If all your memories were erased, what kind of person would you be?
Have you wondered how ‘less-human’ you will be without your memory? Not much importance is placed on memory but it determines our continuous existence on planet earth. Without memory I doubt if any human being can be regarded as rational being.
If you have watched films or seen someone who loss his memory, you can only imagine how ‘new’ the person is. In their brains, there is no single thing they can relate with. They look so confused and everything you tell them looks very strange and new. If you look at the things we have learnt from infant to adulthood, you will agree with me that it could be very tough to just loss all suddenly.
To properly grasp the idea behind this topic, let’s try and explain the meaning of memory and what it is all about.
Memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the human brain. It can be thought of in general terms as the use of past experience to affect or influence current behaviour. Source
Memory begins from the day we become conscious about the reality surrounding us as infants. Memory is memory because the things it remembers are picked by any of our senses. Memory moves from short-term to long-term. If you learn how to make food, for instance, your memory records this process and stores it in short or long-term memory storage. Your consciousness, interests and desires about what you learnt depend on where this process is stored. This is also determined by repetition. The more you repeat this process, the more it stores in your long-term memory. This is why people say practice makes perfect.
Memory, it should be noted is related to learning. Once we learn anything, to retrieve that thing later when we need it, we need our memories to do that for us. It is the storage house of everything we learn consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes we see things and pay no attention to them but having seen these things through our eyes felt them through our senses, the memory record these things and we can get them back in the process of remembering or recollection. The memory rely on learning because it is what we learn consciously or unconsciously that we store and retrieve from our memories whenever we need them.
If memory is important and our continuous existence relies so much on it, how less human can you be without it? Assuming this important memory is taken from you, how human can you be?
Without your memory, you wont recognize your parent, family; you won’t remember all you learnt in school even if you were a professor before the incident. You will become what John Locke called tabula rasa (an empty slate). In this confused state, would you still refer to such person as human being? If such person accidentally kills another man, will you judge the person as morally wrong? Do not forget that morality is for conscious human beings. In this case, is this person amoral (lacking a moral sense) or immoral (Not conforming to accepted standards of morality)?
For me, I think the person is amoral! A being without memories of past things cannot be judged morally. Such person cannot also be called ‘human’ in the right sense of the world. To refer to such person as human is to assume the person still have all the qualities that makes one human. But without memory, a ‘human’ is just like every other thing out there. I cannot imagine human without memories. Assuming we forgot all we learnt, what would become of us? Can we still talk about progress and development when we do not even know what it means to progress or developed.
A human without memory for me stops being a ‘human’ because all the attributes and qualities that makes us human is already lacking.
What is your take on this topic? What kind of human would you be without your memory?
Thanks for reading my blog. Your boy @smyle the philosopher.
A person who losses his/her memory is like someone without a brain, while the brain is there it does not have the ability to store or remember a single information. Some people even go as far as forgetting family members and friends, some even forget their own name. But with time as in the case of short time memory, the individual can begin to remember people and events gradually. Thanks @smyle the philosopher for this write-up, when ever I visit your blog, I leave more educated than when I visited.
Well said sir! Thank you for your contribution
You are welcome @smyle.
Memory loss is very frustrating. You looked confused and feel so strange. I understand because sometimes when I try to remember a name or an event and I can't I don't feel so good about it so imagine forgetting all your life. Gush
Yeah that is very hard! I can relate.
Human is only human because it has all the characteristics a human should posses in which rational thinking is included. A amoral as you have described shouldn't be judged at all cos its just like killing a mad man that abused a little boy. He's irrational and that's why they have a correction home. My take is our memory is as important as our being itself
Yes! It is an important aspect of our lives.
@smyle well said, memory plays a prominent role in humans, if we didnt have this, i wonder how everyone will be, people will not even recall names
That's hard to say bro. More of a an emptiness would i be if i hadn't my memory card..
This post is not about memory card!
LOl you got it wrong. I actually knew it wasn't memory card. i was relating it to what is upsrairs.
Our memory determines our decisions.
A man without memory is just like a transplanted flower that don't really knew where it was first planted.
Well written bro! Thanks
Hello @smyle Am happy to be here, i Agree with you. A Human with loss of memory Has lost it all if he does not recover, i cant imagine seeing a fourty Year Old man with loss of memory omg!! He will forget all he Has learnt from child Good. To me if the loss cant be recovered again, the person does not deserve being called a Human. You said it all sir
Very scary reality. Thanks for your contribution.
Quizzical thinking about it, a human without memory is more or less a zombie
😀
I think i agree!
With Memory loss, everything is lost ..
It'd be difficult and hard to live
Nice write-up @smyle
Yes! Thanks
Memory loss is a bad disease! Thanks for d research. Nice write up!