Day 16

Well, I'm imprisoned on Independence Day, and everything is exactly as it always is. But then that is to be expected. You don't get $8500 for nothing.

I just listened to a podcast of the NPR show "RadioLab" about memory and forgetting, which impressed on me the value of writing down things as they happen. Memory, it seems, is very unreliable. Every memory is just a re-imagining of how things probably were, not a straight recollection of how things were.

I've heard a lot about memory in recent months. Stumbling on Happiness talks about the unreliability of memory as related to how it is a part of our efforts to predict the future and make good decisions. The Assault on Reason talks about the brain's inability to distinguish between things we haven't actually seen, but have seen on TV (like Mt Everest) and what we have actually seen.

The evidence supports the conclusion that memory and imagination are basically the same thing. I think it was a Terry Pratchett character who said that humans walk through time backwards, able to see what is behind us and not toward what we walk. It seems better to say that we walk through time with our eyes closed, able to see neither our goal nor the race we have already run, just imagining what it must have been like and what it might soon be like. At best, if we walk through time backwards, our eyes are only half open.

It is tempting to say then that all we have is the moment in which we live, but perhaps even these senses are inaccurate! It is a fact that the soldier who is shot on the battlefield hurts less and asks for less morphine than someone who is shot in their own city. Why? The soldier who is shot instantly and subconsciously predicts (imagines) the glory, the getting to go home, the warm reception by friends and family, the duty he has done for his country. A shopkeeper who is shot in a hold-up instantly imagines the hospital bills, being out of work, the worry he will cause his family, the pointlessness of his injury. All this imagining happens even before the brain has processed the pain signals, and the better story that the soldier tells himself acts like a drug that literally causes him to feel less pain.

It works like this: We use a bit of present sensory data and a lot of past experiences to create our predictions of the future. We use our predictions of the future, our present moment, and al ot of other past experiences to create our memories of the past. WE use some sensory data, some memories, and some future imagination to perceive our present.

So we imagine our past, we imagine our futures, and our imagination is as important to our present as our sensory impulses! How do we know what is actually happening, actually happened, or actually will happen? Basically, we don't. And I don't think it matters.

Even though imperfect, the present is still the best (or most realistically perceived) time, partially because we use everything we sense and everything we can know and imagine toward the purpose of figuring out "what is going on right now" and "what should I do about it?"

I happen to be a huge fan of the imagination and love the fact that it plays such a huge role in every single moment of my life.

Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, and Al Gore, author of The Assault on Reason, both believe that the world would be a better place if people acknowledge the huge role of imagination, and quit thinking they have the lock on reality. Gilbert talks about individual happiness, and suggests that the best way to make accurate predictions is to find someone or many someones who are currently in the situation you are contemplating being in instead of relying on your own ideas or memory. Gore is more interested in politics and thinks that TV deceives us into thinking our imagination isn't involved. In fact, we set our imaginations on the backburner, and with our conscious imaginations go our faculty for critical reasoning.

Everyone would agree that a pretty good way to work out reality from our imaginations is to talk about it with as many people as possible with as many perspectives as possible. Gore, ever the rationalist, thinks democracy can only happen when political ideas are continuously under debate. Contact with people is like the sun acting on our internal clocks.

Another protection against the ever-fallable imagination that I have not heard anyone suggest is to write. It's like in Memento. In Memento, the hero only has a 5 or 10 minute memory, but he is determined to revenge his murdered wife (her dead body being his last memory), so he writes himself numerous notes, and tattoos important information on his skin.

I think the best way to keep your memory as close to accurate as it can be would be to write regularly. Then, years later, after your imagination has comletely rewritten a day, read what you wrote that day, and instantly, your story corrects itself.

Of course, not even the best writer can truly capture even a moment, much less a day, so imagination still reigns supreme. Reading your own journal is little different than reading a good novel: the imagination rules both. I kind of like that. I'd cool to imagine it.

Now, on this Independence Day, I will close my eyes and imagine fireworks and barbeque and the freedom that I know I actually have.