re: #48 Obdicut

Why is it scary?

Because we rely so much on our “memory”.

In the old days when life was simpler, yes simpler, knowing where to forage for food in what season may have been the difference between life and death - that was important memorization.

Today what I find increasingly scary is that we our defined by our “information” - an information society we are called.

Yet what if that “information” is mostly highly suspect memories, interpretations of our past?

I wonder if the increasingly sclerotic political system in this country is the result of groups hardening in their positions, reassured of the rightness of their beliefs because, well, that is what they remember them to be.

If we are animals whose brains are selected for, as an example, making spears and hunting animals, what happens when those brains now have to deal with multi-layered abstractions and societies very far removed from familial tribes?

Secondarily, I think it is “scary” that as I get older I now realize that I will slowly lose that which I now know. That’s pretty scary too.