I would have to say out of all of the chapters, I found this one the most interesting; I had never thought about being able to train or organize one’s memories.
However, as I read through the chapter it began to make more and more sense about the necessity in ancient times, a world without the modern conveniences of computers, databases, and the internet, for memory honed to be an effective and essential component of rhetoric.
This is not to say that these modern advances have rendered the content of this chapter obsolete, but rather it impressed upon me that to be an effective rhetor, you must train your mind to best be able to retain information that you can then easily call up if needed. This most closely displays the notion of memory as “not only a system of recollection, [but rather] a system of invention” (376). Being able to train your mind and memory to remember significant commonplaces, arguments, or proofs can undoubtedly prepare you for any situation. After all for ancients, memories were key in preparing for and delivering their positions, “whenever the need arose to speak or write, they simply retrieved any relevant topics or commentary from their ordered places within memory, reorganized and expanded upon these, and added their own interpretations” (376).
This ability presented here, the ability to think on one’s feet, so to speak, is one that I see lacking in society today. People seem all too apt to take positions, but rarely can articulate the beliefs behind those position statements. This has been made ever apparent in the recent election season. Groups of people are vehemently against candidates or political parties, and often times present misunderstandings or simply misinformation regarding the polices that these factions present. Perhaps here is where the reliance of people on their emotional responses to people or events often trumps the logical analysis of the commonplaces behind a person or situation. It is easier to say that you just dislike something or someone for personal reasons, rather then the core issues presented.
But then are these emotional responses not part of our cultural memory, and thusly still as valuable? Even if we are not able to articulate the reason behind our emotional responses, the fact that, “memories are stocked with many things besides narratives of our experiences; we remember things we learn from [a variety of people and sources], just as well as we remember experiences. Certainly we rely on our memories of all these kinds of teachings whenever we compose” (380). So, here it leads me to believe even in those dreadful arguments or moments where the opposition is unable to provide credible support for their position for which they are so stubbornly convinced, there is still some basis of truth in that position, or at least an element that has so powerfully resonated in this person’s memory that they are adamantly convinced that it is the truth.
Another element that I gravitated to in this reading was the different artificial memory systems that were practiced in ancient times. My favorite one was advancing your memory by “mental construction, consisting of a series of images connected in an orderly fashion to a series of mental places” (378). This immediately reminded me of the recent hit movie, Inception. The idea of constructing memories out of familiar places in order to better retain this information really mimicked some of the plot details of this movie, and I enjoyed examining this information with that film in mind. I guess it helped to make the memory of this reading all the more apparent, thus proving the point of this section!
I will leave with another contemporary example of these memory systems: a FedEx commercial in which the second memory system is illustrated. See you all in class!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FzwuUgg584&feature=player_embedded
No comments:
Post a Comment