherwise probably been forgotten.
“Even if they haven´t been completely obliterated, every time they are recalled they are distorted since you permeate your recalling by your actual self’s moral, knowledge, interests, and values. Additionally, your actual self is in constant modification, therefore your memories also undergo a reconstructive operation” was the reflection that impressed me the most.
Subsequently, another question was thrown for class discussion. “To what extent would you consider an autobiography a reliable source?”. My first thoughts considered the source of information as an indispensable element, who better to narrate a series of events than the person who went through them?
Shortly after we were questioned once again. We forgot to take into consideration the multiple memory distortions that the author has gone through before getting the time to “concrete” his experiences and actions with pen and paper. Also, the narrative would contain partialities and multiple biases natural to the person and their context. As a final element, due to a psychological phenomenon titled the “desirability effect”, the subject is very likely to leave out of the narrated experience the actions and thoughts that would be perceived as embarrassing, displeasing and regretful by the society they make part of.
I was fascinated, or perhaps I should say astounded, by all of the following questions that arose in my mind after having those sessions. Not only did I start to question my own life’s memories, but of those surrounding me as well. How much truth is actually contained in the stories we already know? How much crucial and irrecoverable information has been lost and devoured by oblivion. Human memory and records are alterable and easily malleable. How sure can actually be of our history?
The topic was first given a biological approach by understanding the connections within the brain parts and the general process by which memories are encoded, stored, and retrieved. However, such processes take place within different interconnected parts of the brain, and the procedure changes for the different types of memory. It was highlighted that in the transition between the stages of such processes, information loss and memory distortions occur naturally.
The teacher said that “it would take a day to remember a day, hence, it would take a lifetime to remember a lifetime”. Since human beings are receptive to massive amounts of visual, sensory, and intellectual information on a regular basis, the brain discards whatever it believes to be unuseful or irrelevant. It was said that the events and details we consider to be of major significance are shaped by our geographical, social, temporal, and cultural context.
After explaining this, the teacher went more deeply into the subject by providing a variety of examples. As teenagers, we may look back upon our childhood pictures and hold to memories that without the photographic register would have otherwise probably been forgotten.
“Even if they haven´t been completely obliterated, every time they are recalled they are distorted since you permeate your recalling by your actual self’s moral, knowledge, interests, and values. Additionally, your actual self is in constant modification, therefore your memories also undergo a reconstructive operation” was the reflection that impressed me the most.
Subsequently, another question was thrown for class discussion. “To what extent would you consider an autobiography a reliable source?”. My first thoughts considered the source of information as an indispensable element, who better to narrate a series of events than the person who went through them?
Shortly after we were questioned once again. We forgot to take into consideration the multiple memory distortions that the author has gone through before getting the time to “concrete” his experiences and actions with pen and paper. Also, the narrative would contain partialities and multiple biases natural to the person and their context. As a final element, due to a psychological phenomenon titled the “desirability effect”, the subject is very likely to leave out of the narrated experience the actions and thoughts that would be perceived as embarrassing, displeasing and regretful by the society they make part of.
I was fascinated, or perhaps I should say astounded, by all of the following questions that arose in my mind after having those sessions. Not only did I start to question my own life’s memories, but of those surrounding me as well. How much truth is actually contained in the stories we already know? How much crucial and irrecoverable information has been lost and devoured by oblivion. Human memory and records are alterable and easily malleable. How sure can actually be of our history?
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