There is this feature of human physiology called persistence of vision. Simply, it is what makes movies possible.
A movie isn’t really a motion picture: In actuality, it is a series of still frames projected at a certain rate (24 frames per second in most of the world; 25 frames per second in Australia (it has something to do with electricity voltage; don’t ask)) where each still frame is slightly different than the one that preceded it. The way the human brain and eye work the projection of these slightly different images in rapid succession is perceived as motion.
What got me to thinking about this is a most interesting book I’ve just finished reading. The Photograph by Penelope Lively (check prices) is, ostensibly, about a love affair, the knowledge of which is brought crashing home when a woman’s husband comes upon a random photograph buried among the strata of articles and other papers that pertain to his work as a university professor. I say ostensibly because the book isn’t really about the photograph, or even about what the photographer captured unwittingly, the very slim indicator that his wife was having an affair with her sister’s husband. The book is really about memory, about the persistence of it, and about how time and our own individual needs change our perception of events even though they seemed strong and fixed when they first occurred and shifted from the now to a memory.
I’m particularly interested in memory, having lost an objectively small chunk of mine at one point. I’m also getting to see first hand how time and circumstance change perception. I recently gave notice at The Association and have been marking out my last few days as an employee there. During that time, something very interesting has happened, I’ve started to feel more kindly toward the place, my attitude has improved, and all the things that troubled me about being there — insane management, grossly incompetent IT staff, ghastly long commute, an office space set up so that it achieves total isolation of all the employees, and exile to a completely inconvenient part of town to name a few — seem like less of a burden. Now that I’m leaving, now that I no longer have to work within such a screwed up environment, it’s really not so bad. Except, when you look at the facts objectively, nothing has changed; all the things that caused me to look for a new job are still there and they haven’t changed, so why has my perception of them changed?
Is there something in the human psyche that causes us to look back at events through the lens of time and see only the good things, something that softens the edges on the hardships to protect us from the objective facts of our lives? And if there is, why? Shouldn’t we be proud of having survived something difficult, of having been smart enough, or, more likely, lucky enough, to have made it through a tough experience relatively unscathed? Or is it that this softening, this distancing from the bad things is our psyche’s way of healing us, of preventing us from having to relive the pain of an event over, and over, and over again (the emotional equivalent of a scab over a scraped knee if you will)?
It must be; I can think of no other reason for us to reflexively diminish some pain we’ve gone through or the achievement of having survived it. After all, if we look back on our lives and see only “the good parts” version, aren’t we apt to make the same mistakes over and over again? What species could survive that kind of psychic wiring for more than a few generations?
What I do know is that I’ve learned, through watching myself navigate this process in real time over a relatively insignificant hardship, that my perceptions aren’t always complete even when I’m the only one involved in the event. Kind of scary, really, how big that makes the world, but kind of good as well.
Hey there – surprising stuff sometimes. I’d noticed how differently people perceive things from reading some newsgroups devoted to the L&O TV shows. Nobody seemed to mind any of the actors, but there are huge differences of opinion about several of the actresses. At least two of them whom I have found to be interesting and at times even moving performers others see as completely wooden, or worse. This discussion went on long enough for me to become completely aware that other people were failing to see things that were entirely clear to me – and vice versa. From this simple and trivial experience I’ve become more willing to accept that my perspective on any issue is not the only possible or right one. Sigh. It was simpler before.
But you are talking about your own memories. Actually I wonder if that’s a special instance of the effect of forces at work between people. In any case, where I’ve come across this most startlingly in recent months has been when I’ve re-read parts of my journal. This is something I do several times a year – either to check some past event, or just to refresh my memory.
The last time I did so, I was struck several times by the difference between how I remember some event now, and how I described it at the time. I was rather shaken – the accuracy of my memory has always been important to me. But in my memory, different events had been combined into one, or set at a different time or place, or just evoked very different reactions from me now than when they happened.
The rock-solid sense of my past has turned into something far less stable.
Possibly this is related to the fact that I retired a few years ago, which was a radical change in my life. Perhaps everything prior to that dividing line will look different to me now – I should check that.
But I think the reason for all this is that our world – exterior or ‘objective’ reality – is not at all independant of our perception of it. What we see is an amalgam of interior stuff and exterior stuff. There really doesn’t seem to be any way to neutralize the effect of the interior stuff. The scientific method is a bit of a fraud really unless we completely eliminate human perception in observing and measuring anything – an impossible goal.
What this leads me to is a curiosity about consensus and its effect on our perceptions.