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by eudamoniac 27 days ago
I've thought a lot about this. If you experience immense pain for half a second, then immediately forget, it doesn't seem so bad. And anything bad that has happened to you that you completely forgot doesn't really affect you. Sometimes when I'm feeling ill, I'll think to myself, "If I remember having this thought, then this sickness is terrible, but if I forget the whole experience, it isn't. If I eventually forget this happened, then this current pain is not real." Then when I remember that, I know that moment in time contributed to my total self. But surely I have also thought this without remembering it.

Does a full day of torture, completely forgotten, really matter? How long before it does matter? We forget vast amounts of our lives constantly. And after death, forgetting everything, how much mattered then? It's a mindfuck.

1 comments

It wouldn't matter even if you remembered it, if it wasn't for PTSD. That and the waste of a day.

The last question is strange, it implies that the goal of life is to fill up a trophy cabinet with golden memories and then, I guess, relish them for eternity, rather than to do things.

A life where I remember good memories is worth a lot more to me than a life where I do great deeds while sleepwalking and have no memory of it. What's the point of doing something if you don't even know you did it?