PALACES OF THE MIND: MEMORY STUDY SAYS ANYONE CAN REMEMBER MORE

(Folks, while I've been sick and trying to rest, Ms. K.M. has graciously contributed some blogs. Don't forget, this is a new feature here. I hope you'll accept my heartfelt thanks for your prayers and well wishes.  I am going to continue to  rest this week, and hopefully be back with you soon. Because of this I will be blogging more "thinly" the next couple of weeks until I can get back on my daily schedule. God bless.  JPF)

 

One of the great challenges in this age of easy access to information is how to retain memorization ability. We often hear people complaining that they can’t remember anything, and we remark to those with such a facility that they have a “great memory.” So is this ability innate or is it something that anyone can adopt?

I remember Charles Wang of Computer Associates once remark in Information Week that he hired programmers who could remember “64 objects located in 64 rooms of a giant house.” In his view, structured recall was an essential element in a great programmer.

Well lo and behold a recent article in the journal Neuron relating the results of a study of memory carried out by scientists from the Max Plank Institute, Stanford University, and Radbound University in the Netherlands. The team studied “memory athletes” and controls in an effort to understand if ordinary people could be taught the “art of memory.”

If the expression, “the art of memory” rings a bell, that’s because Joseph Farrell wrote about the art of memory in Thrice Great Hermetica and the Janus Age. It’s also the title of a book by that jaw-dropping scholar of history, Frances Yates, of the Warburg Institute and the University of London. Her book, The Art of Memory, describes for us the ancient mnemonic techniques, copied from the Greeks, and they learned it from the Egyptians. Who the Egyptians learned it from is anyone’s guess. Memory systems evolved in the long past when paper and writing did not exist or were difficult to access after cataclysms destroyed other methods of recording and recall.

One of the techniques described in the study calls to punctuate something someone wants to remember by associating it with some terrifying event. It seems that human memory works best when it tackles the primary functions of food, shelter, safety and sex. This should be a surprise to no one. One of the challenges in analysis of ancient texts is the inevitable feeling that one is reading a garbled version of “something else.” The texts of the ancient myths, for example, are outlandish and unbelievable to modern minds. Perhaps these stories were punctuated by the descendant receivers in order to solidify them.

Well, now you too can cultivate your inner genius and learn these techniques in an ordered way. A KickStarter campaign is now active to bring you software based upon these ancient techniques.

With memory training, after several weeks, the very performance behavior of the brain changes and memory skills translate into better functioning all around. So the performance changes wrought by the techniques are somewhat permanent if refreshed from time to time.

Joseph and I share the view that encouraging analogical thinking has even a more profound impact on memory than the techniques described in the study. Why? Analogy allows mosaics of thought to be constructed, stored, remembered and imbued with meaning and purpose, which is both a powerful motivator and the benefit; and which goes infinitely beyond the rote techniques in the study because the value of the information picture, your personal information field if you will, is so high.

Since the chemical, biological, and educational assault of the last 65 years on humanity are the techniques of a revolutionary process to create a cultural tabula rasa for which a new religion, a new politics, and a new culture are to be imprinted on all humankind, now you can, using the Art of Memory, develop even better ways of coping.

So it has never been a better time to study the truest history you can find, remember it using the techniques of the ancients, and please share it, so that the perilous songs of the post modern sirens, so compelling in their attraction, will not draw Western culture to further calamity on the rocks of the post modern shore.

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Kelly Em

Kelly Em is a contributor to Giza.  Kelly has a degree in philosophy of science, physics and economics.  She studied science journalism in NY and tried to have fun writing about technology for many years.  She is a musician, professional vocalist, and writer.

43 Comments

  1. Robert Barricklow on April 19, 2017 at 7:12 pm

    They sure get a kick when a bunch of naked apes go on & on memorizing all they’re lies as if they were facts. Silicon Valley shapes the information we get access to, all in the name of tailoring it more effectively to “our needs and preferences”. By feeding content that reflect their views shielding them from people they may disagree with; these filtering mechanisms[go deeper than many realize] make the public sphere[what’s left of it] less dynamic.
    It’s a “frictionless technology” that shapes the masses thinking.
    Then there is the holistic understanding versus the atomized memory.
    For me memory boils down to this: The struggle of mankind against power, is the struggle of man against forgetting.



    • Robert Barricklow on April 20, 2017 at 5:39 pm

      posted because of todays News & Views…

      Think of the recent example in Greece; the so-called birth place of democracy. Ask Socrates, he tell it like it is[or more likely as it]. When the plutocracy put him on his kangaroo farcical trial. At least Plato presented it as it was in the Apology.
      After the tables turned A declaration of general amnesty to all but a notorious few[today all would escape like the 2008 banksters]. The serfs[citizens] were subject to an oath, memesikakein, which means “not to remember past wrongs”.



      • Robert Barricklow on April 20, 2017 at 5:40 pm

        or more likely ask it.



  2. Ramura on April 19, 2017 at 8:33 am

    On another note, I have long been awed by Dr. Farrell’s extraordinary memory and have wondered whether he conciously uses memory palace or other techniques to achieve that end, or is it an inborn trait.

    And, if he is doing it consciously, he must do it with EVERYTHING as I have met him in person and seen him remember all kinds of bits and bytes from conversations on the fly (large monetary numbers or formulas mentioned in passing the day before, for example) easily.

    He has said he has “eidetic memory,” which I always interpreted to mean “photographic” (as in visual). But I have seen him do it auditorially as well. And his ability to remember 40+ member handles in the vidchat room, what countries they are in, and most likely their real member names are, never fails to impress. And which ones are in THIS vidchat or not! That, right there, is quite a feat, IMHO.



  3. goshawks on April 19, 2017 at 1:44 am

    “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” Hmmm…
    goshawks – April 19, 2017 at 1:42 am.



  4. goshawks on April 19, 2017 at 1:42 am

    Ms. K.M., an excellent ‘first’ blog. Welcome to the authorist side!

    In one of the long-ago “Connections” episodes (hello, Marcos!), James Burke did an exposition on how folk – before general book availability – managed to not only retain but accurately retrieve vast amounts of data. The episode was impressive, and I still use some of those techniques to this day. (Part of one ‘secret’ was to associate a data-bit with some wildly strange or unusual happenstance. Somehow, the brain ‘enjoyed’ the playful aspect, and retained the data-point far better than dull, rote memorization. Teachers, take note!)

    The fact that “human memory works best when it tackles the primary functions of food, shelter, safety and sex” is used by the tv/movie industry to ‘imprint’ memes into the human condition. This is not only for propaganda/control purposes, but (in my humble opinion) because we are also creators or co-creators of the future.

    For example, the third(?) “Star Trek” movie involved a scene where they blew-up the Enterprise. Being both emotionally-trained and manifestation-trained, I immediately thought of how this would ‘echo’ through the emotions of countless Enterprise-loving fans – and the manifestation consequences. Not so long after, I was awakened one morning during a class at The Monroe Institute and told that the Challenger shuttle had exploded on takeoff. I can’t prove this, but my ‘instincts’ scream at me that this was the emotional-pain of the Enterprise destruction-footage being ‘played-out’ into the real world.

    Ever wonder why tv/movies are being shown with ever-darker and more-violent content? Combine memory-retention due-to emotional-shock (registered consciously or not) with our mostly-unconscious abilities, and you have some idea of what the baddies are trying to ‘manifest’ for/by us. (How many ‘love and light’ consciousness-raising flicks have you seen lately?)



    • DanaThomas on April 19, 2017 at 4:16 am

      Hmmm interesting. This is why in recent years I have avoided TV and movies like the plague and when I do happen to watch something, I fall into a Jay Dyer-like mode of checking for the memes, themes, symbols, agendas, analogies and quotations of various kinds that emerge 🙂



    • Sandygirl on April 19, 2017 at 4:55 pm

      Goshawks, predictive programming, and they know how to use it, especially when coupled with fear and emotions. Once you learn more about how the esoteric/spiritual works and you get it, know it, feel it, you can look back at your life and see the examples and how well it did/does work. Dr. Farrell’s teachings, the physics, math, topological medium, etc., Is this what was taught in the mystery schools? I can see why they wanted to keep this knowledge hidden.



    • Kelly Em on April 19, 2017 at 8:58 pm

      Goshawks, thank you. I’m so glad you liked it. The quality of Dr. Farrell’s work is so high that I have to work twice as hard to be half as interesting!

      Kelly



    • Kelly Em on April 20, 2017 at 1:48 am

      That’s true, the use of drama to imprint. That’s why movies and such are getting darker and more violent. I think that’s because people are becoming jaded to the darkness, so they make it darker; but now its so dark that people don’t watch as much; so they are overplaying their hand; in fact, that’s what they do best.



  5. zendogbreath on April 18, 2017 at 9:42 pm

    how ironic – i forgot my password to login to comment



  6. mercuriAl on April 18, 2017 at 9:38 pm

    Well done and warmly received, Ms. K.M.



    • Kelly Em on April 19, 2017 at 8:58 pm

      Hi MercurAI,

      Thank you so much. I am enjoying myself.



  7. anakephalaiosis on April 18, 2017 at 7:22 pm

    My Father’s house has many rooms. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

    Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say to you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

    Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For your is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.



    • Kelly Em on April 19, 2017 at 8:59 pm

      Interesting that you mentioned that. The analogy is clear. God’s metaphor of the medium is the biggest house with the most rooms, and the contractors are adding on rooms as we speak!



  8. Sandygirl on April 18, 2017 at 5:44 pm

    Cymatics, the study of frequency and vibration. Studies have shown some frequencies have positive or negative effect on the brain and we can bet that they already have the specific vibes to affect our memories.



  9. Katie B on April 18, 2017 at 12:03 pm

    Love this! Can you speculate further, K.M. re connection between dream journals and reality at all? I found when I kept mine that things from my dreams (that I would not have ordinarily remembered had I not committed them to paper upon awaken and indeed, remembered more of it the more I wrote) came true the next day – nothing massive just little things. Would these things have come true had I not committed them to paper and remembered? Are dreams just memory palaces?



    • Phil the Thrill on April 18, 2017 at 12:36 pm

      If you haven’t, you might read Carlos Castaneda. His “The Art Of Dreaming” is very intriguing. When one reads Castaneda, however, one is best served by reading all eight of his “Don Juan” books, in order. I did recently, and found the experience to be very rewarding. Castaneda’s work is in the vein of others who claim that our waking life is actually a dream, and most of us don’t know it; that our night dreams can be consciously directed; and, that our day “dream” is of our own unconscious making. By learning to direct our night dreams, we can become conscious in our day “dream”. We can then begin directing our own lives, as opposed to considering our lives to be shaped by forces outside of our own control.
      Somebody said, our perceptual capabilities are in direct proportion to our ethics. I find this to be a fascinating statement.



      • Katie B on April 18, 2017 at 1:53 pm

        Oops I reported your comment by accident!! I keep doing this – fat fingers!!

        Yes I agree with Casteneda’s statement and wonder if we don’t quite have free will in this waking life. Plus those dreams of being a passenger or a puppe sometimes a pilot on a wildly out of control helicoptor. Taking the rough with the smooth landings. I have tried to control my dreams by the supplement method and La Berge’s. It’s very difficult and your brain chemistry and hormonal profile needs to be A1 – not too low or too high in anything. For instance, you need a decent amount of early morning cortisol which will help create alertness and control in your dreams. Pierre Sabak says some interesting things about the same subject in one of his dvd’s and infers this is how we control time by controlling our dreams. And be masters of it instead of subject to chronos and the baby eaters



        • Phil the Thrill on April 18, 2017 at 2:12 pm

          Oh, don’t be too hard on your fingers, now. Maybe your cursor has saddlebags :^)



          • Katie B on April 18, 2017 at 2:13 pm

            I defo have those! Dunno about my cursor!



        • Hidden Wally on April 19, 2017 at 12:24 am

          Control time? Tell me more. Do you mean control the time line and hence your (our?) future?



    • Chuck on April 18, 2017 at 5:25 pm

      Great piece Ms. KM!



      • Kelly Em on April 20, 2017 at 1:49 am

        Thanks! I forgot how much I like journalism.



    • Ramura on April 19, 2017 at 8:27 am

      Good point, Katie B! I kept dream journals for sixteen years straight, and sporadically ever since. I realized many instances of precognitive ability over the years, the longest period being between 2-3 years before the event, and many at least 6-months out (Berlin wall coming down, freeway collapse in the Loma Prieta earthquake, etc.). At the time, I was grateful that I had recorded those dreams as it was validating to me, personally, that I had “known” in advance what was coming. These events have given me much room for pondering the nature of time, cause and effect (?) and reality over the decades, but I actually had never asked myself if the mere fact of RECORDING them had some outer effect in their manifestation. Of course I had myriad little personal instances, too, such as you report. I’ll have to pay better attention to those now in terms of how much the “writing it down” aspect connects to the “I dreamt that yesterday” when it happens aspect.

      Also, shout-out to Ms. K. M. She told me she was doing this blog and I have been looking forward to it. She does not disappoint! I look forward to future submissions from her fine mind. Bravo, K.M! 🙂



      • Kelly Em on April 19, 2017 at 9:47 pm

        Thank you, Ramura!

        More fun ones coming too. I just don’t have enough time with everything else.



    • Kelly Em on April 19, 2017 at 9:01 pm

      Not really sure about dreams per se. For me, they always seem to convey the feeling space that’s ignored by the thought space. The “Kelly Channel” runs 24/7. Perhaps the Buddhists are right and all is a vast dream space punctuated by 16 hours of actively interacting with it.



  10. marcos toledo on April 18, 2017 at 10:12 am

    Ignorance is strength forgetting is bliss reading real books is a sin having your own private library is a capital crime. Welcome to the world of 1984- Fahrenheit 451 where being a mindless zombie is your patriotic duty.



  11. Tommi H on April 18, 2017 at 7:48 am

    Interesting blog!



    • Kelly Em on April 19, 2017 at 9:02 pm

      Thank you, Tommy!



  12. DanaThomas on April 18, 2017 at 6:13 am

    Nowadays people tend to think of taking some pill or other to improve memory. A pool substitute for understanding, or trying to understand, just what memory is.



    • DanaThomas on April 18, 2017 at 6:14 am

      poor not pool 🙂



      • marcos toledo on April 18, 2017 at 10:22 am

        It is interesting Dana that I a biological being could understand your mistake of pool for poor. But could substitute in reading what you meant I doubt a AI could really understand a do the mental substitution.



        • iZeta on April 18, 2017 at 8:47 pm

          well, I don’t know about that. When I type something incorrectly (ie spelling error) into the google search bar, google automatically gives me suggestions of what I might have originally wanted to type. It almost always gets it right. I don’t think it’s intuitive though. I think it’s more quantitative. It very quickly searches every available variation of what I might have wanted to say in the first instance. It’s useful most of the time, when I’m in a hurry. But when I think about it deeply, I realise that I’ve fallen into the trap of believing that immediacy is the goal. Google is making us stupid after all. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/



          • Robert Barricklow on April 19, 2017 at 7:02 pm

            iZeta
            “Most people don’t want google to answer their questions…they want Google to tell them what they should do next.” – In a 2010 interview in the WSJ, with then CEO-Eric Schmidt. That’s their God complex ego[ogling itself]; it goes with their tribe’s mindset.



        • mercuriAl on April 18, 2017 at 9:35 pm

          .roop ton looP
          .socraM ,oneuB



          • iZeta on April 18, 2017 at 11:16 pm

            um what?



          • Hidden Wally on April 19, 2017 at 12:25 am

            Pool not Poor. Bueno, marco



          • iZeta on April 19, 2017 at 2:13 am

            @HiddenWally: Thanks 🙂 I should have thought a bit longer sheesh!



    • iZeta on April 18, 2017 at 9:02 pm

      Could memory form part of the ocean of the Great Topology?



      • Kelly Em on April 19, 2017 at 9:10 pm

        That’s of course a very large question. Thank you for asking it. Speculating here, if we think of the Anima Mundi, the world soul, the mass consciousness as creating, supporting, updating, and obscuring information in a vast information field, which is effected by the capacity of sentient beings to conjure, then yes. The topology, really a vast, dynamic, n+1 dimensional tensor (a complex topology with potentially infinite extent), is quantum entanglement operating with functions of implicit/explicit order, which I think will be shown to be the natural technology of the world soul and also of the information field., though I could be wrong!



  13. Lady dashwood on April 18, 2017 at 5:35 am

    Palaces of the mind indeed. The last great frontier! A very important subject, thank you for taking the time to write about this and share with us.



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