{"id":349,"date":"2015-10-01T12:40:11","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T12:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=349"},"modified":"2025-06-24T20:48:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T20:48:29","slug":"selective-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/selective-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Selective Memory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0History Is What We Make It<\/a>\u00a0I wrote about the vagaries of our memories – how we remember some things, forget others and make up yet more!!\u00a0 Yesterday I was given a rather clear example of just how ‘strange’ our memory can be when it comes to selecting a particular event to forget!!<\/p>\n

I was talking to a friend about one of my favourite subjects – the fact that seemingly small or unrelated things that happen can have a very significant effect on our life course – and reflecting on the fact that – unusually for that time – I managed to stretch my education out by a year or two more than was ‘average’.\u00a0 This resulted in me starting work at a slightly older age than my ‘contemporaries’.\u00a0 In theory I could have finished school and obtained a degree before I was twenty years of age.<\/p>\n

What actually happened was that I started my first job soon after my 23rd birthday.\u00a0 There are lots of effects of that – but the one that was ‘relevant’ was that I attended a total of seven of the residential music schools that were run during the summer holidays – two as a student and then five as a member of the teaching staff.<\/p>\n

The weird memory bit is that of the seven I can remember six quite clearly – but the other one has seemingly left no trace in my mind (it was the fifth of the seven).\u00a0 At that time I kept a little book in which\u00a0 I listed the concerts that I was taking part in, so I am able to look back and check where and when they happened.\u00a0 I even resorted to Google Maps and went in to Streetview to see where we spent those ten days – still no hint of recognition!!<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t know where to start on figuring out why one – of the seven – has been completely erased.\u00a0 Perhaps there was nothing ‘special’ about that one.\u00a0 Perhaps some of the memories I have of the other six are actually transferred from that one – but it does seem strange that I don’t even recognise the venue.<\/p>\n

The point of this blog entry is not to speculate on the reasons why – instead it is being written to illustrate the truth about how our memories can be very selective – and often without any obvious reason why.\u00a0 Whilst I am fully aware that I don’t remember everything that has ever happened to me it was perplexing why in this case my memory had been quite so specific.<\/p>\n

We would do well to remember (isn’t that ironic in this context) that our memories are far from perfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In\u00a0History Is What We Make It\u00a0I wrote about the vagaries of our memories – how we remember some things, forget others and make up yet more!!\u00a0 Yesterday I was given a rather clear example of just how ‘strange’ our memory can be when it comes to selecting a particular event to forget!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[79,103,119],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ignorance","tag-cognition","tag-philosophical","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3039,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/3039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systemsthink.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}