yes, there is a hope...: June 2019

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF REMEMBERING EVERYTHING

MOONWALKING with EINSTEIN by JOSHUA FOER

Set up in the background of History of Memory and the author's journey for participating in U.S. Memory Championship, the book caught my attention when I was going through some Goodread suggestions, the name of the book and brief description caught my attention.

Basically, I will be discussing the chapter wise analysis because that is better to give an overview. The book contains eleven chapters of different themes related to memory and contains observations of writer Joshua Foer. However, the title is misnomer as it has to do nothing with either Einstein or Moonwalking. Before the start of chapter 1, Joshua shares one small story, which I am sharing below:

"There were no other survivors.

Family members arriving at the scene of the fifth-century-B.C. banquet hall catastrophe pawed at the debris for signs of their loved ones—rings, sandals, anything that would allow them to identify their kin for proper burial.

Minutes earlier, the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos had stood to deliver an ode in celebration of Scopas, a Thessalian nobleman. As Simonides sat down, a messenger tapped him on the shoulder. Two young men on horse-back were waiting outside, anxious to tell him something. He stood up again and walked out the door. At the very moment he crossed the threshold, the roof of the banquet hall collapsed in a thundering plume of marble shards and dust.

He stood now before a landscape of rubble and entombed bodies. The air, Which had been filled with boisterous laughter moments before, was smoky and silent. Teams of rescuers set to work frantically digging through the collapsed building. The corpses they pulled out of the wreckage were mangled beyond recognition. No one could even say for sure who had been inside. One tragedy compounded another.

Then something remarkable happened that that would change forever how people thought about their memories, Simonides sealed his senses to the chaos around him and reversed time in his mind. The piles of marble returned to pillars and the scattered frieze fragments reassembled in the air above. The stoneware scattered in the debris re-formed into bowls. The splinters of wood poking above the ruins once again became a table. Simonides caught a glimpse of each of the banquet guests at his seat, carrying on oblivious to the impending catastrophe. He saw Scopas laughing at the head of the table, a fellow poet sitting across from him sponging up the remnants of his meal with a piece of bread, a nobleman smirking. He turned to the window and saw the messengers approaching, as if with some important news.

Simonides opened his eyes. He took each of the hysterical relatives by the hand and, carefully stepping over the debris, guided them, one by one, to the spots in the rubble where their loved ones had been sitting.

At that moment, according to legend, the art of memory was born."

Now we will discuss the chapter 1, "The smartest man is hard to find", the writer tries to differentiate IQ and smartness, citing his various anecdotes and experiences in USA and competitions like USA memory championship. As per the author, this book is about the year he spent trying to train his memory and trying to understand its inner workings, its natural deficiencies, its hidden potential. He further clarifies that the book is not a self-help type of book, but contains the method to train one’s memory and how memory techniques can be used in everyday life. He adds “…once upon a time, memory was at a root of all culture, but over last 30 millennia since human began painting their memories on cave walls, we’ve gradually supplanted our own natural memory with a vast superstructure of external memory aids – a process that has sped up exponentially in recent years. Imagine waking up tomorrow and discovering that all the world’s ink has become invisible and all our bytes have disappeared. Our world would immediately crumble. Literature, music, law, politics, science, math: our culture is edifice built of externalized memories.” Thus, external memory aids have devalued the internal memory and the fact that there is memory mortality (people going with the memory they have after death), these aids have helped in passing off the ideas and helped in continuation. These aids have also changed the way we used to determine the intelligence.

The chapter 2, titled “The Man who remembered too much” Foer discusses the mind training and memory capability of a person code named “S”. The discussion about the person reminds me about Swami Vivekanand’s case where an anecdote is shared in “The complete works of Swami Vivekanand” where Swami ji has memorised entire Britannica Encyclopedia by glancing through it. The person "S" however, as described by his employer Luria “a somewhat anchorless person living with the expectation that at any moment something particularly fine was to come his way.” And hence comes the very crux of the chapter that the person needs to distinguish between the trivial and the important, learn what to prioritize and what to generalize. It is forgetting and not remembering that is essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. “to think, is to forget”. The chapter discusses concepts like "curve of forgetting" and "art of forgetting". It also, gives insights into secret learning societies with closed membership and the researches which are undergoing in different part of the world for study of memory.

In chapter 3, “The Expert Expert”, the author gives his own examples of giving memory tests, participation in research labs on memory. In the next chapter titled “The Most Forgetful Man in the World”, the discussion on EP who is stated to be most forgetful man ever comes up and it is said that his memory was only as long as recent thought. Then comes one of the powerful message of the book, “monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorable into the next and disappear. That’s why it is important to change the routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.”

Foer further in the chapter by several examples discuss the memory, amnesic and unconscious remembering, also known as Priming to know the dark secrets of memory. One new thing which I got to know is the categorization of memories into declarative and non-declarative. The former is when we have to remember consciously and latter which we remember unconsciously like how to ride a bike. Within the declarative memory the scientists further classify the episodic memories which are experiences of life and semantic memories which are regarding facts and concepts, and are free of time and space bondage.

In the chapter “The End of Remembering”, the author narrates the story of Theuth, the inventor of writing who came to Egyptian king Thamus and offered the invention of writing but he refuses citing “…it will implant forgetfulness in their souls and… will cease to exercise their memory and rely on external marks for remembering and what the god has discovered is a recipe for reminding and not memory and it will lead to “telling many things without teaching them anything and it will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing. And they won’t be the men filled with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom and will be burden to their fellowmen.” Further, Foer points out that even philosopher Socrates was not in favour of passing the knowledge through writing. For Socrates, "Writing could never be anything more than a cue for memory – a way of calling to mind information already in one’s head." Infact as per the book, Socrates feared that writing would lead the culture down the treacherous path towards intellectual and moral decay…”. Incidentally or ironically, we can know these thoughts of Socrates only because Plato wrote his teachers thoughts. One interesting fact that book brings to fore is that till 200 BC there were not even basic punctuation marks which were later on invented by Aristophanes of Byzantium who was the Director of Library of Alexandria. Instead, the words ran together in an unending stream of capital letters known as scriptio continua, broken up by neither spaces nor punctuation (isn’t it funny?). For ex. GODISNOWHERE can be interpreted as GOD IS NOW HERE or GOD IS NO WHERE. Both these are right interpretation.

In the chapter titled “The OK Plateau” introduces the concept of the same name which is "the point at which we decide we are OK with how good we are at anything, turn on autopilot, and stop improving." Foer adds that we tend to reach OK Plateau in most of things we do. This is applicable to our daily lives as in personal life as well as professional. Once, we are comfortable in any position or in post, there is a plateau and we stop learning or that inherent desire to know is gone. If we go to gym, we work hard for few months and once we see some desired results, we either slow down or skip occasionally. Similarly, in bureaucracy there is tendency that once the person comes out of training academy or completes his initial years, he stops learning or improving his skills. Infact, it has been observed that people develop inherent dislike to anyone (even seniors) who point out mistakes to them or give some suggestions for improvement. The author adds that one has to challenge himself and review, respond, rethink and rejig to improve oneself. There is a stage where regular practice is not enough. The catalyst is needed and hence, we need to watch ourselves fail and learn from our mistakes. Quoting Ericsson, the author says to improve, we must actually practice failing. One way to do that is to put yourself in the mind of someone who is more competent than you and see how he faces and solves these problems. Foer shares a quote of Bruce Lee which he used to motivate himself while preparing for Championship which says “There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.”

"The Talented Tenth" chapter discusses some geniuses in the field of memory along with authors journey for preparation. The technique of Mind Mapping is also discussed which is basically a technique that uses Maps for mindfulness. The author criticizes this technique as a case of "decontextualized knowledge", like learning without understanding.

In “The Little Rain in all of Us”, the major focus is on the story of Daniels, who was claimed to be a savant. Savant was used for persons who have mastered multiple fields, who traded in abstract ideas. It was highest honour for a man of learning. However later on the connotation of the word changed and it was associated with a sort of syndrome. The chapter ends by quoting the example of Daniels, “…that we have remarkable capacities asleep indie of us. If only we bothered ourselves to awaken them.”

The final chapter “The U.S. Memory Championship” is descriptive tale of the Foer’s participation in the event minute by minute and his ultimate win as US Memory champion.

The book is somewhat of different genre nearing Science/Psychology which I bought by mistake, completed in phases due to my work schedules, nature and subject matter of book. However, some of the best learnings and insights are from the places/persons/events you least expect and this is where the book comes into the picture. On first glance, it looks very easy that this is only a description of journey about participation of a person into a championship and how he won it, but the way Joshua Foer has approached the topic, chapterised it, described the characters coming in the journey and blend of history is where this book stands apart. We all know practices makes one perfect, but the book clarifies that the practice has to be with right kind of concentration, self-conscious and deliberate practice. Funny side of the story is that the author says even after being a memory champion, he still forgets as to where he has kept keys of car. The book is a good read for people who wanted to get a fresh air after reading through classics, mystery, love stories or history books.

Have a Happy reading...

Justice: What’s the right thing to do?

Frankly, I wanted to read this book from 2013. I have heard about this book while preparing for CSE exams but never managed to do so. The sudden desire at that time was due to an interview of the author Michael Sandel which was published in The Economic Times then and some of the thoughts in the discussion by expressed by Sandel were really fresh.

So, having gifted the book to myself this new year, it took really long time to finish it and compose the blog.

The book as the title suggests in discussion on the certain notions which are often discussed in polity and public life and society at large like Justice, Values, Ethics.

The first chapter “Doing The Right Thing” discusses the dilemma faced by people while deciding the situations. Here, Sandel by citing various situations like market greed at the time of crisis like hurricanes and how businesses behave. His insistence that government should stay away from deciding the virtues and vices is interesting as many time it convinces the reader that the arguments about profit and morality are vague and situation specific. He frankly uses the wisdom of Aristotle and those of modern philosophers like Rawls and Kant and concludes that the ancient theories of Justice focused on virtue while modern theories focus on freedom. One interesting discussion is on the meanings and symbolism attached with “medals” which are awarded for military acts. One very interesting example of moral dilemmas he quote is of “The Runway Trolley” which is very apt while taking decision in public life where contrary claims exists. He discusses the three approaches to Justice and applies the 3 parameters to identify whether the society is “Just” or not. They are Income And Wealth, Duties And Rights, Powers And Opportunities, Offices And Honors. He adds that a Just society distributes these in right way as per his/her due and the three approaches of distribution of goods are welfare, freedom and virtue. In subsequent chapters, Sandel has discussed these 3 approaches.

In chapters like “The Greatest Happiness Principle” which is also known as utilitarianism has been discussed with the help of Bentham and Mills. One interesting fact which I came to know through the book is that Dead body of Bentham is still preserved in London as per his wish to inspire future generations of thinkers and he should be present everywhere when philosophers meet so the minutes record it as “present but not voting”.

In “Hired Helps: Markets and Morals”, the same old question “whether free markets are fair” and “are there some goods that money can’t buy” resurfaces. Here he cites morality of paying persons vis-à-vis 2 specific issues namely fighting wars through private armies and bearing children through surrogacy as paying money to obtain certain goods and services may not be virtuous and free. Sandel offers a crash course on Immanuel Kant in chapter 5 named “What Matters is the Motive”. The views of Kant are discussed in detail vis-s –vis subject matters of the books and I must accept that his views on Honesty, Sex, Politics, Morality, Utilitarianism were bit new and different.

An interesting discussion arises in chapter titled “Who Deserves What?” in which questions of Fairness and Honour & Resentment. Citing the example of cheerleading, it adds that most of the social practices have instrumental and honorific purpose and the proceeds to discuss Aristotle’s Theory of Justice. The best phrase in the chapter is while discussing moral virtues, he adds that the challenge is to do the right thing “to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way.” In later parts of the chapter the “Practical Wisdom”, Aristotle’s view on Slavery, politics find mention.

The book touches the sensitive topic of “Public apologies” which have become trend these days and amid demands of Indians for public apology on Jallianwala Bagh tragedy from Britain. The author offers very plausible explanation for the same and moves to discuss “Is Patriotism a Virtue?”

In final chapter “Justice and the Common Good”, Sandel asserts that “…it was mistake, for progressives to “abandon the field of religious discourse” in politics. He adds that “the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms.” Hence, the politics and morality in society are intertwined with religion and hence it is not possible to resolve legal questions without taking up the underlying moral and religious questions.

The book concludes by saying that the politics of moral engagement is need of hour and it’s not only inspiring but also more promising for a just society.