Danny ChaiWhile on vacation, one night after Abby went down we watched Knocked Up (an interesting but unsatisfying movie). I’m not giving anything away when I mention that the lead male gets the lead female pregnant. And it comes out in the movie that he was so drunk that he doesn’t remember a lot of it.
I’ve never understood that. And I’ve posed the question here before: would you spend money for the most amazing experience in the world if you knew you couldn’t remember any of it afterwards? How much does remembering something matter?
To me, it’s everything. My feelings on this are partly based on (I kid you not) the ideas of John Locke (the philosopher, not the Lost character), who argued that personal identity is based on the continuity of memories. Meaning, you are the same person in as much as you have a continuity of memories. If you get amnesia, you are, in an important sense, a different person. He had interesting, relevant ideas about drunkenness also, that the things you do when you’re raging drunk are the actions of another person if you can’t remember them, so you’re not personally responsible for them. You are, however, responsible for getting drunk, since you can remember that.
I’m simplifying it a bit, but that’s the gist, and it makes sense to me. That’s also why I buy the conceit of Total Recall (a totally underrated movie, by the way, possibly Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best, and filled with both interesting philosophical ideas and some of his best corny lines (e.g. Sharon Stone pleads for mercy based on her (sham) “marriage” to him – he shoots her and says “Consider that a divorce”. Classic. Or when he uses a massive drill to kill a tank operator: “Screw you!” Good times.)) of virtual vacations, where they implant memories of a vacation without you actually going anywhere, makes sense to me. The memories are all that matters; the experience only matters in how it affects the memories. Although I suppose there is much greater value in “real” memories, but yeah; assuming I couldn’t distinguish between a false and real memory, I’d rather have a good false memory than a completely forgotten real experience.
That’s why I was shocked when many people said they would spend money for an experience they couldn’t remember. (Similarly, I don’t understand why people get trashed enough that they can’t remember anything good that happens afterwards.) To them, there’s inherent value in an experience even if you can’t remember it. To me, I don’t see how there’s any value in something you can’t remember it at all, how it’s any different than if it never happened. But that mindset seems widespread.
What I wonder is if the same thing applies to kids. I’m firmly on the memory side of that as well. I don’t get crazy birthday parties for young kids because they won’t even remember it. Most other parents who don’t do crazy parties say something similar – they won’t remember it anyways, the implication being if they can’t remember, it doesn’t matter. When we checked into our hotel, I mentioned Abby was 2 and she said something to the effect of “oh, she won’t even remember this”, implying other people think memories matter for kids also. For the pro crazy parties for young kids side, is it that they think the experience is inherently valuable, and it doesn’t matter if they remember it or not? I would think so, but then I read this item in News Of The Weird:
Some parents, in exuberant yet inexplicable expressions of devotion to their babies’ supposed happiness, stage lavish birthday parties at such young ages that the supposed beneficiaries could not possibly remember or appreciate them. For example, the party by Sheila Chapman and Ray Reed for their precious “Prince” Clayburn Reed in February in Tampa Palms, Fla., celebrating Prince’s first birthday, featured 60 guests and a professional party-planner, pony rides, a magician, a pinata, centered around a rented room at the local country club. Said Chapman to a St. Petersburg Times reporter: “These are the memories I want him to have. I want him to know how important and special I think he is.”
So even these parents are doing it for memories. Are all parents?
Anyway, yeah, I don’t get the experience for its own sake divorced from memory thing. I’m not saying my position is inherently more logical. I’m just not there.