The fool neither forgives nor forgets. The naive either forgives and forgets. The clever forgives, but he does not forget.
(Thomas Szasz)
If someone tells you that you have a memory like an elephant, do take it as a compliment. “Elephants never forget” – but maybe they should. This apparently contradictory statement could very well prove true in unpredictable environments. Learning how to forget about the past means you are allowing yourself to live in the present. You can’t resolve the emotional pain of traumatic events and bad memories with a Band-Aid. It’s hard to accept that there is no way to go back in time and prevent those events from happening or live without those experiences.
Who hasn’t been hurt by the actions or words of another? Perhaps a parent constantly criticized you while growing up, a colleague sabotaged a project or your partner had cheated behind you. Or maybe you had a traumatic experience, such as being physically or emotionally abused by someone close to you. These wounds can leave lasting feelings of resentment, bitterness and anger – sometimes even hatred. Resentment, bitterness, anger and the desire for vengeance, do not concern the person who chooses to overcome the bad moments of the past, to open his soul and to let all his negative feelings and thoughts fly away. However, for many people this process can be very tedious, if not impossible. Being hurt by someone, particularly the one you love and trust, can cause anger, sadness and confusion. If you dwell on hurtful events or situations, grudges filled with resentment and hostility can take root. If you allow negative feelings to crowd out positive feelings, you might find yourself swallowed up by bitterness or a sense of injustice. Here I am not at advising “forgive and forget”, which is an entirely different issue. But if you hold on to that pain, you might be the one who pays most dearly.
Can we learn to forget our memories, if only for our own sake? Neuroscientists begin to understand how the brain controls its own memory centre. After reflexively reaching out to grab a hot pan falling from the stove, you may be able to withdraw your hand at the very last moment to avoid getting burnt. That is because the brain’s executive control can step in to break a chain of automatic commands. Several new lines of evidence suggest that the same may be true when it comes to the reflex of recollection – and that the brain can halt the spontaneous retrieval of potentially painful memories. Within the brain, memories sit in a web of interconnected information. As a result, one memory can trigger another, making it bubble up to the surface without any conscious effort. “When you get a reminder, the mind’s automatic response is to do you a favour by trying to deliver the thing that’s associated with it,” says Michael Anderson, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. “But sometimes we are reminded of things we would rather not think about.”
Research also shows that under certain circumstances, we can train ourselves to forget details about particular memories. For most people, the tendency to forget is something we spend our time cursing. Where are my keys? What am I looking for in the refrigerator again? What is that woman’s name? But, imagine if you never, ever, forgot a thing! It may sound cool initially, but when you think about it, our brains aren’t equipped to be giant vaults of information. Unless you are Sherlock Holmes working that mind palace technique, most of us only retain important information and significant memories. Like penguins on an iceberg, only so much fits in our brain. When we take in new information, we sometimes push other things out. Surely, Instagram and Facebook may help keep our memories fresh, but our brain actually exhibits a physical change when we make a memory – an engram – which is a trace of that mental moment.
Scientists Sheena Josselyn and Paul Frankland put it this way: “The prevailing view is that the formation of an engram involves strengthening of synaptic connections between populations of neurons…This increases the likelihood that the same (or similar) activity pattern within this cell assembly can be recreated at a later time.” When our brain is making a memory, physiological changes take place. Then, when our brain is trying to access that memory, it searches for those connections to the engram. There are two popular theories on why our memory fails us: Decay vs. Interference. The Decay theory is just what it sounds like – our memories decay over time. Interference theory tells us that our memories fade when other information takes their place. Some neuroscientists believe that our brains actively forget titbits of information on purpose. In many cases, a specific event will be remembered more generally to promote broad learning of a stimulus vs just one single piece of knowledge about it. The example neuroscientist Maria Wimber gives is getting bitten by a dog. If our memories never generalized or lost some details, we would only associate dog bites with that one dog at that specific dog park. In reality, most people would associate all dogs with the potential of a bite.
Humans are not helpless against this process, however. Previous imaging studies suggest that the brain’s frontal areas can dampen the activity of the hippocampus, a crucial structure for memory, and therefore suppress retrieval. In an effort to learn more, Anderson and his colleagues investigated what happens after the hippocampus is suppressed. They asked 381 college students to learn pairs of loosely related words. Later, the students were shown one word and asked to recall the other—or to do the opposite and to actively not think about the other word. Sometimes between these tasks they were shown unusual images, such as a peacock standing in a parking lot. As described in Nature Communications, the researchers found that the participants’ ability to subsequently recall the peacocks and other strange pictures was about 40 percent lower if they had been instructed to suppress memories of words before or after seeing the images, compared with trials in which they had been asked to recall the words. The finding provides further evidence that a memory-control mechanism exists and suggests that trying to actively forget a particular memory can negatively affect general memory. The researchers call the phenomenon an “amnesic shadow” because it apparently blocks recollection of unrelated events happening around the time of decreased hippocampal activity. The results may explain why some people who have experienced trauma and tried to forget it have poor memory of everyday events.
As Tom Sigfried states in his article, “Forgetting is essential”, some researchers now argue, because the biological goal of the brain’s memory apparatus is not preserving information, but rather helping the brain make sound decisions.” “… the biological goal of the brain’s memory apparatus is not preserving information, but rather helping the brain make sound decisions.” (Tom Sigfried). Obviously, decision making is a crucial brain function that plays a huge role in our ability to learn. Study methods that treat the brain as a thought partner rather than an information repository are ultimately always more effective in the long run. That is why we must remember to delete – and forget – especially in the digital age of today.
Human knowledge is based on memory. But does the digital age force us to remember too much? Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argues that we must delete and let go. That is why we should also remember and learn to forget. And save ourselves the pain associated with unpleasant memories and things that we would rather like not to remember.
Bhushan Lal Razdan, formerly of the Indian
Revenue Service, retired as Director General of Income Tax
(Investigation), Chandigarh.