4 ms·

You don't even need to go to the ancient world to see this. A rudimentary look at genealogy will show you that even in the 19th century. If a child under 2 die

by cletus 7y ago

You don't even need to go to the ancient world to see this. A rudimentary look at genealogy will show you that even in the 19th century. If a child under 2 dies, you'll often see reuse of that name for the next child. There were cultural standards, particularly in Europe, around naming children after paternal and maternal grandparents and so forth (such that often you can tell what number a child was by their name if you know the relative's names). Think about that for a second. Let's say you had a child who died at 6 months old. 1-2 years down the track you had another child and you'd use the same name. We have totally different expectations of mortality than a century ago. A child born today in the developed world is incredibly likely to make it to adulthood. It's simply not conceivable than in an era of greater infant mortality that there weren't different attitudes to the death of a child.

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
that's actually a pretty effective way for overwriting/replacing your bad memories with something new. Less drastic / and practical examples: Say you went through a really bad breakup and your partner let you down by cheating on you with your best friend. You still love them and really want to those memories gone. You got 2 options: 1) stop listening to favorite songs, no longer visit specific restaurants or pubs, stop doing a sport you did together, 2) replace these memories by doing exactly those things with your new partner. soon you will have forgotten about them. Instead what remains is that activity/place now being your memory and not associated to another person (or the 2 of you).
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  I wouldn't recommend letting your new partner know that you're doing that though.
  - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
    yes would be a very bad idea :-/ there would probably be better examples (dealing with a breakup was in retrospect a terrible use-case to make my point).
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago
  > that's actually a pretty effective way for overwriting/replacing your bad memories Please avoid this oversimplification of human psyche. We are not fruit flies, we are thousands of times more complex than "replacing your bad memories"
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  That's... pretty dumb way of dealing with breakup, and I can't see it reliably working as you describe. Humans are way more complicated than that. What has at least a reasonable chance of working in similar situation - come to peace with whatever happened and simply move on. It doesn't matter anymore. Don't cover bad memories with new shiny ones and pretend those old ones aren't there - of course they are, till your last breath they will be. It really doesn't matter who did what and who hurt who once things are over, it's over. Process things, expose yourself to them (at least for me it works, weird as it may sounds smoking weed and mulling things over and over makes them closed quite effectively in relatively short time - but that's my own unique mindset, no clue why it works like that). They are your emotions after all, part of you. No point trying to act differently. How to know you really processed them? For example meeting your ex won't trigger any stupid emotional reaction. Imagine granny meeting grandpa when they are 80, would they still hold grudges? What would be the point?
  - cthalupa 7y ago
    I think I have to at least somewhat agree with GP here. Obviously you need to come to terms with the relationship ending and move on in general, but I think there's some truth to making new memories in these places being beneficial. I would argue it isn't necessarily specific to a partner, however. I don't frequently meet up with my ex's, but have caught up with them for lunch or other things from time to time. I don't really have any sort of emotional reaction to those - the relationship is over, I've got no desire to get back together with them, etc. And it's easy for me, because I know and accept that who we are now wouldn't work out, and that's why we broke up. But memories don't always have that same perspective. They're a crystallized point in time, and maybe that point in time is before whatever happened or changed that resulted in the relationship not working out. To me those "ghosts" can be significantly tougher to deal with than interacting with the person in present day. Making more memories in those places doesn't make me forget, but it does help redefine it as just another memory in a long list of them. It gives me options of other things to remember.
kazen44 7y ago
Also, illness and mortality was far more definitive prior to modern medical breakthroughs. Prior to world war 2, getting ill from a wide range of highly deadly or incapacitating diseases (polio for example) was quite common and far more fatal then it is today. The culture around mortality has changed a lot in my opinion.
- Someone 7y ago
  Also, “highly deadly” included any serious open wound (open leg fracture, for example), stepping into a rusty nail or even getting a serious cold. I think pneumonia, the flu, tuberculosis and diphtheria killed more people than polio (https://www.ncdemography.org/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-of-death-1900-v-2010/ https://www.ncdemography.org/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-... doesn’t even mention it)
  - benibela 7y ago
    Tuberculosis did not go away. World wide it still kills 1.5 million people / year and 25% of the population is infected.
ncarroll 7y ago
This happened to Salvador Dali. His older brother, Salvador died a few months before he was born. I once (a long time ago, sorry I don't have a link) saw a documentary that claimed his fascination with counterfeit art had to do with his feeling like a copy of his brother.
addHocker 7y ago
Also, the individual person was not so much important, but the role they had to fullfill. You were the hoovesmiths son, yoou had to fit into that gap, like music or carpetering all you want. The roles we switch so dynamically, where once a heave cloth you doned once your life and then wore them till the end.
brutos 7y ago
My grandmother has nine children. Seven of those survived and two did not. This was very common in the area she lived then. To this day, however only in private moments, she talks about the two that did not make it. The loss of the two children many decades ago still brings her a lot of pain. She gave the name of one of the children that did not survive to a later child, however that never erased the suffering. I think we should be more kind to our ancestors. Just because they lived in fucked up times, compared to our current standards, does not mean they experienced a different quality of suffering.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  I think you might be onto something. Today's folks, me including, take suffering, be it physical or psychical as something exceptional, the worst of the worst situation in life and will do just about anything to get rid of it. And in many cases we have some ways to help with it. Compare it to times where you had to simply endure suffering (and everybody suffered somehow), be it headache, badly healed fracture, being gang raped during some war/raid by bandits, seeing your wife/child dying during childbirth and so on. And nowhere to escape to. Apart from alcohol/natural drugs which produced many addicts - drunks were part of many societies since ever and story was often the same as today
- derefr 7y ago
  > Just because they lived in fucked up times, compared to our current standards, does not mean they experienced a different quality of suffering. Perhaps it's more about "you can get used to anything." Happiness set-point theory, etc. If you're always experiencing some low level of pain, then the pain soon stops being distracting. It still has pain qualia, if you focus on it; but those qualia no longer impact your life. You learn to function around/through that pain. It stops having relevance to your brain's decision-making process. It stops being processed consciously. And someone who has learned to do that, if they experience a set, larger amount of pain (a tooth being extracted, say), will experience less subjective pain relative to someone not already experiencing that low constant underlying pain, because the relative amount of pain they experienced—the pain they haven't learned to ignore, the pain that leaps to conscious attention—will be less for them, than it is for the person who normally experiences no pain at all. Now take that concept and apply it to mental anguish or guilt/shame. I would expect that it would imply that people who lived in times where everyone had all sorts of reasons to be anguished, and thus were low-level constantly anguished—would end up less likely to get PTSD, simply because there are fewer things in their lives that can truly "pin the needle" of anguish enough to cause PTSD, when the tare on their "enough anguish to rise to conscious attention" scale has been reset higher.
SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
> If a child under 2 dies, you'll often see reuse of that name for the next child. This is apparently the backstory as to why the musician Richard D James called himself "Aphex Twin"
saalweachter 7y ago
This struck me when I was reading up on SIDS and wondering how people could go so long without realizing that, if you put your babies down to sleep wrong, something like 1 in 1000 of them will die. And then you look at the historical statistics and realize that, depending on your time and place, something like 250-400 in 1000 infants died. And aside from how viscerally terrifying that thought is, it's no wonder you couldn't notice that extra 1 in 1000 until you fixed childhood plagues and nutrition. It was the terrifying scourge of the 80's, but just a drop in the bucket historically.

by cletus 7y ago

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago

that's actually a pretty effective way for overwriting/replacing your bad memories with something new. Less drastic / and practical examples: Say you went through a really bad breakup and your partner let you down by cheating on you with your best friend. You still love them and really want to those memories gone. You got 2 options: 1) stop listening to favorite songs, no longer visit specific restaurants or pubs, stop doing a sport you did together, 2) replace these memories by doing exactly those things with your new partner. soon you will have forgotten about them. Instead what remains is that activity/place now being your memory and not associated to another person (or the 2 of you).

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I wouldn't recommend letting your new partner know that you're doing that though.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
  yes would be a very bad idea :-/ there would probably be better examples (dealing with a breakup was in retrospect a terrible use-case to make my point).
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
> that's actually a pretty effective way for overwriting/replacing your bad memories Please avoid this oversimplification of human psyche. We are not fruit flies, we are thousands of times more complex than "replacing your bad memories"
saiya-jin 7y ago
That's... pretty dumb way of dealing with breakup, and I can't see it reliably working as you describe. Humans are way more complicated than that. What has at least a reasonable chance of working in similar situation - come to peace with whatever happened and simply move on. It doesn't matter anymore. Don't cover bad memories with new shiny ones and pretend those old ones aren't there - of course they are, till your last breath they will be. It really doesn't matter who did what and who hurt who once things are over, it's over. Process things, expose yourself to them (at least for me it works, weird as it may sounds smoking weed and mulling things over and over makes them closed quite effectively in relatively short time - but that's my own unique mindset, no clue why it works like that). They are your emotions after all, part of you. No point trying to act differently. How to know you really processed them? For example meeting your ex won't trigger any stupid emotional reaction. Imagine granny meeting grandpa when they are 80, would they still hold grudges? What would be the point?
- cthalupa 7y ago
  I think I have to at least somewhat agree with GP here. Obviously you need to come to terms with the relationship ending and move on in general, but I think there's some truth to making new memories in these places being beneficial. I would argue it isn't necessarily specific to a partner, however. I don't frequently meet up with my ex's, but have caught up with them for lunch or other things from time to time. I don't really have any sort of emotional reaction to those - the relationship is over, I've got no desire to get back together with them, etc. And it's easy for me, because I know and accept that who we are now wouldn't work out, and that's why we broke up. But memories don't always have that same perspective. They're a crystallized point in time, and maybe that point in time is before whatever happened or changed that resulted in the relationship not working out. To me those "ghosts" can be significantly tougher to deal with than interacting with the person in present day. Making more memories in those places doesn't make me forget, but it does help redefine it as just another memory in a long list of them. It gives me options of other things to remember.

kazen44 7y ago

Also, illness and mortality was far more definitive prior to modern medical breakthroughs. Prior to world war 2, getting ill from a wide range of highly deadly or incapacitating diseases (polio for example) was quite common and far more fatal then it is today. The culture around mortality has changed a lot in my opinion.

Someone 7y ago
Also, “highly deadly” included any serious open wound (open leg fracture, for example), stepping into a rusty nail or even getting a serious cold. I think pneumonia, the flu, tuberculosis and diphtheria killed more people than polio (https://www.ncdemography.org/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-of-death-1900-v-2010/ https://www.ncdemography.org/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-... doesn’t even mention it)
- benibela 7y ago
  Tuberculosis did not go away. World wide it still kills 1.5 million people / year and 25% of the population is infected.

ncarroll 7y ago

This happened to Salvador Dali. His older brother, Salvador died a few months before he was born. I once (a long time ago, sorry I don't have a link) saw a documentary that claimed his fascination with counterfeit art had to do with his feeling like a copy of his brother.

addHocker 7y ago

Also, the individual person was not so much important, but the role they had to fullfill. You were the hoovesmiths son, yoou had to fit into that gap, like music or carpetering all you want. The roles we switch so dynamically, where once a heave cloth you doned once your life and then wore them till the end.

brutos 7y ago

My grandmother has nine children. Seven of those survived and two did not. This was very common in the area she lived then. To this day, however only in private moments, she talks about the two that did not make it. The loss of the two children many decades ago still brings her a lot of pain. She gave the name of one of the children that did not survive to a later child, however that never erased the suffering. I think we should be more kind to our ancestors. Just because they lived in fucked up times, compared to our current standards, does not mean they experienced a different quality of suffering.

saiya-jin 7y ago
I think you might be onto something. Today's folks, me including, take suffering, be it physical or psychical as something exceptional, the worst of the worst situation in life and will do just about anything to get rid of it. And in many cases we have some ways to help with it. Compare it to times where you had to simply endure suffering (and everybody suffered somehow), be it headache, badly healed fracture, being gang raped during some war/raid by bandits, seeing your wife/child dying during childbirth and so on. And nowhere to escape to. Apart from alcohol/natural drugs which produced many addicts - drunks were part of many societies since ever and story was often the same as today
derefr 7y ago
> Just because they lived in fucked up times, compared to our current standards, does not mean they experienced a different quality of suffering. Perhaps it's more about "you can get used to anything." Happiness set-point theory, etc. If you're always experiencing some low level of pain, then the pain soon stops being distracting. It still has pain qualia, if you focus on it; but those qualia no longer impact your life. You learn to function around/through that pain. It stops having relevance to your brain's decision-making process. It stops being processed consciously. And someone who has learned to do that, if they experience a set, larger amount of pain (a tooth being extracted, say), will experience less subjective pain relative to someone not already experiencing that low constant underlying pain, because the relative amount of pain they experienced—the pain they haven't learned to ignore, the pain that leaps to conscious attention—will be less for them, than it is for the person who normally experiences no pain at all. Now take that concept and apply it to mental anguish or guilt/shame. I would expect that it would imply that people who lived in times where everyone had all sorts of reasons to be anguished, and thus were low-level constantly anguished—would end up less likely to get PTSD, simply because there are fewer things in their lives that can truly "pin the needle" of anguish enough to cause PTSD, when the tare on their "enough anguish to rise to conscious attention" scale has been reset higher.

SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago

> If a child under 2 dies, you'll often see reuse of that name for the next child. This is apparently the backstory as to why the musician Richard D James called himself "Aphex Twin"

saalweachter 7y ago

This struck me when I was reading up on SIDS and wondering how people could go so long without realizing that, if you put your babies down to sleep wrong, something like 1 in 1000 of them will die. And then you look at the historical statistics and realize that, depending on your time and place, something like 250-400 in 1000 infants died. And aside from how viscerally terrifying that thought is, it's no wonder you couldn't notice that extra 1 in 1000 until you fixed childhood plagues and nutrition. It was the terrifying scourge of the 80's, but just a drop in the bucket historically.