Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer.
Jots and thoughts:
Monotony collapses time [I'd say compresses it; zip-files it, even]; novelty unfolds it.... If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next- and disappear. That's why it's important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exciting locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories [actually, anchoring memories to memorable events- we are ALWAYS creating new memories; they just don't stick if we judge them unimportant. At least this way they can be important in context of an important event/time in our life.] stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perceptions of our lives. (p. 77)
This shows in a way why the writing doesn't grab me; he says one thing and then when he restates it, he actually undermines or distorts what he just said.
And he doesn't clarify or integrate points often, for example in the continuing excerpt:
William James first wrote about the curious warping and foreshortening of psychological time in his Principles of Psychology in 1890: "In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out," he wrote. [See, here is where he needs to explain, or refer too, or at least later in the book tie together, why it is so difficult to remember early childhood, when everything is REALLY really new: because our brains are still forming. I don't know why, but the lack of qualification is disorienting and off-putting.] "But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse." Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. (p. 77)
It is hard not to feel as though a tremendous devolution has taken place between that Golden Age [of memory] and our own comparatively leaden one. People used to labor to furnish their minds. They invested in the acquisition of memories the same way we invest in the acquisition of things. But today, beyond the Oxford examination hall's oaken doors, the vast majority of us don't trust our memories. We find shortcuts to avoid relying on them. We complain about them endlessly, and see even their smallest lapses as evidence that they're starting to fail us entirely. (pp. 134-5)
When the Egyptian god Toth presented his gift of writing to King Thamus, the king's response was:
"If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls,: he told the god. "They will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful' they will rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from withihn themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminding. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men." (pp. 138-9)
Well, there's the modern world summed up for you, eh?
The OK Plateau
Rhetorica ad Herennium
Phoenix by Peter of Ravenna
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