So this morning in a typical moment of time-wastery, I went on this website full of psychological tests that Kate had sent me. And one of them posed a question. Imagine, it said, that you have the opportunity to take a week's holiday. You can go wherever you like, with whomever you like, and have a wonderful time. In dollars, it asked, what value would you put on that holiday? Feeling quite flush, and imagining the most insanely brilliant holiday of my life, I said $2000 and clicked enter. Another page opened. Imagine, it said, that you can go on the same wonderful holiday, but you will have absolutely no memory of it once it's over. What value would you put on it then? Ick. I said $0. Nought dollars. I tried and tried to want to go on an experience that would vanish as soon as it had happened, but I couldn't. I know it's wrong. I know that Fromm would tell me off for being stuck in the having mode, not the being mode. But he'd also know that my desire to have is due to my society, where having is always preferenced over being, where ownership is all.
Still, it's awful. I remember a few years ago, in therapy, I said that if I couldn't tell someone about an experience I'd had, the experience itself wouldn't count, wouldn't have value. And of course, the outpouring of my life's inanities on LLFF smacks of someone with a need to share, for whom existence is heightened by interaction with third parties (albeit completely selfish and one-way). Thankfully, whereas my core used to be external, it's now where it should be, in the pit of my abdomen (these are all visual metaphors I worked out at £50 an hour). But I still wouldn't want to go on a holiday if I couldn't remember it afterwards. Or, at least, I'd go, but I wouldn't pay for it. That's stupid though. Am I saying it's better to stay at home and not have fun than to go away, have a brilliant time and forget about it? Well, yes and no. I just think - it's a lost week. I'd rather stay home and have a good time here and remember it. And of course, as I wrote in the box provided on the psychological test website, if I ever developed Alzheimer's or similar, if I followed my thinking now that nothing is worth experiencing unless you remember it afterwards, I'd have no motivation for doing anything and may as well kill myself. So that's a happy thought for a Thursday.
Once again, you may have noticed from my incoherence that I am hungover for a second day. Unless you're my boss, in which case I think I might be coming down with something but will be fine by Monday. It was the final night of our six-week ukulele beginners' course yesterday, and it's fair to say there was an awful lot of love in the room at the Wednesday Jam, or wizzle jizzle. God it's fun. Long may it continue. Now I'm sitting at my desk, waiting for my lunch to digest so that I can go to the gym. In the meantime, I will read the paper online, reply to some emails and continue the epic poem I'm writing about what's really going on in my head. You'll love it.
It's a very interesting question, which has had my mind whirring for the last couple of minutes.
ReplyDeleteAs a former psychologist, I would say my immediate reaction is that experience and memory are one and the same, so your response to not wish to be pay would the logical one. The question strikes me more as being for the conjecture of philosophy or spirituality than for Psychology with a capital P, but then your Alzheimer's example gives a real life application.
Certainly, to reimagine the question, if a loved one of mine had Alzheimer's, I'd still lavish them with experiences, good food, nice surroundings etc, even if their memory couldn't consolidate it, as I would want them to be happy in the here and now. And I don't think that's me being overly soppy. Is it? So where does that logic lead me?
Hmmm. This will worm at me now.
Maybe, even if you don't have a clear recollection of an event, it leaves an impression which in turn informs the way you look at life. Eg a sense of wellbeing or foreboding if it was a negative experience?
ReplyDeleteIf you'd enjoy it while you were there and be none the wiser afterwards, what is to lose?
ReplyDeleteAlthough, for someone who calculates the value of a piece of clothing each time they wear it, I can understand the need to receive something for your monetary expenditure, but why not just take it and enjoy it for the time you are there.
Glad to get your mind whirring, Huw. But I don't think your Alzheimer's comment is that relevant - after all, surely the main reason you'd be lavishing them would be to make YOU feel better, not them. Or am I being really harsh?!
ReplyDeleteI guess you could look at it like this: imagine a doctor guarantees that in a week's time, your brain will suddenly not be able to remember anything. You will have no short or longterm memory. And it will be like that for the rest of your life. You have a week to make arrangements for the rest of your life. Do you make sure you are constantly engaged with doing really fun things that you'll never remember? Or do you just say 'Meh, chuck me on a comfy sofa and I'll chill there until I die'? I think I'd go for the latter, just because it's easier. Although actually, if I did receive that diagnosis, I think I'd be off to Dignitas in the next couple of days...
As for Kate's comment, it may be possible that there would be some sort of vague recollection, but the question in the test stated you would have no memory of the occasion whatsoever. Which, in response to Anon's comment, would mean that I *do* have something to lose - I could have spent that time at home, not on holiday, doing stuff I would remember in future. I'd have lost a week of my life.
Anyway. It's a weird one.