Youth and the freedom from memory

[sqishy]

I return yet again with a strangely flowery-looking title :P , but I've some reasoning to go with it. This may be more fluid and unstructured than previous threads.

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This continues from my previous thread on starting perspectives to see the world (still open to keep going there if anyone is interested http://www.virtualteen.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2028702 [advert over]).

We have/are memory, with experience too (though I argue that memory is also experience, but that certain experience manifests differently to others, the former being memory while I just call the latter experience). I also call experience XP, and memory MR. I call this the XP-MR origin, being some technical speak to what is my starting point to view the world/etc.

- - - - - - - -

Now, let me jump. Let me jump to the psychological/mental nature of age. What is the essence of getting older, mentally? I argue that it is simply an increase in the memory you have. Older people know more than younger people, and they remember more.

Memory binds us to our identity. Everyone is unique due to the unique memory that they have. Our self and identity is bounded by our memories. We define ourselves through what we tend to do, what we like, what we hate, what we create, destroy, and so on.

The more memory that you have, the more you are bound by memory, as a trend.

What makes the identity of a 1 year old what it is, is much less than what makes the identity of a 100 year old, so much so that some psychological theories suggest no self-awareness is fully formed till around 3 years of age (our self and identity is actually emergent from memory). The older we get, the more form we absorb from the world, the more integrated we are in it. This also means that we are more bound into the world around us, and while we find it easier to live in it (as a trend), we find it harder to function without it (such as a large change in environment). We construct ourselves from the world.

This is in contrast with being younger. Younger people tend to know less, and have less memory. They are less bound by the world around them, and find it easier to move around between environments (because they are not settled yet). They are more free from specific memories that bind them to certain qualities and patterns of actions, and are actually more free than we are in this way.

I argue that freedom is not the ability to roam within a certain frame of being, but is the ability to roam between frames of being. Younger people know this world less than the older ones, and are in a way more outside of it than us. They have greater potentiality, because they have lesser actuality.


In short, we define our existence through the world we know, and aspects of ourselves that we know. Both are from memory that is formed, and there is more memory when older.

So, though there is some irreversibility to mental ageing in the aspect that we simply just learn things and settle more into certain aspects of being (we tend to settle in frames of being over time, after moving between frames), we still have the ability to be aware of this necessary process in life. Though we will always learn, we can recognize that we don't need to bind ourselves with those memories, to whatever degree that we want.

Part of youth cannot be got back (the learning part), but another part is the continual seeking for exploring that of the world that you do not know, by seeing that you will never know all of it, and that your past (a map of your memories) does not have any obligation by necessity to define your future.

To be young is to be free from memory and the burden of knowledge. We desire the world most enthusiastically when young, and we desire that which we perceive to lack - we lack the world. In a way, we are an entity that 'touches' the world at birth, and slowly disperses and settles into it through life, before fully settling into the background of the world to the point of fading away at death.

So, you don't have to see yourself as having to fully enter the realm of existence as we know it in this world that we see. The world never necessarily has to make sense to you, and you never necessarily need to make sense to it. Enjoy the border between the potential and actual, the known and unknown realms of being and non-being; learn how to immerse in frames of being, but also allow yourself to travel between them too.

[Hope this makes some sense.]

[Vlerchan]

What is the essence of getting older, mentally? I argue that it is simply an increase in the memory you have.
What happens to people with alzheimers?

[sqishy]

What happens to people with alzheimers?

They lose memory. This is why I said it was a trend.

I can illustrate this more with structure with what I call the sand pillar analogy, later on.

[Vlerchan]

They lose memory. This is why I said it was a trend.
I'm not disagreeing with the line regarding that people that remember more are bound more to their memories. I'm disputing that idea that the expanse of our memories is relevant to determining our age.

I also take issue with the theory necessarily predicting that people with alzheimers are bound to become free-er - or tend to, at least. Having dealt with a number of people with alzheimers, there is nothing emancipating about requiring further and further, full-time care, stripped of any potential capable of being actualised.

[sqishy]

I'm not disagreeing with the line regarding that people that remember more are bound more to their memories. I'm disputing that idea that the expanse of our memories is relevant to determining our age.

If you mean mental age, then I am saying that memory increases with increased physical age - mental age advances as a trend too, but this is unique for everyone in generally subtle differences (just like how we physically age in generally the same ways, but specifically in different ways). This is why everyone reaches maturity with certain aspects of life, at different physical ages.


I also take issue with the theory necessarily predicting that people with alzheimers are bound to become free-er - or tend to, at least. Having dealt with a number of people with alzheimers, there is nothing emancipating about requiring further and further, full-time care, stripped of any potential capable of being actualised.

I will have to expand in explaining this idea. I meant freedom from having oneself to themselves be bound by aspects of the world, not freedom to interact with these aspects in certain ways (we have a different notion of freedom, I think we already found out). In the case of age-related memory disintegration, the person is more dependent on others and is less clearly formed with their sense of coherent self. This is the same as with children, but children are physically such that they are not wound down and almost fully dispersed and settled in the world around them (entropy).

The self-other duality is manifest where there is sufficient form of both the world and the entity (that which has potential to become a self). The self cannot be formed until the entity interacts enough with the world so as to form a proper connection with it. Similarly, the self cannot be sustained after the entity is so dispersed in the world that it simply disintegrates. There is an asymmetry here with the physics, which follows through the apparent 1-way 1-dimensional experience of time.

The 'pure' freedom I mentioned in the NeoReactionary thread is not attainable as a human. An impure form can be though, it requires an intermediate between full bondage with a world, and no bondage with that world. We learn enough about the world to become conscious that we feel separate from it in some way - we can only see this from paradoxically connecting with it.

[Flapjack]

I return yet again with a strangely flowery-looking title :P , but I've some reasoning to go with it. This may be more fluid and unstructured than previous threads.

- - - - - - - -

This continues from my previous thread on starting perspectives to see the world (still open to keep going there if anyone is interested http://www.virtualteen.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2028702 [advert over]).

We have/are memory, with experience too (though I argue that memory is also experience, but that certain experience manifests differently to others, the former being memory while I just call the latter experience). I also call experience XP, and memory MR. I call this the XP-MR origin, being some technical speak to what is my starting point to view the world/etc.

- - - - - - - -

Now, let me jump. Let me jump to the psychological/mental nature of age. What is the essence of getting older, mentally? I argue that it is simply an increase in the memory you have. Older people know more than younger people, and they remember more.

Memory binds us to our identity. Everyone is unique due to the unique memory that they have. Our self and identity is bounded by our memories. We define ourselves through what we tend to do, what we like, what we hate, what we create, destroy, and so on.

The more memory that you have, the more you are bound by memory, as a trend.

What makes the identity of a 1 year old what it is, is much less than what makes the identity of a 100 year old, so much so that some psychological theories suggest no self-awareness is fully formed till around 3 years of age (our self and identity is actually emergent from memory). The older we get, the more form we absorb from the world, the more integrated we are in it. This also means that we are more bound into the world around us, and while we find it easier to live in it (as a trend), we find it harder to function without it (such as a large change in environment). We construct ourselves from the world.

This is in contrast with being younger. Younger people tend to know less, and have less memory. They are less bound by the world around them, and find it easier to move around between environments (because they are not settled yet). They are more free from specific memories that bind them to certain qualities and patterns of actions, and are actually more free than we are in this way.

I argue that freedom is not the ability to roam within a certain frame of being, but is the ability to roam between frames of being. Younger people know this world less than the older ones, and are in a way more outside of it than us. They have greater potentiality, because they have lesser actuality.


In short, we define our existence through the world we know, and aspects of ourselves that we know. Both are from memory that is formed, and there is more memory when older.

So, though there is some irreversibility to mental ageing in the aspect that we simply just learn things and settle more into certain aspects of being (we tend to settle in frames of being over time, after moving between frames), we still have the ability to be aware of this necessary process in life. Though we will always learn, we can recognize that we don't need to bind ourselves with those memories, to whatever degree that we want.

Part of youth cannot be got back (the learning part), but another part is the continual seeking for exploring that of the world that you do not know, by seeing that you will never know all of it, and that your past (a map of your memories) does not have any obligation by necessity to define your future.

To be young is to be free from memory and the burden of knowledge. We desire the world most enthusiastically when young, and we desire that which we perceive to lack - we lack the world. In a way, we are an entity that 'touches' the world at birth, and slowly disperses and settles into it through life, before fully settling into the background of the world to the point of fading away at death.

So, you don't have to see yourself as having to fully enter the realm of existence as we know it in this world that we see. The world never necessarily has to make sense to you, and you never necessarily need to make sense to it. Enjoy the border between the potential and actual, the known and unknown realms of being and non-being; learn how to immerse in frames of being, but also allow yourself to travel between them too.

[Hope this makes some sense.]
You're already a wise old man;) I agree with everything and I am not a physiologist so cannot add anything:')

[sqishy]

You're already a wise old man;) I agree with everything and I am not a physiologist so cannot add anything:')

I wouldn't see myself as that really tbh.

I'm not physiologist either :D (that I know of), I think you mean a philosopher. I technically would be one, but it doesn't form any big part of my identity.

You are free to add anything and also reject anything for debate, just saying so for future reference.