The Right To Forget Is Also A Fight To Survive ( Guilt and Pain)
Photo by Simon Humler on Unsplash
Memory is not etched on the Rocky landscapes of your mind. They are in flow, along your river of thoughts. Sometimes over flooded, it would rise up and wash over the shore. Sooner you will realise they have the same mappings of tears running over your cheeks. And like tears they would disappear and leave no traces behind.
What you remember is not life that you lived. We can’t be so certain about our memories. It is malleable like a metal. Every time you recall something you are rewriting some of its parts. I had a shirt that my mother’s younger brother gifted me. I used to wear it often. Once, when we had a conversation about my childhood, my mother started to talk about this particular shirt. She said it was white in color. I immediately disagreed with her because in my memory, the color was something else. To my surprise my sister agreed with my mother. That means I have failed myself in living every moment? Is it ? No, the fact is it’s normal to have distorted memories. Our brains don’t store information like a computer. This incident happened a long time ago and due to which some of the details of the story are patched up. But, I hope you got the gist of my argument ☺️ .
This thing has huge implications when it comes to judicial proceedings. ‘Did you see him when the murder was happening’?
Did you kill her/him ?
Such dramatic questions with a hell lot of weight can influence the gravity of a crime or a court proceedings. That’s why witnesses can’t be trusted completely. They can’t be trusted because they are animals with a brain. And the brain can be bugged.
There is a very interesting research done by Julia Shaw and Stephen Porter published in Psychological Science on Constructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime(2015). The study shows that false memories related to heinous crimes can be implanted on a person’s memory map relatively in a short span. But there was another research paper the following year by Chris Brewin and Bernice Andrews -two British psychologists. In their new systematic review in Applied Cognitive Psychology they have taken a hard look at all the evidence, and they argue that we need to rethink the idea that false memories are so easily induced. But the paper agrees to the concept of implantation which is much more evident when an authority is involved. Imagine a brutal questioning in your nearby police station. The torture may lead to the convict agreeing to committing all the crimes in the locality and even more.
But this is not just the case with an individual. The way a society remembers something could shape its entire progress or, decadence. The collective memory plays a huge role in shaping a society. It defines their outlook towards life and determines how despair they are. The great Eric Kandel, in his classic memoir- ‘In Search Of Memory’, speculates on how the trauma of his early experiences in Vienna altered his life. He talks about witnessing hundreds of thousands of Viennese pour out on the streets to celebrate Hitler’s triumphant march into Vienna and the subsequent humiliation of the Viennese Jews.
History is a collective memory. It’s not written in rocks. As individuals play a huge role in preserving their personal memories,they are also rewriting history. So, whether it’s Jews in Nazi Germany or Palestinians in modern day Israel;the trauma is remembered, because the body keeps the count. Children, women and young men are altered invariably by atrocities. It is carried from generation to generation through their genes.
Every atrocity is re-lived each day by hundreds,long after they are committed. The collective memory shapes a society.
But, there is something to be optimistic about. The Bane here, is the boon. Latest research on distortion of memories points to, how erasing and fixing memory can be a cure to PTSD, Depression and anxiety. That’s promising!
Most of these illnesses are accompanied by an exorbitant amount of guilt. Did I do something wrong? am I the reason? These are the thoughts that prompt the vicious cycle of thoughts-the uncontrollable chain reaction ready to explode. Guilt makes a person vulnerable than the most vulnerable. It breaks you down even when you are convinced about your moral meter. It haunts you like a wild beast enclosed deep down in the chamber of your mind.Screeching and clawing it will gnaw you from within. Above all guilt is a good fuel on which narcissism and borderline tendencies of others find a fertile breeding ground. Slowly becoming a weed on your land is something that you can avoid. The key is to trust yourself while being sceptical about your souvenirs. Your thoughts are not always you. They can be shaped for betterment.
