Memory'S Ghost: The Nature Of Memory And The Strange Tale Of Mr. M Book

Here we find that squares of the mind are stranger than we imagine; the memory of our own traits does not depend on our collection of personal memories. They inhabit separate provinces. We do not arrive at summaries about ourselves by concluding from instances. Rather, we acquire and store a sketchy knowledge of ourselves more as we store word fragments than as we store the events of our days.

Makes me feel better about my near complete lack of childhood memories. I can just substitute in some imagined events and be like everyone else.

It is only now understood that memory and imagination are at base the same process, and they can contaminate one another. Because of the abstracted nature of our grasp of the world, we lose directness, but at the same time we gain another power. In the world itself, a rock may not bend, nor may it merge with rocks of other colors. But the representations of these among our neurons can bend or mix in any sort of chimera, any felicitous or fearful hybrid. Neurons react not only to direct sensations from the world but to signals from each other. What are uncooperative solids outside us may be combined and recombined as easily as colored dyes in a transparent gel, as easily as shadow and light merge.