Deleted member 8353
Former Hikikomori, Aimless Pleasure Seeker
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- Joined
- May 29, 2018
- Posts
- 9,341
It used to be even easier for me to dwell on my persistent loneliness than it is now, on being a reject all throughout my life. However I've recently come to the realization that my memories are ultimately no more than a series of illusions, and the previous sentence is only true if I believe it to be.
The ability to recall our past is unreliable at best, and never really succeeds in actually recording events in the manner which we truly experience them, nor is it a sound arbiter for making any sort of value judgements. But that isn't what I want to focus on, rather the point I'd like to address is that the memory of our past isn't entirely static after having first been created, our brains don't seem to work the same way as a computer or a camera might. Every time we think about an event that happened to us in the past, we're essentially creating our idea of that experience all over again. You might try to remember a particularly beautiful horizon, but every time you access that memory the picture will always appear slightly different within your mind. We don't retain immaculate captured scenes, but rather vague notions of experiences which we shape for ourselves over and over again. The images, emotions, beliefs, and really any sensory information we "recall" are actually being created the moment you "remember" them.
Following from this, if I've established that my memories of the past will gradually be altered throughout my life, slightly warping with every effort I make to reconstruct them, then what is to stop me from consciously attempting to change the conditions of a remembered experience if I find the existing memory to be unpleasant? What is to stop me from simply creating a "memory" for myself, or at least something that feels entirely akin to one. I've already had success with the latter, through concentration I've managed to create several memories of being together with my waifu, and when I think about them, they feel no less real than anything else I've experienced in my life. To do this I imagined experiences to cope, like I often do, and then made a serious effort to recall every detail of them later. Now they seems like other memories, the results feel genuine to me, and that's what matters. Perhaps next I'll try this with the idea of having the normie experience of friends and acceptance.
Mental imagery is undoubtedly the best cope, and with a bit of effort, you can create memories for yourself too.
The ability to recall our past is unreliable at best, and never really succeeds in actually recording events in the manner which we truly experience them, nor is it a sound arbiter for making any sort of value judgements. But that isn't what I want to focus on, rather the point I'd like to address is that the memory of our past isn't entirely static after having first been created, our brains don't seem to work the same way as a computer or a camera might. Every time we think about an event that happened to us in the past, we're essentially creating our idea of that experience all over again. You might try to remember a particularly beautiful horizon, but every time you access that memory the picture will always appear slightly different within your mind. We don't retain immaculate captured scenes, but rather vague notions of experiences which we shape for ourselves over and over again. The images, emotions, beliefs, and really any sensory information we "recall" are actually being created the moment you "remember" them.
Following from this, if I've established that my memories of the past will gradually be altered throughout my life, slightly warping with every effort I make to reconstruct them, then what is to stop me from consciously attempting to change the conditions of a remembered experience if I find the existing memory to be unpleasant? What is to stop me from simply creating a "memory" for myself, or at least something that feels entirely akin to one. I've already had success with the latter, through concentration I've managed to create several memories of being together with my waifu, and when I think about them, they feel no less real than anything else I've experienced in my life. To do this I imagined experiences to cope, like I often do, and then made a serious effort to recall every detail of them later. Now they seems like other memories, the results feel genuine to me, and that's what matters. Perhaps next I'll try this with the idea of having the normie experience of friends and acceptance.
Mental imagery is undoubtedly the best cope, and with a bit of effort, you can create memories for yourself too.