Memory Spins False Worlds

Our fame is as storytelling creatures. Arguably, this is the dividing line between animal and humankind. Our ability to displace ourselves from the present moment even though we inexorably occupy it, and to dwell instead in the folds of the past or fret upon the unfolding of the future – this is what makes us human. It is our birthmark; an almost-irremovable spot that can be the cause of distress or celebration, depending on how we choose to wear it.

You’ve likely noticed it by now. When you pass by people in the street. How some walk with their heads bowed, eyes to the ground, brows tortured by thought, aware of your being only at the minimum level of attention necessary. They are not really where their bodies are situated at all. Their physical surroundings periphery to their actual point of concentration. Auto-pilot episodes, elsewhere minds, bodies locked in cruise control.

Wanderers on some material plane, apparently loose parts in an external, objective world that, for all our understanding, goes on changing largely independent of our inner states. And yet we consistently superimpose our inner states upon this objective, external world.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then perhaps we are souls under house-arrest, peering through the looking glass. All too often, our vision is fogged or otherwise restricted. There are only so many angles of perception we can hold at any one time. No matter how we might crane and stretch to attain a better view, we will always have our blind spots.

And there are parasites in our houses too.

Consorts of endlessly transmuting energies and disembodied voices. You cannot outrun them, for you are locked inside this house with them. And to rage against them is also no use. With either strategy, you only succeed in inflating your enemies, helping their shadows loom larger on the wall.

Where we attempt to exterminate one family of thought, we succeed only in ensuring the multiplication of its offspring. It is the myth of Heracles fighting the Hydra. In decapitating one head, several more are sure to sprout in its place. The only proper solution is to face the head of each snake directly and to properly cauterise the wound. But this, it’s a conversation for another time.

If you’re an ordinary human being, the chances are that you’ve been living under this sort-of house arrest like the rest of us. Worse still, you’ve been living there so long, you might have no understanding of your identity beyond the walls which contain you. At its most extreme, this means you cannot separate yourself from where you reside, you might mistake who you are for the very house itself and everything contained within it. This means the disembodied voices - the ghosts haunting its many rooms - are also haunting you.

These unresolved voices of the past become the chorus that fabricate our stories and repeat them back to us. And we become little more than hosts possessed by this echo-chamber, navigating our limited space and time according to the framework set upon us by our store of past experiences. We become aware of our blind reactions only in the playing-out of their consequences, and realise all too late the wisdom in the saying: what you own ends up owning you.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

This, of course, a slice from Orwell’s 1984: a warning about the dangerous mutability of information. It’s an admission from the novel’s totalitarian Big Brother government, otherwise known as the Party, which recognises that in order to exert control over its population they must continually weave a story to which all past evidence corroborates. All evidence of which exists only in records and human memory. The Party must therefore be in full control of all records – doctoring or outright eradicating them when necessary – and also be in full control of the minds of its people – also doctoring or outright eradicating them when necessary.

Implicit in this process is an appreciation that past events have no objective existence. The past is dead and lives on only in the mind. All that truly exists is the present. The Party understands this. Whoever recalls the past has the ability to alter its shape, which – as the majority of people behave according to their past – grants whomever manipulates past events the power to manipulate behaviour in the present. And behaviour in the present creates a predictable pattern for behaviour in the future. Put otherwise, you act in your present according to your past: your present actions build your future. Be cautious therefore, which version of the past you choose to live with.

However, there is an escape hatch here, if you will, a get-out-of-jail-free card. I could tell you, that you, like the Party, are also the governing body with the power to manipulate past events, thereby determining your behaviour in the immediate now. But this seems to be an unnecessary exhaust of energy. Wouldn’t it be better instead to live entirely unburdened by the past?

Read again the statement closely.

‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

Now, reverse-engineer the equation.

For the past to determine the future, the present must be the direct consequence of the past. Without such a present, the past can have no bearing on the future. It seems to me then, that the present moment is everything, the fulcrum on which a life experience is continuously determined. There is an acknowledgement in this equation: absolute power belongs to whomever dominates the present moment.

And guess what? This anonymous ‘whomever’, that person, is you.

The erudite truth is that you are always occupying the present moment. Though your elsewhere mind might convince you otherwise, you cannot remove yourself from the unceasing now, no matter how hard you try. Whether you realise it or not, your relationship with the present moment is the most significant determinant of your life experience. You can be the victim of circumstance or the manufacturer of circumstance. That choice, ultimately, is yours.

A slight modification of the Party’s statement seems unavoidable for my purposes here. Forgive me, Orwell: I’m aware I’m taking you out of context. But let us say that whilst ‘Who controls the present controls the past’ is indeed true, we can also elaborate, and choose to say: ‘who surrenders to the present is uncontrolled by the past.’

Memories spin false worlds. Unburden yourself. Remove the shackles of the past – loosen them at the least – and your future will become increasingly unconditioned; an infinite sea of potentiality.

Thanks for reading, Josh.