To Ignore, and Forget.
There are innumerable lenses and narratives through which to view the experience and development which constitutes a human being. If you ask Woody Allen what it mean to grow up, maybe he'd tell you it's all about luck. If you could ask Freud, he might tell you it's about the development of a psyche. If you ask George W. Bush, he might say it's all about faith, penitence, and prayer. If you ask Ayn Rand, she'd probably say something about the ability to reason objectively. In each case, it is how well we perform in the context of a specific narrative that will determine the people we become.
If you ask me, it's all about learning what we can and cannot ignore, and in the process of ignoring, forget.
If you ask me, it's all about learning what we can and cannot ignore, and in the process of ignoring, forget.
posted by B S Goldsmith at 11/16/2006 02:37:00 PM
12 Comments:
personally, i can see where you're coming from here. what exactly do you mean by ignore though? it seems to me that some things which would be better ignored, are impossible to completely ignore. unless you mean brush off.
But what if you could?
It isn't about absolutes; it's about how good you are at it/become. No one is able to only pay attention only to the "important" or "better" things all the time. By the same token, no one has a perfectly formed psyche.
Oh, you structuralist, you.
As I get older, the more I become convinced of the primacy of one singular and inescapable narrative:
ACGT (and sometimes, U).
p.s. paging Nietzsche to thread.
Wow, I've never even heard of that book. I just ordered it.
I like to think of myself as a post-structuralist pragmatist. And while we post-structuralist pragmatists have no choice but grant you ACGTists technical primacy, by no means would we ever agree that it amounts to a singular or inescapable narrative (lest we digress to structuralism).
Word.
And bro, you are going to love that book. One of my all-time favorites. Absolute classic.
If ACGT (U) is inescapable there's hardly a reason to discuss. Unless we're including GATTACA style genetic engineering in the conversation.
I guess my complaint is that no matter how good I get at ignoring some things just won't be ignored. And I would argue that were I able to ignore them to a higher degree it would indicate a poorly, not perfectly formed psyche. (Dilusion.)
Or, even though my psyche would be better off avoiding certain things completely, to do so in the denial of reality makes the cost too high.
Or, more simply put. Some things are out of our control. Adjusting to them is just as important as ignoring them. In my opinion. Which is not to say ignoring isn't part of adjusting.
Shiiit.
"...it is how well we perform in the context of a specific narrative which will determine the people we become."
I think you may have read my post to suggest that the better we are at ignoring, the better off we'll be. My bad for being a little too oblique. What I'm suggesting--as best I can put it into a single sentence--is that, for better of for worse, the things you (try to) ignore make you who you are.
Just to poorly paraphrase Nietzsche:
On the contrary Brad, ignoring/forgetting is essential for life and action.
We all survive on a myth of our identity, both personally and culturally: moments we choose to remember and those we choose to forget. To truly understand the terrible injustice of reality and the terrible injustice in our hearts would be debilitating. Nothing can survive a historical audit, for it always brings to light all that is false, crude, inhuman, absurd, and violent about our nature.
well then. . .
i agree.
and i should probably read more philosophy, maybe i'd have a better context going into this discussion.
let the record show that i came back to this post almost exactly a year later (totally randomly) with pretty much the exact same thought.
this is almost creepy: i listened to this episode of radiolab during my flight back from dc last night (11/17/2011). there's a whole segment about how forgetting is a crucial part of the human mind. it led me back here almost exactly five years after my original post. glad i remembered it was here.
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