3 ms·

Counter take: these fleeting memories are not worth being saved. A friend said it best: all your priceless mementos, souvenirs and photo albums will end up in

by csdvrx 4y ago

Counter take: these fleeting memories are not worth being saved. A friend said it best: all your priceless mementos, souvenirs and photo albums will end up in a cardboard box taken to the trash. There're some examples right here about a grandmother carefully made potted/preserved food being put in the trash. Why not skip the middleman and trash them yourselves? Odds are they are only worth it nostalgia value. Unless you want to optimize for pathological cases, like dementia in the article, I think it's better to optimize for making new experiences - and that requires freeing some "mental space". Another example: music. Trash the collection of MP3s you listened to as a kid, and start anew! Buy (and therefore discover) new things instead of clinging to the old!

nonameiguess 4y ago
I suspect this won't be popular (notice this comment is currently at the bottom of the page), but I agree with this. I suppose I'm just temperamentally very much not a hoarder, but I grew up in the pre-www era and this doesn't really resonate with me. I never wrote much down, didn't save letters, didn't take photos or videos. It doesn't really make a difference to me that Facebook might go away and iCloud will delete my photos, because I don't have a Facebook profile and don't upload anything to iCloud anyway. This seems much closer to me to the baseline human experience anyway. For the vast majority of the time humans have existed, we had neither writing nor photography. While those things are important culturally for transmitting knowledge, I don't see every individual's personal memories as being something that matters to preserve. My mom digitized a bunch of old betamax tapes five years ago and showed us the old videos when my wife and I visited for Christmas. It was interesting but not exactly critical to my life enjoyment that I be able to see school plays from kindergarten and my sister's 7th birthday party and whatever else she showed us. One of my very earliest, I supposed 3rd overall, friends, died when we were 12 from an allergic response, almost exactly like what happened in the film "My Girl." She was in some of these videos and it is the only photographic evidence of her existence I have. I don't feel like that added anything. In spite of not seeing an image of her for nearly three decades, I didn't forget her. And if I had forgotten her, well, I wouldn't be aware of it since that is what forgetting means. The sadness of forgetting is entirely abstract. No actual person is sad if no actual person remembers. The most important thing is seeing and spending time with the people I still have.
- morelisp 4y ago
  As a counter-point confirming yours, my best friend in infancy died of cancer right before our fourth birthdays. My parents (still friends with his) have dozens of picture of us and even some just him. They don’t mean anything to me; I have absolutely no memory of him.
dusted 4y ago
Interesting take, we couldn't disagree more! ^_^ Maybe you have a photographic memory (or gain nothing from reminisce). Personally, for me, I have a terrible memory; I forget things that I am deeply emotionally connected to, or rather, I don't forget them, but I quickly become unable to access those memories, and I need something of a link to recall it, and when I do, all the emotion comes back with it and it gives me deep happiness. Having something to browse through and examine gives me these links into my own memories, and allows me to remember and re-experience those things. After we're gone, sure, if our mementos mean nothing to anyone else, they're thrown out. That does not matter the least, but you miss the point, that when that happens, we're not there to make use of them anyway! :) "Only worth the nostalgia value", well I disagree both on your framing of nostalgia as having little value and of their singular use. Also, especially music, does not change.. if you like it, you like it.. I still listen to the same CDs now at 36 as I did when I was 9.. (Megadeth and Iron Maiden never gets old to me!) Thanks for your comment, interesting with an opposing view :)
- csdvrx 4y ago
  > Maybe you have a photographic memory (or gain nothing from reminisce). I don't know how my memory compares, but indeed I found I gained very little about reminiscing, so I stopped feeling bad about trying to follow a suggested model that didn't seem to give me any positive result. Recent example: I took a week of vacation, for the first time since the pandemic so you could say it was important, yet I didn't take a single picture. I enjoyed my vacation a lot, but before, I found the "need" to take picture was distracting. Worse: it created guilt when I didn't view the picture later. This time, I simply avoided the problem by not taking pictures: thus no distraction, and even better: no guilt possible either (because as usual I know I'd never check the pictures ever again... should I find a new type of guilt of not remembering, maybe it will incite me to view some of the previous pictures that I neglected? However I seriously doubt it will happen! > Thanks for your comment, interesting with an opposing view :) Same, it's interesting to see people optimize for very different things.

by csdvrx 4y ago

nonameiguess 4y ago

I suspect this won't be popular (notice this comment is currently at the bottom of the page), but I agree with this. I suppose I'm just temperamentally very much not a hoarder, but I grew up in the pre-www era and this doesn't really resonate with me. I never wrote much down, didn't save letters, didn't take photos or videos. It doesn't really make a difference to me that Facebook might go away and iCloud will delete my photos, because I don't have a Facebook profile and don't upload anything to iCloud anyway. This seems much closer to me to the baseline human experience anyway. For the vast majority of the time humans have existed, we had neither writing nor photography. While those things are important culturally for transmitting knowledge, I don't see every individual's personal memories as being something that matters to preserve. My mom digitized a bunch of old betamax tapes five years ago and showed us the old videos when my wife and I visited for Christmas. It was interesting but not exactly critical to my life enjoyment that I be able to see school plays from kindergarten and my sister's 7th birthday party and whatever else she showed us. One of my very earliest, I supposed 3rd overall, friends, died when we were 12 from an allergic response, almost exactly like what happened in the film "My Girl." She was in some of these videos and it is the only photographic evidence of her existence I have. I don't feel like that added anything. In spite of not seeing an image of her for nearly three decades, I didn't forget her. And if I had forgotten her, well, I wouldn't be aware of it since that is what forgetting means. The sadness of forgetting is entirely abstract. No actual person is sad if no actual person remembers. The most important thing is seeing and spending time with the people I still have.

morelisp 4y ago
As a counter-point confirming yours, my best friend in infancy died of cancer right before our fourth birthdays. My parents (still friends with his) have dozens of picture of us and even some just him. They don’t mean anything to me; I have absolutely no memory of him.

dusted 4y ago

Interesting take, we couldn't disagree more! ^_^ Maybe you have a photographic memory (or gain nothing from reminisce). Personally, for me, I have a terrible memory; I forget things that I am deeply emotionally connected to, or rather, I don't forget them, but I quickly become unable to access those memories, and I need something of a link to recall it, and when I do, all the emotion comes back with it and it gives me deep happiness. Having something to browse through and examine gives me these links into my own memories, and allows me to remember and re-experience those things. After we're gone, sure, if our mementos mean nothing to anyone else, they're thrown out. That does not matter the least, but you miss the point, that when that happens, we're not there to make use of them anyway! :) "Only worth the nostalgia value", well I disagree both on your framing of nostalgia as having little value and of their singular use. Also, especially music, does not change.. if you like it, you like it.. I still listen to the same CDs now at 36 as I did when I was 9.. (Megadeth and Iron Maiden never gets old to me!) Thanks for your comment, interesting with an opposing view :)

csdvrx 4y ago
> Maybe you have a photographic memory (or gain nothing from reminisce). I don't know how my memory compares, but indeed I found I gained very little about reminiscing, so I stopped feeling bad about trying to follow a suggested model that didn't seem to give me any positive result. Recent example: I took a week of vacation, for the first time since the pandemic so you could say it was important, yet I didn't take a single picture. I enjoyed my vacation a lot, but before, I found the "need" to take picture was distracting. Worse: it created guilt when I didn't view the picture later. This time, I simply avoided the problem by not taking pictures: thus no distraction, and even better: no guilt possible either (because as usual I know I'd never check the pictures ever again... should I find a new type of guilt of not remembering, maybe it will incite me to view some of the previous pictures that I neglected? However I seriously doubt it will happen! > Thanks for your comment, interesting with an opposing view :) Same, it's interesting to see people optimize for very different things.