According to dictionary.com, memory is the mental capacity of retaining facts, or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences. But memories are more than that. Memories define someone’s likes and dislikes, help recognize friends from enemies (Wilson). Memories are our own identity, all our knowledge and experience comes from them. Everyday of our life we are creating new memories. They are the base for taking decisions in a person’s life but are all those memories trustworthy? When you remember that time you fell of the bike, or when you received a dog for your birthday, are those memories something stuck in the past that never change? We think of memories as a fixed event that happened in the past, and we just have to recall it to live
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On one hand, science proves to us we can’t trust our memories, because every time we remember, we change our memories. Most of the memories we have aren’t the actual memory because our brain doesn’t work as a recording device. Instead, memory has a great margin of error because every time we recall, we are doing it in a different way, “In fact, memory recalls more imagined than real details of events” (Lemind). Most of our memories are therefore unreliable. Dallas M. Roark also agrees on this by saying “The memory is so unpredictable and undependable, it is argued, that we cannot know the past.” The present is the only thing that counts, and we can’t use a past that is unknown and constantly changing in our minds for creating the future. Apart from that, as explained before, memories aren’t stored in just one part of the brain, but instead are a wide brain activity. Parts stored through all our brain are taken and put together for creating a memory and giving it logical sense. Therefore memory can never be an exact copy of what really happened, because the memory isn’t there as a fixed event but instead is created. This is explained by the Constructionist Theory, which states that personal memory is a representation of the past based on the reconstruction of old experiences. The problem with reconstruction is that it can lead to distorted and changed memories, or even completely false memories; the brain may make up details or introduce recent events so that the memory we are trying to recall makes sense. Nevid’s explanation of the Constructionist Theory confirms “memories are not carbon copies of the past” and it also shows are memories are flawed, so we shouldn’t trust them (Nevid
On one hand, science proves to us we can’t trust our memories, because every time we remember, we change our memories. Most of the memories we have aren’t the actual memory because our brain doesn’t work as a recording device. Instead, memory has a great margin of error because every time we recall, we are doing it in a different way, “In fact, memory recalls more imagined than real details of events” (Lemind). Most of our memories are therefore unreliable. Dallas M. Roark also agrees on this by saying “The memory is so unpredictable and undependable, it is argued, that we cannot know the past.” The present is the only thing that counts, and we can’t use a past that is unknown and constantly changing in our minds for creating the future. Apart from that, as explained before, memories aren’t stored in just one part of the brain, but instead are a wide brain activity. Parts stored through all our brain are taken and put together for creating a memory and giving it logical sense. Therefore memory can never be an exact copy of what really happened, because the memory isn’t there as a fixed event but instead is created. This is explained by the Constructionist Theory, which states that personal memory is a representation of the past based on the reconstruction of old experiences. The problem with reconstruction is that it can lead to distorted and changed memories, or even completely false memories; the brain may make up details or introduce recent events so that the memory we are trying to recall makes sense. Nevid’s explanation of the Constructionist Theory confirms “memories are not carbon copies of the past” and it also shows are memories are flawed, so we shouldn’t trust them (Nevid