What interested me the most this week ironically took up the smallest section of the Postmodernism and Modernism outline. That was the memory section. The concept of memories has always fascinated me as cliche as that sounds. The Modernism side was easier to understand. It is said that at our final moments, our whole lives flash before our eyes, that is all memory at work. It is also said that to be happy, make more memories, not more money because in the end, who can take a diamond necklace, or a one of a kind watch? Those things are stripped of their worth and become as common as dust.
The above begins to outline Proust's idea that "life of memory is the only chance of meaning." Think about it; what else makes us happier than making happy memories. One moment has a ripple effect when turned into a memory. The moment itself makes you smile once, but the memory makes you smile countless more times. Without those replays, I cannot imagine life, or at least a good life.
The Postmodernism side was somewhat more complicated. Some concepts came easy, the others I had to pause on and try to shift my perspective to be able to fit the idea. The memory section, was not easy for me to understand as the Modernism version was. This version said that "we are within memory; memory is not within us." More often than not, we view memory as internal, as personal, and as a possession. I guess this is the reason it took me a while to understand the second part of the quote. When I thought about it, I thought of how history is so like memory. Our memory is like our textbooks. Both contain the past and already my memory of writing this very sentence is already formed. It is history. By this logic, one could argue that there is no present, only a past and a future because every second passed is the past and every second to come is the future.
