Wow, great post, Colin. It’s remarkable to me how we are sometimes on the same wavelength even with our Substack posts. What you say here *reminds* me so much of what I just wrote.
I don't know. Not having visual memories -- and understanding how ayptical that is -- I am skeptical of making claims about how these things work in humans, though I agree we are different from machines. I can't re-animate; all I can do is store. I appreciate experience all the more because all I have is the one experience; I cannot relive it as most do.
Thank you Hollis. You are pointing out a crucial limitation in the general model of memory I was working with. It's a humbling and necessary reminder that 'human experience' isn't a monolith, and my description of memory as 're-animation' is a framework that clearly doesn't apply to everyone.
What I find so powerful is that your experience leads you to the same core value the essay champions, the sanctity of the unrepeatable, unmediated moment, but from an entirely different path. The idea of appreciating the initial experience more intensely because it cannot be relived makes the argument for protecting its integrity even more urgent.
Colin, I so enjoyed this well written post conveying a depth of feeling about Living the Moment by being Really There, experiencing it for yourself, in all its nuances and gloriousness.
As soon as I read the title, I thought, herein will be a life reflection on Rosen’s book, 'The Extinction of Experience', a book well worth reading. People vicariously watch themselves through a lens snapshotting their own memories happening. I’ve found when I’ve asked younger people about a moment, months later, it is but a flicker in their memory, not unlike those taken on SnapChat that previously disappear in 24 hours. A memory lived vicariously can not possibly match a wholly lived in the moment experience of being Really Truly there. It is why we still choose to travel, to be where others have been, to stand at that shore, where a friend snapped a photo.
Each of us views life from a personal lens. Where one may take meaning from one aspect, I will make meaning of another. This has happened to me time and time again. Looking at the snapped moment, without having experienced it fully in the first place, how can one make meaning of these moments later in life ? The act of remembrance requires full presence to transform it into a substance of the experience. We attach meaning to small things while in the experience, which fills the lens of our mind when we recall it. When I previously became too absorbed with getting snapshots at an event, like a birthday party, I noted my own lack of substance, even when looking at the photos shortly after the event.
As someone older, memories of when I was so much younger have over the years taken on significance and meaning in the aftermath of years passing. It is all in my mind, not elsewhere to view. It would be interesting to ask a Gen Z to look at photos taken even five years ago, and to ask them to recall and remember the event. I'm curious what they'd relate about that experience. Would they say it has created a fractured memory? I believe Freya India has written about exactly this loss.
On my desk I have: "Live Your life Fully, Moment by Moment by Moment." This is akin to your “memory is all we have”. I agree that raw experience matters, fully living in the moment; it is critical to what becomes a memory, for without that, what memory would we have ? But, as you convey here, living well is even beyond that really truly lived experience. It is how we craft those moments, those experiences as the years pass, how we reflect on them, having lived fully in those experiences. Reconstructed memories made later life, made from memories that were fully lived experiences, are indeed all we have at the end of a well-lived life.
Thank you Wendy. I really like that you recognized Rosen's influence immediately, and you capture the core issue perfectly, that a documented moment often lacks the texture of a fully inhabited one. Your own experience with snapshots gets to the center of this. That sense of being a documentarian rather than a participant is exactly the trade-off I worry about. Thankfully you were conscious enough to recognize it.
Your question about younger generations and the potential for a "fractured memory" is absolutely crucial. It's a deep concern, and I'm grateful for the reminder about Freya India's work on the subject; I will definitely seek it out. It's a vital part of this ongoing discussion.
It’s wonderful that you have a similar personal maxim on your desk. It seems we're both wrestling with how to maintain that essential skill and overcoming losing what makes us human.
My copy of Rosen’s book is underlined and annotated. In her chapter ’Mediated Pleasures’, where she cited Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, "Questions of Travel”, I paused to read it. When the poem shifts to, “surely it would have been a pity not to have seen…”, I grieved, for it is not only the younger generation that is mediating experiences. She related the story of tourists handing over their phones to the bus drivers, who’d take those phones to the pinnacle of Heidelberg's Castle in Germany, and snap a photo, just so each tourist could boast that, “I was there.” How can those tourists feel the inner joy of being at the pinnacle if they were never there, never having seen what they’d have experienced individually, sensually and physically? In sharing that photo in the retelling of their trip, there will be no shining aura of a lived moment, for the photo is a fractured memory.
I think of when I raised my sons. Taking photos required effort, and were expensive. Today, photos require no effort and require no cost. Yet, I’ve found that my internal stored memories of my sons are vivid, easily recalled and re-experienced. I lived those moments. When I watched my first son walk or heard his first laugh, that moment seared into my mind. It remains as vivid as the day it occurred. Recently, when relating it to that son, I felt the joy in the moment, as if it were happening right then. My son told me that my whole body radiated a joy he was at loss for words to describe.He experienced what I felt; this retelling will remain in his own memoirs, long after I am gone.
People outsource their memories to Facebook and Instagram, their curiosity to instant Google answers, their sense of place and direction to GSP, their emotions to apps, and increasingly, their life decisions to AI. Where then are their experiences within their own mind?
When I was twelve, I was profoundly changed by this sentence, attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Spiritual beings embodied to experience it humanly, with the human spectrum of senses, ones uniquely our own. How then is a spiritual being living a human experience- if its humanity is increasingly outsourced, and mediated?
Colin, it is our mutual wrestling to restore and retain what makes us human that resonates profoundly in your writing. I appreciate your eloquence, and depth of thought.
After I read it, I had it read to me, as poetry is best heard.
With my eyes closed, the grief of loss is rather profound, if one does not feel the nuances of experiencing a moment.
The poem itself is a flowing of thought, which is what we tend to do, isn't it, when we experience living fully aware in moments, and the experience it is.
"poetry is best heard," so very true. I like those flowing thoughts, being fully present and experiencing the moment is so important.. it strikes me that this should be a taught skill early enough in life so that young people maintain it into older age.
I'm fairly certain we both learned this early in life.
My family owned no TV when I was young, so my life was filled with reading, conversations and walks in nature. I feel blessed beyond words to have been gifted this. It is a tremendous loss when a child does not acquire a yearning to just live within a moment.
This skill to fully experience a moment is fast disappearing. Yet, It is heartening that there is increasing awareness about this loss. Perhaps you saw this recent post on the loss :https://www.whitenoise.email/p/all-the-light-outside-the-screen. This line is reflective of the poem, "He remembered the unpleasant squeak of the cheap styrofoam cup, the sour burn of the Colombian brew, the gull that stole his donut—because no audience had rented that memory."
Thank you Wendy, for sharing such profound insights and personal memories.
Your framing of this as "outsourcing", our memories to Instagram, our curiosity to Google, our humanity to AI, is absolutely brilliant, a precise and chilling diagnosis of the problem. It perfectly names the slow erosion we are trying to describe.
I agree the story of the tourists at Heidelberg Castle is devastating; it's the ultimate example of a "fractured memory," proof of presence (albeit at the bottom of the steps) without the experience. It stands in such stark contrast to your beautiful, living memory of your son's first steps, a memory so potent. That is the very essence of what is at stake.
A memory is not a static file to be retrieved, but a living force that can be re-experienced and even shared across time. It's the ultimate argument for why we must fight to live our own moments.
And thank you for bringing in Teilhard de Chardin. You have elevated the discussion to its most essential level. The question you pose, how can we have a human experience if our humanity is outsourced? is the most important one we can be asking right now. It will stay with me.
Wow, great post, Colin. It’s remarkable to me how we are sometimes on the same wavelength even with our Substack posts. What you say here *reminds* me so much of what I just wrote.
Thank you Norman, your post is too - so much to think about.
I don't know. Not having visual memories -- and understanding how ayptical that is -- I am skeptical of making claims about how these things work in humans, though I agree we are different from machines. I can't re-animate; all I can do is store. I appreciate experience all the more because all I have is the one experience; I cannot relive it as most do.
Thank you Hollis. You are pointing out a crucial limitation in the general model of memory I was working with. It's a humbling and necessary reminder that 'human experience' isn't a monolith, and my description of memory as 're-animation' is a framework that clearly doesn't apply to everyone.
What I find so powerful is that your experience leads you to the same core value the essay champions, the sanctity of the unrepeatable, unmediated moment, but from an entirely different path. The idea of appreciating the initial experience more intensely because it cannot be relived makes the argument for protecting its integrity even more urgent.
Colin, I so enjoyed this well written post conveying a depth of feeling about Living the Moment by being Really There, experiencing it for yourself, in all its nuances and gloriousness.
As soon as I read the title, I thought, herein will be a life reflection on Rosen’s book, 'The Extinction of Experience', a book well worth reading. People vicariously watch themselves through a lens snapshotting their own memories happening. I’ve found when I’ve asked younger people about a moment, months later, it is but a flicker in their memory, not unlike those taken on SnapChat that previously disappear in 24 hours. A memory lived vicariously can not possibly match a wholly lived in the moment experience of being Really Truly there. It is why we still choose to travel, to be where others have been, to stand at that shore, where a friend snapped a photo.
Each of us views life from a personal lens. Where one may take meaning from one aspect, I will make meaning of another. This has happened to me time and time again. Looking at the snapped moment, without having experienced it fully in the first place, how can one make meaning of these moments later in life ? The act of remembrance requires full presence to transform it into a substance of the experience. We attach meaning to small things while in the experience, which fills the lens of our mind when we recall it. When I previously became too absorbed with getting snapshots at an event, like a birthday party, I noted my own lack of substance, even when looking at the photos shortly after the event.
As someone older, memories of when I was so much younger have over the years taken on significance and meaning in the aftermath of years passing. It is all in my mind, not elsewhere to view. It would be interesting to ask a Gen Z to look at photos taken even five years ago, and to ask them to recall and remember the event. I'm curious what they'd relate about that experience. Would they say it has created a fractured memory? I believe Freya India has written about exactly this loss.
On my desk I have: "Live Your life Fully, Moment by Moment by Moment." This is akin to your “memory is all we have”. I agree that raw experience matters, fully living in the moment; it is critical to what becomes a memory, for without that, what memory would we have ? But, as you convey here, living well is even beyond that really truly lived experience. It is how we craft those moments, those experiences as the years pass, how we reflect on them, having lived fully in those experiences. Reconstructed memories made later life, made from memories that were fully lived experiences, are indeed all we have at the end of a well-lived life.
Thank you Wendy. I really like that you recognized Rosen's influence immediately, and you capture the core issue perfectly, that a documented moment often lacks the texture of a fully inhabited one. Your own experience with snapshots gets to the center of this. That sense of being a documentarian rather than a participant is exactly the trade-off I worry about. Thankfully you were conscious enough to recognize it.
Your question about younger generations and the potential for a "fractured memory" is absolutely crucial. It's a deep concern, and I'm grateful for the reminder about Freya India's work on the subject; I will definitely seek it out. It's a vital part of this ongoing discussion.
It’s wonderful that you have a similar personal maxim on your desk. It seems we're both wrestling with how to maintain that essential skill and overcoming losing what makes us human.
My copy of Rosen’s book is underlined and annotated. In her chapter ’Mediated Pleasures’, where she cited Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, "Questions of Travel”, I paused to read it. When the poem shifts to, “surely it would have been a pity not to have seen…”, I grieved, for it is not only the younger generation that is mediating experiences. She related the story of tourists handing over their phones to the bus drivers, who’d take those phones to the pinnacle of Heidelberg's Castle in Germany, and snap a photo, just so each tourist could boast that, “I was there.” How can those tourists feel the inner joy of being at the pinnacle if they were never there, never having seen what they’d have experienced individually, sensually and physically? In sharing that photo in the retelling of their trip, there will be no shining aura of a lived moment, for the photo is a fractured memory.
I think of when I raised my sons. Taking photos required effort, and were expensive. Today, photos require no effort and require no cost. Yet, I’ve found that my internal stored memories of my sons are vivid, easily recalled and re-experienced. I lived those moments. When I watched my first son walk or heard his first laugh, that moment seared into my mind. It remains as vivid as the day it occurred. Recently, when relating it to that son, I felt the joy in the moment, as if it were happening right then. My son told me that my whole body radiated a joy he was at loss for words to describe.He experienced what I felt; this retelling will remain in his own memoirs, long after I am gone.
People outsource their memories to Facebook and Instagram, their curiosity to instant Google answers, their sense of place and direction to GSP, their emotions to apps, and increasingly, their life decisions to AI. Where then are their experiences within their own mind?
When I was twelve, I was profoundly changed by this sentence, attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Spiritual beings embodied to experience it humanly, with the human spectrum of senses, ones uniquely our own. How then is a spiritual being living a human experience- if its humanity is increasingly outsourced, and mediated?
Colin, it is our mutual wrestling to restore and retain what makes us human that resonates profoundly in your writing. I appreciate your eloquence, and depth of thought.
Questions of Travel is a beautiful thought provoking poem on memory and loss... and much more
It is a stirring poem.
After I read it, I had it read to me, as poetry is best heard.
With my eyes closed, the grief of loss is rather profound, if one does not feel the nuances of experiencing a moment.
The poem itself is a flowing of thought, which is what we tend to do, isn't it, when we experience living fully aware in moments, and the experience it is.
"poetry is best heard," so very true. I like those flowing thoughts, being fully present and experiencing the moment is so important.. it strikes me that this should be a taught skill early enough in life so that young people maintain it into older age.
I'm fairly certain we both learned this early in life.
My family owned no TV when I was young, so my life was filled with reading, conversations and walks in nature. I feel blessed beyond words to have been gifted this. It is a tremendous loss when a child does not acquire a yearning to just live within a moment.
This skill to fully experience a moment is fast disappearing. Yet, It is heartening that there is increasing awareness about this loss. Perhaps you saw this recent post on the loss :https://www.whitenoise.email/p/all-the-light-outside-the-screen. This line is reflective of the poem, "He remembered the unpleasant squeak of the cheap styrofoam cup, the sour burn of the Colombian brew, the gull that stole his donut—because no audience had rented that memory."
Thank you Wendy, for sharing such profound insights and personal memories.
Your framing of this as "outsourcing", our memories to Instagram, our curiosity to Google, our humanity to AI, is absolutely brilliant, a precise and chilling diagnosis of the problem. It perfectly names the slow erosion we are trying to describe.
I agree the story of the tourists at Heidelberg Castle is devastating; it's the ultimate example of a "fractured memory," proof of presence (albeit at the bottom of the steps) without the experience. It stands in such stark contrast to your beautiful, living memory of your son's first steps, a memory so potent. That is the very essence of what is at stake.
A memory is not a static file to be retrieved, but a living force that can be re-experienced and even shared across time. It's the ultimate argument for why we must fight to live our own moments.
And thank you for bringing in Teilhard de Chardin. You have elevated the discussion to its most essential level. The question you pose, how can we have a human experience if our humanity is outsourced? is the most important one we can be asking right now. It will stay with me.