Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Why Blog?

Short answer is  “I don’t trust my memory”.

No, I don’t have Alzheimer nor am I expecting one soon but I happen to be human and started to understand the limitations that come with it.

As I got interested in neuroscience and more and more I read the on-going research, I pretty much convinced my memories will tend to fake me up or make me biased one way or other. 


How many of us remember vividly the last great vacation, special day with the loved or simply those “good old days”? (Even if "believe" that we remember, is it accurate?) 
Most of us remember only the some moments of those days and cannot recount hour-by-hour narrative of even our best days.

Nevertheless , as Bertrand Russell once said “We walk around wherever we go, encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions … like flies on a summer day. “.

So lets say, this is an attempt to talk coherently before getting drunk and with the world (wide web) as the witness.

Maximus is my dog, Max (Chocolate Labrador). He is little over three years and my life changed drastically for better ever since he came to my life. Simplest explanation would be, he gave my innocence back. In my 30’s he made me realize what it feels like to look at that world with innocence and overcoming the biases society tends to sneak into us with time. I am a sucker of Oxytocin and no wonder I am addicted to Max.

A beautiful quote from Meg Daley Olmert’s new book :
The satisfaction that washes over us as we watch our pets sleep is the ancient reminder that when all is well in their world, all is well in ours.”

Dog years are going to ration the time we have. I would like to capture the essence of this time we are spending together.  
I recently read this fascinating theory on time. Max makes each day a novelty and that makes time go slow (according that theory), which in turn slows down the dog years. (God bless that theory!!)

Between, how can I know, what I write now cannot be faked by my memory since obviously there is a time lag between happenings and what I write.  I guess, I have to write what I perceive at this moment (we are all at the mercy of our episodic memory but I am glad we have one) instead of going into infinite loop of Metacoginition and driving myself insane!!

Wanted to write a blog for a long time now but never got around doing it (excuses, excuses).  Well, 09/09/09 is a very good date to start and hopefully it will be my rehearsal-loop. (Constant rehearsal helps information to be transferred from short term memory to long term memory) 


"I have done that," says my memory. "I cannot have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually, memory yields. - Friedrich Nietzsche

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