Memory

Memories are for us, humans, a pillar of our personality. They are formed from the beginning of our life as a result of our experiences, and in turn, they affect our reactions and the way in which we assimilate our next experiences. They make up the spinal column of our ideas, of our emotions and of our aspirations. That is why when the 2001’s film, Iris, shows us the sliding of the personality of writer Iris Murdoch into an abyss for which we have little understanding, it shows us deep down a form of extinction.  Alzheimer’s illness is for the writer, widely known in the English speaking literary world, a voyage from a cultural and living richness to the black hole of internal absence. Alternating old memories with recent forgetfulness, her consciousness is softly pushed towards a past which with the progress of the illness is equally and gradually erased.  In this manner, Iris loses consciousness of her own self, falling into behavior repetition and experiencing a lack of sense to the point of losing the feeling of direction in her actions and her steps. Desperation fills her sometimes, creating an emotional charge which generates rifts in her personality and in her relationship with her husband, John Bayley. In this situation, the question may be asked:  with the impossibility of forming recent memories and the disappearance of the past, what can a human being have, existentially, left? Maybe there is only the possibility of forming memories for others, of endowing other’s experiences with meaning. This tells us of how important, on an individual level and in a double aspect, the memory of life can be.


The same may happen to societies. Historical memory contributes to the interpretation of the present, sometimes conditioning and limiting it, and sometimes providing useful information for its reading. Just like with individuals, it constitutes the basis for an identity deeply rooted in the matter of a particular life. The loss of said historical memory is a fact that may contribute to the unraveling of the social fabric, to the loss of social identity, and thus, to certain disorientation regarding various aspects including a society’s civilizational teleology. The memory of how a society has become a nation may provide certain key aspects to preserve itself as such. Without these key aspects, nations come to the point of facing an abyss parallel to that of personality disappearance.


Unlike the above-mentioned incurable disease, in which the transit to the loss of one’s identity is irreversible, this abyss may be cleared. Even though, like with individuals, the memory of the past may influence the interpretation of the new social experience, the fact that this interpretation is a collective one opens the possibility of overcoming historical conditionings. It is then when history and communication become important. The establishment of a Civilizational Direction into which a society must grow with structural stability is one of the pillars of its development. When we speak of a Civilizational Direction which includes a certain structure, we could describe it as a model that includes fundamental values and the institutions that will put them into practice as a policy of the social entity that may or may not be, at least fully, reflected in governmental policies. These values must not be only a sort of political articulation of social life, as it has happened in the past. They must also represent an investment in an ethical model that makes civilization sustainable.


Perhaps in an inverse sense, from a certain perspective, to that of Alzheimer’s disease, we must go from a memory strictly about facts of a history which has held certain randomness to a well based civilizational future containing the necessary freedoms and the necessary guides for growth, thus, leading us to avoid the abyss which would condemn us to repeat the past. In this manner, Iris shows us a path that is possible for both individuals who may experience the effects of this disease and, metaphorically speaking, societies that forget the cause and reason of their existence, and allows us to feel the border of this abyss.