Community Resilience in the Steel City

Reskilling: Memory

Last night I led a break-out group on Reskilling: Memory. As you all can probably imagine, a good memory is extremely crucial to successful functioning in this world. From grocery lists to edible plants, names and faces of people to favorite characters in a story, favorite quotations to entire poems or stories, memory is ubiquitous in almost everything we do. Yet more and more I've realized that Aristotle's warning about the written word replacing good memory is coming true, especially in our technological society. Why remember facts when you can just Google them? That kind of thinking is a slippery slope my friends, with an edge that I have felt myself begin to teeter back and forth on.

That is why I thought it would be a fun idea to have a Memory reskilling. Let's take our minds back from the machines and remind the world--and ourselves--how amazingly powerful the human mind can be. I'm not saying we should aspire to become Homer overnight (or ever...) but if we shoot for the stars, we will land on the moon. If you want to participate in this reskilling with me, find something you've wanted to memorize for a while, whether it be poetry, a short, a quotation, a phone book, whatever, learn it---internalize it--and present it at the next Tuesday coalescence. And then don't forget it! Part 2 of the reskilling is the most important part. After presenting it one week, you'll be challenged to remember it two weeks later, on top of a new piece.

Sound fun? Join me this week in Transition Pittsburgh's first Reskilling: Memory!

Denial

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Comment by Rosemary McMullen on April 1, 2011 at 12:24pm: According to my experience and study, the memory is held by the etheric body, the next layer out from the physical. It needs to get a good start age 0-7. Prior to the age of technology, this growth was natural, punctuated of course by trauma. But since young kids started to be exposed to TV and other tech invasions their etheric body may definitely have been compromised early on. I am inspired to see what healing measures may be applied to human beings to revitalize the etheric. Good sleep, calmness of the emotions, vitally infused food -- get them!

Comment by Aaron M Fraser on March 23, 2011 at 12:54am: Haven't had a chance to join the breakout group, but I am very interested in learning more

Comment by Susan Richter on March 21, 2011 at 9:18am: Sounds really interesting! Just came across a long poem yesterday that I wouldn't mind learning...but maybe I should pcl something shorter for now. I'll talk to you at the Coalescence about it!