Reading Journal 2024: Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to what Matters
Author: Charan Ranganath

I’ve been interested in the subject of memory for a while now, having recently begun a deep dive into the subject. Part of this is a desire to understand my own story, and to even learn how tell my own story. Part of it is a desire to better understand reality, or our realities.

Ranganath wants to delve into the specific question, why we remember. Part of the issue with the book is that he seems to be torn between tackling the functional side of this question (the mechanics and the evolutionary reasons for why we remember) and the philosophical side of this question. The more he talks about the functional aspects, the more apparent it becomes that these things have real and important philosophical implications. And where he does delve into the philopshical, the more apparent it becomes that the functional side of this question is left without much to ground or direct it as a question of what matters. It is a weakness of a book that isn’t, ironically, that clear on why it matters beyond the purely functional reality.

For example, right off the hop the acknowledgment is made that we are a product of our memories. Without this we would not have a sense of the self or the other, and without this we would not have a measure for our experiences of both suffering and pleasure. We would not exist as selves.

At the same time we are forced to confront the truth that our memories are not reliable and are based on demonstrably false ideas regarding our experiences. Which creates a point of crisis when it comes to defining a person, or even pointing towards the true value of our experiences.

To tackle this problem the author works to challenge some common perceptions of memory by redirecting our common understanding of concrete or true and false memories towards its plasticity and necessary adaptability. We should not be so concerned with how our memories capture a past event or experiences accurately, we should be more concerned with how our memories interact with the experiences of our present. Memory is not designed to stay static, it is designed to adapt through a process of necessary forgetting and re-contextualizing reformulizing.

In this sense, it is far less important for us as biological persons to have Polaroid memories that cannot lie, and far more important for memories to operate episodically. It is about the story our memories are telling in relationship to our present, precisely because this captures the most important component of our sense of self- our experiences, which are by their nature realities rooted in the present.

From here the author then moves into the different ways we can manipulate memory for our assumed benefit and flourishing. The author touches on the relationship between curiosity and the building of memory, on the ways different practices and medications can help us forget painful or tragic experiences while reframing such memories differently, or the practice of learning through failure rather than success (which also plays into how backwards our education system is when it comes to how it measures education).

It delves into some interesting observations as well relating to how the brain works in an interconnected fashion rather than, as common understandings often see it, through separate locations doing different functions (the wrong assumption about short and long term memories being stored in different places, for example). It also spends time looking at how our brains structure the information it turns into memories by blocking information together into manageable portions (think a phone number which we remember not as single digits but as a 3/4 blocking pattern). Or there is the way memory is formed and dictated by context and community. We are products of our environment.

All of it insightful, and at times practical. But I found myself at so many different points wondering how this information applies specifically to the problem of personhood and the self, especially in a world that has elevated a certain kind of truth to a postion of highest value. What we are discovering about memory flies in the face of much of modernity. This seems clear. And yet not even the author seems willing to acknowledge this head on. What we end up with is something that feels largely irrational, and even at times confusing on a philopshical level. Not only that, but it leaves one with a very real potential existential crisis. The sort that arises when we are forced to confront the functional reality of who we are while also being expected to give it meaning.

Why do we remember? The question also becomes why do we forget. Because memories shape our experiences in ways that bring joy or bring pain. With the recent and constantly emerging research on the function of memory comes an equal interest in its manipulation. Use a drug or a therapeutic process to reshape or forget painful memories. Use processes or drugs to change the episodic tale and trick it into telling  a different story. And this is given meaning not only because it allows us to avoid the assumed downside of existence (pain and suffering, because if we don’t remember it we don’t experience it), but because it then becomes our experience, and thus becomes a certain kind of truth that is given ultimate value. To safeguard this against what we might call social harms, we apply social or cultural memory, which is that the select ones with power shape the collective memories.

It all left me with a good deal to wrestle with of course, and some good information. But this wrestling has to be done philosophically without the aid of the author’s own voice. For anyone interested in the subject of memory it is a decent work that brings the different discussions to the table, which is good. And it can help, beyond the practical elements, bring to light the philopshical problems. I simply would have liked it to be more focused in either of these areas so that it could perhaps be a bit more honest about why it matters.

Film Journal 2024: The Fall Guy
Directed by David Leitch

As a rom-com it’s very good
As a comedy-action it’s good.
As a love letter to the art of stunt work and filmmaking its exceptional.

There is a lot of film here. Most of this is due to the fact that it spends time building up the romance. So much so that its easy at points to forget at times that this is an action blockbuster film. And don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of excitement and entertainment and big creative set pieces with cinematic flourishes, but they are interspersed into a mix of drama and ideas relating to the the Director-stunt person relationship. Which just means it’s a more patient film than you might expect.

It also feels like a throwback to a bygone era, a celebration of a time when practical set pieces were more the norm than a CGI heavy industry (and the plot plays into this as well). I’m not sure if this will isolate some viewers, or play too much into nostalgia, but I do imagine it will play well for those who grew up in the 80’s/90s. And if not, you’ve got Gosling and Blunt doing their thing, which is worth the viewing in its own right.

Film Journal 2024: Freud’s Last Session
Directed by Matt Brown

“So much pain in this world, and this is God’s plan?”

“We are all cowards in the face of death.”

“My idea of God keeps shattering over and over again. And yet I find God everywhere. Impenetrating everything.”

“From error to error, none discovers the entire truth.”

A fascinating film that uses its imagination to explore the possibility of this clash in belief, in philosophy, in worldview that flows from a rumored meeting between Freud and Lewis right before his death. When, at one point, Freud notes that observation above about our shared cowardness in the face of death, he posits his analysis that such cowardness expresses because deep down we know that God does not exist. The flipside of this analysis is that perhaps it surfaces because deep down we know that God exist. The reasoning here suggests that if we can say that God is goodness, it is only the existence of goodness that can convince us that death and suffering is evil.

This of course positions us at the crossroads of the world we observe, and what is clear is that both men are observing the same world and the same facts about this world, but arriving at different conclusions regarding what this says about truth. This forms a blueprint for how we think and how we discover. This is ultimately a film about the intellectual process itself.

For Freud, all pleasure is sexual in nature. We can boil down the passions to a singular drive, function and experience that is designed to counter pain. Designed to create the illusion of pleasure so that we can exist in a world defined by pain. And the more he hands us his observations of the world, and specifically its human function, the more convincing it becomes. For Lewis, it is the reality of pain and suffering that becomes a window into true pleasure, which he defines as experibcing the nature of God or the eternal. And the more he notes the degree to which humans stake their lives on certain convictions that are at their heart irrational and illusionary, the more this begins to make sense as well. For Lewis, Freud’s commitment to sex as the governing force only uncovers the fallacy and finiteness of its drive. For Freud, its basic nature uncovers the fallacy of the.idea of god.

The film, with two captivating performances at its center, allows these competing forces to coexist, leaving us to wrestle with the uncertainty pulling us in both directions at once. It becomes part of the experiential force of the films story, revolving around a singular conversation between two scholars. And even though these are two larger than life figures, i can’t help but feel like the relevance of their dialogue ultimately fleshes itself out in the day to day experiences of the world they are observing. Here th film uses subtle cinematic and visual flourishes to elevate ideas to the visceral and the experiential. The result is a film designed to, at the very least, challenge us to think.

Film Journal 2024: Infested
Directed by Sébastien Vaniček

Back to back horror films about an infestation of dangerous spiders (this and Sting). On a purely objective level, this is probably the stronger of the two, but both have their strengths and are great entries into the creature feature genre. In the case of Infested, the contained environment of the apartment block lends it the necessary tension and intrigue.

Where Sting takes a more straight forward and tightly scripted approach, to its credit since it works well for what it wants to be (a classic creature feature), Infested is more ambitious, blending in a larger metaphor and socio-economic commentary. I’m not sure it works completely (there’s too much back and forth instead of a clear progression), but full points for its creative imagination. Most importantly it manages to create the experience and feeling of dread.

Film Journal 2024: Unfrosted
Directed by Jerry Seinfeld

I mean, it would be a difficult movie to hate
But there’s no question it’s bad. Like shockingly bad. I’m tempted to say it’s all sugar and no substance, which would be true. But it’s worse than that. It’s high fructose corn syrup trying to pass itself off as something edible.

Somehow it makes it appear like it’s demographic is around 7-8 years old, but then subtley makes itself too racy for a 10 year old at the same time. Which i guess is a moot point, because the only ones who are going to watch this will be all the 40 somethings who grew up with Seinfeld essentially defining their era.

Film Journal 2024: Challengers
Directed by Luca Guadagnino

This is a bit of an assumption on my part, since I’ve only seen it once, but one of the biggest take aways from my initial viewing of Challengers is it definitely lingers as an experience and grows the more I think about the film, suggesting that this is bound to reward rewatches. More to the point, I find myself thinking about the film quite a bit.

Much or what I find myself thinking about are the technical elements. The film has such a feverish and pointed progression to its madness that some of its unique flourishes end up flying by without notice. The way it films the tennis matches, for example, shifting from different perspectives in order to keep us off balance. The film is far more cinematic than I expected as a whole. The way the film structures its story by jumping back and forth in time. The way the soundtrack and score leads different scenes.

The film is equally interesting on a dramatic front, with far more going on than first meets the eye. It’s balancing a three way power struggle, playing with who is the underdog and who has the power as the relational dynamics get more developed and entrenched. What’s clear is the film uses the tennis match as an allegory for the relational dynamics. What might be less obvious is the way these two things become an allegory for society and humanity at large. Here it hits close to home, daring us to confront the notion that this is, in fact, how life itself works.

And then there is simply the act of experiencing the film in the moment. The final 20 minutes or so are especially next level filmmaking. The intensity it manages to evoke, all of it earned, will have you leaning forward in your seats, and the way it lands its ending is nearly pitch perfect.

Film Journal 2024: Pratfall
Directed by Alex Andre

I guess the Before series has essentially come to define a whole genre. Another one of those films that easiest to describe as “Before, just with…”

Fill in the blanks with an unstable insomniac and a French tourist wandering and reflecting through the streets of New York City.

Loved the setting. Great visual presence. If the characters aren’t as iconic as the genre establishing romance that guides the day in the famed trilogy, they do have their own unique charms and interests.

Film Journal: The Moon and Back
Directed by Leah Bleich

Lots of wonderful and endearing dynamics at work here. It’s funny, sad quirky, charming, real, adventurous, relatable.

Setting it in an era where home movies were a thing and anyone could be a director by picking up that camcorder and getting creative without the aid of smartphone culture and technology helps to personalize the journey. Art meets life as part of a mutually engaged process, using the plot device of an unpublished script left behind by a dead father as a window into reflections on the power of memory to bring the past to life. Loved how they used it as a means of communication between father and daughter across the divide.

It definitely has that low key, no frills indie vibe, but as a debut it’s the creative vision that really shines.

With my recent shift in jobs, I’m still driving a school bus, and still driving for a private school (which, for my American friends, means religious/faith based school here in Manitoba). These things are the same.

I have seen a very real shifts though in location and the students. I have shifted from a rural setting to the city, and from most to not all Christian kids from a uniform background to driving a busload consisting of no less than 10 different ethnic backgrounds and 7 different religious expressions.

Which has been really interesting for me. Given that it is a private school, there is a certain degree of freedom I have in discussing matters of religion and faith that I wouldn’t have elswhere, only in this case I find myself engaging with a very real diversity of opinions and convictions and perspectives. I’ve been really appreciating learning from them while also challenging myself to think about the universality of such discussions and concerns. I’ve also been struck by how the students are not afraid to talk about religion at all. In fact, they seem genuinely interested in it.

This past week one such subject was the idea of heaven, or eternity. Strictly speaking, it’s a topic that requires some imagination, as we don’t really have good language for it. I was curious to see how this subject might translate in the midst of the diversity of those imaginations that make up my busload. Here there is both overlap and specific departures, but all pointing in a similar way to the problem of death.

Usng my own imagination, I might begin with this simple observation.
I thought about how we experience time from a finite perspective. So much so that it is common to think in terms of borrowed time, or the concept of making the best of the little time we have. This is the language that we have. Time begins. Time ends. And we experience this in the space between birth and death. To begin to imagine a universe with no beginning or no end, scientifically, philosophically or religiously, is a bit of an impossibility, because we don’t have language for it. It’s not something our brains can comprehend.

And yet, at the same time, if we compare an era when life expectancy was 40 with an era when life expectancy is 80, we can see how easily we shift our value systems accordingly to fit the potentiality that this given life span represents. We don’t decry that added 40 years, we shift our expectations of what a good life is. We see anything less than that expectant life span as lost potential and, on some level, a tragedy. Thus, it would seem natural to at least consider that our tendency to make finiteness a value in and if itself perhaps should be given pause. If 80 years is our present reality, it seems reasonable to conclude that it’s, at the very most, a contextualized reality.

This is one part of the equation. The other part of the equation relates to the quality of a life. It’s one thing to talk about length of years, It’s another thing to talk about the quality of those years. The reason we know the language of finiteness is because we experience decay, suffering and death. This is, then, the measure of a life according to our potential. The potential becomes the value. But what happens when we shift this measure from matters of quantity to the question of quality. What kind of life do we experience in the in-between space, and how does this become a measure of our value. Here things become far more complex.

In some sense, it is the collison point between expected life span and the quality of our experience that informs the push and pull of these values. This is how we arrive at the concept of potential as the driving value system that governs existence. Potential is driven by norms, and norms require context. Context is shaped by our experiences of the present. Thus, if experiencing finiteness as a measure of 80 years with a plethora of medicines, practices and tools that can alleviate sickness and suffering is our context, and this context has been normalized by our culture, then potential becomes an incredibly fluid and malleable notion. Especially when you begin to apply these norms to contexts that are not our own. This brings up numerous questions:
1. At what point do we deem the notion of our potential to have been exhausted?
2. How do we measure what we might call unrealized or unreached potential? Do we imagine this potential to have limits?
3. Is something like suffering deemed to be an enemy of potential only within the parameters of our constructed norms, or is it deemed simply to be an enemy of potential and thus something that needs to be done away with? The same question could apply to death. When we think of unrealized potential, do we imagine this only reaching so far? What is the aim of progress in this regard?
4. Can our concern for the present ever be detached from our assumptions about this unrealized potential?

Here is the thing. The language of finiteness depends on our experience of suffering, decay and death. This is what defines our reality as a “kind” of reality (one which experiences suffering, decay and death). All discussions of potential are held captive not onjy to this reality, but our context. Time as we know it exists only because of the existence of suffering, death and decay.

At the same time, life is defined by its potential. This potential exists in opposition to suffering, decay and death, even as it is also held captive by it. This becomes the working tension that we carry forward into discussions of the eternal or the infinite. In truth, and this is something that philosophy can demonstrate, for as long as our reality is defined by suffering, decay and death it cannot speak the language of eternal or infinite. It can only broaden the parameters, and as I reasoned above, there is no reason to believe that such broadening has a limit. To speak in terms of the eternal and the infinite requires one to imagine a different kind of reality altogether, one that requires a different language to be expressed. One defined by the absence of death.

If this is all true, then I think we can see how the language of finitensss tells us two essential things; First, death, suffering, and decay is in fact an enemy of life, not its definition. Second, the fact that we think in terms of potential tells us that in some way, shape or form, we understand that finiteness is not our primary language. We may have lost our mother tongue, but it nevertheless is still present in the ways that life continues to exist in opposition to death. Finiteness is not a value, it is a problem that needs a solution. The real awareness emerges when we consider that finiteness is not a problem that can ever be solved by simply broadening our parameters. We need a different reality to break in and not only transform our thinking and our language, but to redefine and change our experience. To give us a different context through which to measure the notion of potential.

Film Journal 2024: Late Night With The Devil

Directed by Cameron and Colin Cairnes

The irony of the present controversy regarding the filmmaker’s public admission over using AI, which is seen as an issue because of the way the question of AI has shaped the most recent strikes in Hollywood, is that this controversy exists over a film that is arguably about our ability to know what is real and what is not.

I don’t know. I get the larger issue. I get the role we as viewers play in terms of support. I also get our role as viewers play in supporting indie projects like this. To suggest this is morally complex, or morally ambiguous territory would be to understate the matter. However, simply taking the film for what it is, it’s also kind of interesting that the whole controversy adds some subversive subtext to the viewing experience.

Controversy aside, Late Night with the Devil is a uniquely imagined, and imaginative, journey into a bygone world, one where late night shows were event t.v., and where the late night wars were as real as the ripped jeans and tshirts that made up most of our wardrobe. The way the film brings this period to light was very well done, written into the practical set designs (more irony noted) in a way that accentuates the films creativity.

I loved the way the whole story was constructed to. We are being told the story through narration, which brings us through an opening 20 or so minutes which set the stage for the real concern- this particular episode of our main characters late night show, played to pitch perfect perfection by Jack Delroy, made in the midst of ratings concerns. What unfolds over the rest of the film is the unaired episode.

I did find myself wondering at points over the course of this film, whether the story actually ends up getting too complex for it’s own good. The set up I mentioned above seems simple enough. Where it goes with the story reaches much bigger and broader than that simple construct, offering layers of commentary on a few intersecting ideas. But then I found myself still ruminating over those complexities after I got home. This is where my appreciation for its thematic presence really started to grow, touching on everything from the wrestling with faith and doubt, exploring the nature of sin and its ability to colonize our lives, the trappings of capitalism, and even more intimate questions of identity and personhood.

Sure, its possible to experience and enjoy this simply on the level of a good horror film. Here I also think it delivers. It’s not jump scares, its more of a psychological fear that drives this one, inviting us to give ourselves over to the idea of a world where competing spiritual forces are infact very real, and then testing the lines of our cynicism and our doubts, exploring when and how we want to take things seriously. Perhaps most profoundly, these things don’t manifest simply as spirits in our imagination, but in the very real ways we operate in our specific socio-political realities, and in our relationships. This is where the arc of our main character becomes to fascinating to watch.

So many things to ponder here and to experience and to mull over. And it struck some legitimate notes of terror for me, both as a horror and as a commentary. Love that it takes a some big, imaginative swings, and on such a small budget. The controversy will be what it will be, and this film even has an opportunity to say something real about that. As a film though, I thought this one was effective and impressive.