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Nathan Gill
LA 201-02 – Sophomore Seminar
Mr. Conley
21 August 2023
Memory VS Memorization VS Memorialization
Every person has a chance to remember, to keep a memory of what happened at a given
moment. While we can remember, what about memorizing? To people, there is no difference
whatsoever. Paul Ricoueur takes three words and links them together. Those three words are
memory, memorization, and memorialization. Not only these but Ricoueur also put an idea to
traumatic events and a different process—remembering, memorizing, and forgetting. Ricoueur’s
ideas are intriguing regarding the relationship between memory, memorization, and
memorialization; I believe they are important for 2023 and not losing the past. With his ideas,
some more traumatic events are more easily remembered because of the consciousness filtering
events and character experience. During this process of remembering, memorizing, and
forgetting, there are things at stake like key moments of the world.
The relationship between the three topics—memory, memorization, and
memorialization—that Ricoueur writes about is intriguing because of the way Ricoueur puts a
closer meaning to the words. To Ricoueur, the memory of a person “is the phenomenal
equivalent of a physical event” (Ricoueur), and memorization is “learning related to forms of
knowledge…marked from a phenomenological point of view” (Ricoueur). These definitions of
Ricoueur are intriguing because I have never thought about this before. Looking at Ricoueur’s
ideas, memory is just recalling an event, whether a classroom experiment or a whole game. A
person can use all the senses or just some to picture that moment in time and see it in the mind’s
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eye. Memories are important for 2023 because we should not lose the past. Slavery, a memory, in
2023 is being put in education as “not that bad” or “gave slaves a chance to develop skills.” This
is blatantly wrong. Slaves were abused and treated like not even humans. If people continue
down this path, we will forget the truth and the true memories. Memories can lead to
memorialization. Ricoueur states “Memories can be created as discrete forms…called a
memorial backdrop” (Ricoueur). These backdrops can lead to a memorial for something we
should not forget. If you were to think about the memory of the Holocaust, it led to the
memorialization of that event because of the events during it. These events were so destructive
and—some may say—evil that the current day should reminisce and remember in 2023. These
are important for today because, again, we must not lose the past. Memorialization makes it
harder to lose the truth in the past, but that past could be twisted to fit the victor, not the loser.
Memorization is similar but instead of moments and events, it is looking at knowledge.
Compared to memory, memorization is a little more factual than remembering something that
might not be the entire truth. Most have memorized things like ABCs, basic math skills, and
spelling. These are facts, not hyperboles like some memories people share. Memorization is
important for 2023 because people should memorize the truth. Going back to the piece about
slavery, the truth about slavery was that it was terrible and made our fellow humans be treated
like animals. This is the memorization people need to remember. We cannot lose the past. If we
do not learn about and change from that past, humans are doomed to repeat it. So people should
memorize the memories of the past and create a memorial to not forget.
The memories of traumatic and major events are easily better remembered than smaller
events because of the consciousness of the brain. The consciousness of the brain is how we are
aware of and process our surroundings in each moment of now. It filters how people perceive
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and experience events. Ricoueur’s thoughts of consciousness are that the “consciousness of an
event recognized as having occurred before the moment when [the] consciousness declares
having experienced” (Ricoueur) that moment. He is talking about how before or during a
major—traumatic—event, the consciousness claims the person has already experienced the
event. Even if the person has never experienced that event before that moment. This leads to
mental disorders like PTSD. People with PTSD have the disorder because the events that the
consciousness has experienced were traumatic enough, the brain decides to enable the person to
remember this traumatic event easier than other minor, non-traumatic events. The consciousness
could filter these events because of how our ancestors acted a long time ago. If a terrible event
happened to an ancestor, they would remember that event and avoid it like a plague. Our brains
today are wired similarly to that if the event was bad, stay away from that event. It is also like
food aversion, the dislike of food because something bad happened after it. A person ate hotdogs,
probably too many, and continued like normal. After a certain time, they begin to throw up, and
the person blames the hotdogs and will not eat them again because they made that person sick.
Also, like getting salmonella from a restaurant like chick-fil-a. They may not want to go back
because of that experience. These traumatic events are remembered because the human
consciousness is wired to filter the events and remember them so people can avoid the same
mistakes that happened before like not getting sick.
Remembering, memorizing, and forgetting, this process has something at stake like a key,
life-changing, memory. The choices for the world’s future are based on remembering the
experiences and memories in their life. The example of remembering was a life-changing event.
Without remembering a memory that defines the future, the world may not change. This leads to
a slippery slope. It might not change the world in the earlier stages but when it comes later down
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the line, that world would be tremendously different, like a butterfly effect. Forgetting, the third
factor, is like the inverse of remembering. The world shouldn’t—but can—forget some memories
but cannot forget the key moments. The thing at stake with forgetting is the world cannot forget
that key event or not remember it. What is important about Ricoueur’s ideas is that the world
cannot just forget. It should remember events no matter how small because we can learn from
them. These ideas should be taken more seriously because learning was how we got to be to this
day. We learned how to farm, the stars work, to fly, and all of these came about because we
learned from the past. Memories are the middle ground, just a part linking forgetting and
remembering. No memories, nothing to remember or forget. Memories are at stake because
memories are what allows the world to reflect—for better or worse. No memory means the world
cannot learn, improve, or even worse, they cannot remember the past. This is when we can see
the stakes are at their highest. In the actual world, if people did not learn from our mistakes, we
would keep repeating history. During the second world, as the atomic bombs were dropped, the
USA tried to stop the second bomb to not repeat the mistakes of the first. Even now, people are
hesitant to drop atomic bombs because of the past. If we did not reflect on the memory and
forget, the world would be a lot different than now. Overall, the stake in this process of the three
factors is having key memories in our lives. Remembering the memory changes, us and not
forgetting about that memory as well.
Paul Ricoueur was not shy and believed in his words and work. While his words are
tricky to completely understand, I am still highly intrigued by how Ricoueur changes a topic that
most think they know. Memory can lead to memorialization by remembering that memory and
memorization are still connected in memory by memorizing stories of memory. But not only are
his words on those three, but also his words on traumatic events. These events are filtered by
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one’s consciousness, allowing one to remember that event so one does not repeat it. Lastly is the
process of another three variables: remembering, memorizing, and forgetting. All three of these
variables have something at stake with them: not remembering or memorizing a key lifechanging event or forgetting that event. Ricoueur’s work puts a person on their toes and allows
them to think about how our minds work. He changed the way I see our minds and memory,
maybe others can follow in the same lane.