Remembering Ideas.

I remember ideas of long ago ,some even 66 years ago. It is really surprising we remember ideas as these are not objects or events happening in material reality .Originally the memory only remembered sensing some effect from the external world ,or was it perhaps from the interior organization of the organism?Later more complex memories of many things connected to sensorial effects,views,music,smells…,were remembered .Finally abstract ideas went into the memory too.

The oldest memory of an idea I had is about St. Nicolas. It was the night the good Saint was going to come and bring toys to the kids that had been good, at some moment I was going down the stairs in complete darkness ,from my bedroom to the kitchen where there were some noises. I remember reasoning while descending the stairs silently the idea that the story could not be true because I had noticed the days before that different Saints were in different shops or different streets . I found it strange that I was not afraid,just a little uncertain.When I peeped through the window in the kitchen door (it was only partially covered by some white transparant curtain) and saw my parents arranging toys on the kitchen table. I silently returned to bed and did not mention anything afterwards until two years later! The idea of “discovering” the truth about St.Nicolas must have touched me deeply,I still remember it as if it was yesterday though it is now 66 years ago.
That abstract things entered the memory is easily understood, this happened when people were still very primitive beings by giving names to objects ,animals,plants,… , that was important for communication and survival . Also properties of observed objects or events went in the memory,like being digestible or poisonous ,safe or dangerous.

But then purely abstract meanings combined in rather complex ideas are also remembered ,some for a very long time!Is this ability trained by listening to stories and fairy tales ? I noted children ask you to tell the same story over and over again ,I guess that is when they are learning to see the story as one whole unit.Probably people started story telling, often about how they hunted some big animal ,after dark when they had nothing else to do .This story-telling is at the basis of entertainment as well as of education, written language was almost completely about telling stories about ancestors,history,… later more scientific or religious.

I guess it is important for the cognitive development of adults to tell stories and longer and more complex stories to them as children!
For some mathematical structures I understand that the brain considers them as pseudo-matter ,I once dreamed really surrealistically and saw groups and algebras turn into cheese and bread! That means to me that the brain constructs such links between concrete objects and abstract ideas automatically, and probably arbitrarily, without any aware reasoning. So when manipulating abstract notions we are probably treating them unconsciously as material objects ,ie. we model the abstractions on possibly unrelated concrete objects probably because when giving a name to the abstract notion the brain treats it like an object.

This then raises the obvious question about the control of encoding some thing in the memory.Do we decide consciously what we remember ? I think only partially at best. Some names of people you remember after hearing once,others you cannot remember even after being told several times over longer periods. The memory works differently in different people and sometimes it is dysfunctioning even ,but in each situation I wonder how it is decided what is remembered and how deep is the encoding .Older people discover the depth of encoding or in fact the vanishing of it when the short time memory is going down drastically with the years.But it is also common experience that at moments the memory is resurrected and suddenly forgotten facts are remembered,sometimes for a short while only.Does that mean that the memory is still fine but only the interface with conscience is breaking down ?

In an earlier post about stepping in and out of time, viewing humans as time-hybrids,I viewed thinking in abstract notions as “stepping out of time” because the notions expressed by abstract meanings do not depend on space and time ,once communicated (orally,books,information carriers)they become part of a common thought process in many (possibly all) humans. So abstract thinking can also be viewed as passing from the Self to a human identity !When we say someone is loosing contact with reality is that really meaning the person is loosing control over stepping in and out of time ; when you die it can be a direct loss of this control but if you become demented first you slowly loose that control .Stepping out of time with abstractions may then be separating partially from the ego in observed reality but also staying connected to a common way of thinking of humanity via thecommunicated abstractions.

This creates a strange link between thinking individually and dying ,from ego to human identity,stepping out of time to loosing time completely.