Don't trust your mind too much...

2005-12-24

Merry Christmas!

Ok, this being out of the way, let's talk about something that is pretty serious. But first, let me talk to you about a book that I love.

ARMOR, by John Steakley.

This is not the best book ever written. But it might be the book I read the most in my life (5 or 6 times, and counting). Seriously, every time I forget the details enough, I read it again (every 4-5 years so far).

Now what is so great about this book? Well it's about powersuits (which I like a lot -- what's not to like about powersuits really), and fighting bugs (which are the ultimate bad-guys). Neither of those are very original these days. There are a bunch of books that play around with those concepts, and I haven't read another one twice.

No, the genius of this book is that you follow people who are following someone else. And after a while, you start feeling the same way as they do about this anti-hero hero (have I lost you so far? ;-).

Basically, you (and those people) are relieving the horror the guy in the suit had to go through. And as the book progresses, you identify more and more with the watchers, who are themselves identifying more and more with the hero (the guy in the suit).

But this has nothing to do with what I want to talk about today.

You see, I want to tell you not to trust your mind too much. Because if you do, you might just end-up telling stories that are not exactly true. Even if they are about you, and even if you are being absolutely genuine and honest.

Here is a small story to illustrate my point. And you might read this and think: "Yea, maybe it happened to him, but not me. I don't tell myself lies."

Ok, fair enough. It's your dreams after all. Just trying to keep you awake here, you want to stay with your eyes closed, it's your call... But in the mean time, here we go with my little (true) tale. And I know it is true because:

1. It just happened (I haven't had time to forget it/change it/embellish it yet).

2. I am writing it down so it will stay the same even if I forget the details (and my mind fills the blanks later -- without telling me which parts are originals, and which parts are the filling).

I have been reading this book (Armor, remember?) a few times. At some point, I must have found that one sentence in it was pretty profound. It goes like this. On the first page. Yes, I must have read it 5 or 6 times over the years...

"You are what you do when it counts"--The Masao

I must have found this so profound, that I made a desktop background with this saying, leaving out the "The Masao" part. Why not. I knew where I read it, right?

I must have used this background for a while, and then changed. And then forgot about it.

I found it again later, and I read the sentence. And I thought: "This is a very cool/powerful phrase. I was pretty hot the day I came up with this".

Now, read this again. Yep. "I WAS" pretty hot...

At that point, I remembered writing this and making this background image, but I had forgotten where I got the sentence in the first place. My mind (what a beautiful tool), failing to remember all the details, and most probably listening a little too much to my Ego, decided to fill the blanks with the "I WAS" part.

To my conscience, at that time, there was probably no difference between the parts that I actually remembered, and the parts my mind filled because they were missing. I mean to me, at that point, the whole memory was complete and authentic. No way to tell apart the "yep, this happened for real" from the "yap, maybe it did happened that way".

And the mind is very good at this. This is why if you ask 20 people who saw the same thing, you will get 20 stories that are a little bit different. And contradictory. Not on every detail, but some people will swear they saw a guy with a green shirt, and others will swear to you that the shirt was red.

What is scary is that they are all absolutely and genuinely 100% honest!

It's just too hard to differentiate the filling from the real. Because it is all coming from the same source. Our minds...

And if you write down the answers, and ask the same people again 10 years later, you will find that the details change. Actually, some details might become exactly the opposite. And still, those people will tell you exactly what they remember in good faith!

To them, it is real...

Just as real as this saying was to me.

Now go forward in time. I am starting a blog, and I am looking for a sentence that inspires me. So I remember this great line I came up with a few years back, look for it in my backgrounds, and bingo, I find it!

"You are what you do when it counts"

Cool...

I'll use this on my blog! :)

And I did.

Then, a few months later, looking for a good book to read, having nothing on my shelves that I haven't read (or that interests me at the moment), I ask myself: "Maybe it's time again for my old friend Armor?"

And I pick it up. And, just like I did so many times before, I open the first page. And there it is, hitting me in the face like a punch from a MicroArmor.

"You are what you do when it counts" --The Masao

You have noticed the end right? "--The Masao"... It doesn't say: "-- Luc" or anything like that.

Just in case you are wondering, I am not the Masao. Never have been (or if I have, my mind did a very good job of forgetting that one ;-)

Oh! And one last thing. Even now, I still don't remember reading this line in Armor. I mean I could choose to believe I came up with this line. And forget to mention to myself that at the time I had this great idea, I had already read the book at least 3 times...

Now if you think this happens only to me, good for you. But there is nothing I like as much as finding out that I have been telling myself stories, and believed it... There is nothing I like as much as finding out I am letting a prejudice cloud my thinking. Or that a great new idea I just had is actually one I had 20 years ago that I am just refreshing again with a little paint over the rust (we do that more and more as we grow up by the way).

No, I love this. As long as I am catching myself, it means I am still looking for those. I will get worried when I start catching myself less and less. Still OK for now. This has been a good day.

But trust me on this. Don't trust your mind too much... ;-)

Post Scriptum 2018-04-15

Looks like since I wrote this in 2005, it has been much more publicized. A simple search on "don't trust memory" will come up with multiple articles about this.

Here are a few that caught my eyes:

Memory - not as good as we think

The Sense of an Ending – and why we are wired to produce false memories

Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts

Enjoy.