permanence - the state or quality of lasting or remaining unchanged indefinitely
Something I've been thinking about more in the past few months than I probably ever have before in my life is how temporary things are.
They say that memories last forever,
but for me they don't as much as it would for others. The positive experiences I've had in the past like meeting up with my Czech partner for the first time, I don't "remember" it more than knowing it happened and being able to imagine what it would have been like. I even find myself sometimes forgetting something I did was earlier that day. Most of my memory is dedicated to "yes, that event happened" but not the specifics like the date or the emotions associated with it.
So what so interesting about the idea of permanence?
In a world where everything can fade and be forgotten, there is something enticing about things that stick around longer than a persons life. Buildings, books, art, they all share the same trait of being able to outlive their creators, and even when I don't understand the meaning behind their creation, I admire them for their ability to outlast me. Seeing all these things makes me want to contribute too, to make something that can outlast me, maybe even a few generations.
Preservation
Something else I've come to admire is not just the creators of the art, but the people making sure they stay existing (because clearly we can't trust companies to do it for us) cue rant about companies removing movies and shows from any legal service
But really, why can't companies just make a legal way to access old stuff.
I've already spent like 2 hours slowly writing this, I will be back to add more eventually.
I feel very similarly to this. Despite not having any notable trauma that I can recall in my childhood, a lot of memories of that era for me are very vague, which results in me feeling just a bit jealous of those who can recall that era of their life with clarity and accuracy!
I have a lot of thoughts on the topic, I can share quite a few, but I lack the time right now. I’m going to share something that John Green wrote in The Anthropocene Reviewed which, despite the difference in time, is a shared experience I also had:
When I was nine or ten, I saw this planetarium show at the Orlando Science Center in which our host, with no apparent emotion in his voice, explained that in about a billion years, the sun will be 10% more luminescent than it is now, likely resulting in the runaway evaporation of Earth’s oceans. In about four billion years, the Earth’s surface will become so hot that it will melt, and then in seven or eight billion years, the Sun will be a Red Giant star, and as the Sun expands, our planet will eventually be sucked into it, and any remaining Earthly evidence of what we thought or said or did will be absorbed into a burning sphere of plasma. Thanks for visiting the Orlando Science Center. The exit is to your left.
It’s taken me most of the last 35 years to recover from that presentation.
This is very recognizable, i am sorry to say that i do not have the energy to write a whole lot right now, but i certainly feel you.
Whenever people i am close to are talking about things that happened years ago and remembering them quite clearly i feel weird because with very few exceptions i only have the vaguest of idea of my past and my childhood especially.
There is no real solution but i have a tip for anyone who is the same and that is to take pictures, a 2d image is nothing compared to the real thing but it may trigger things in your mind that you did not know you remembered. Sometimes a memory does not exist, but other times you may need a trigger to bring (part of it) forward into you mind, i have found this helpful and i hope it may help anyone reading this as well.
So, permanence is something I struggled with since I was a child, and I had my first interaction with the concept of loved ones dying. I struggle and have always struggled with the thought that I am something that will one day, no longer exist. And that the people I interact with, too, will one day no longer exist. No longer there to converse with, to learn from, to joke with.
This is honestly the only reason I wish for an afterlife, despite not believing in one. To have somewhere I can speak with those I hold dear after they and I leave this world.
But, anyway, lack of permanence and my struggle with it is something I have kind of based my life and values around. I resolve not to be a person who cares about ego or legacy too much because, in the end, that doesn't do a lot for you when everything we make will one day be wiped out. The connections we make between each other is the main thing with staying power, to me. Even those don't last, because you don't get to choose how or if people remember you. But because of that, I try to be kind towards other people, if only to have people recall me fondly.
In the fabric of time, and in the vastness of space
A billion amounts to nothing in infinity's face
At most, a couple generations will remember the ways
In which your life never mattered, so who cares if it's a waste?
Well, one day you'll be not even a faint memory
No, at most, a ghost or falling leaf from your family tree
Your legacy's not yours to see, nor is your eulogy
And you'll never know what it all means
But you'll be at peace before you sleep if you just keep this in mind:
That everything and everyone goes with the passage of time
So whether it's cancer, murder, or suicide
One day you're going to die
Memento Mori: the most important thing in the world by Will Wood
One of the first times I heard the term was in Persona 3. The message of that game, to me, is that the point of life, if there is any, is to make connections with other people, and to hopefully make their and your own life richer in the process. I feel at my best when I am with a friend who truly understands me. The kind of connections which rejuvenate when you meet is an addicting feeling, and it is nice to know that, even when I’m gone, the both of us will recall the friendship with a lot of sentimentality. Online encounters tend to be a sort of truncated form of this.
I know that at most a couple of generations will remember me, when I’ll die the second and final time. Putting my name on something without myself in it doesn't serve any purpose, and I don't deserve to be stuck in the crowded annals of history with all the other people who find themselves worth it.
Add me to the conversation, not the text
That said, I do want to create, strongly. I want to create something that is put out there with a unique idea, I want to put it out even if it’s shitty thing that nobody likes. Because I have faith that even my bad, or even inappropriate art can be learned from, and grown from by other people. Like those in academia publishing research, I am happy enough just being a stepping stone for someone else to make something better, because it means some form of the message I was trying to make outlived me and outlived my art.
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is a game I think about in regard to this a lot. It was a game put out in 1997 which had a core idea of respecting the creatures and animals of an RPG world as they are real animals and creatures. Nearly 20 years later, Toby Fox read a plot summary of this obscure game online and was inspired to make it a large part of Undertale, which itself has gone on to inspire even more works. Undertale is a tribute to classic RPGs which a lot of its fanbase weren't familiar with, so it inspires those people to explore those classic rpgs, and maybe to learn from them in their own projects inspired by Undertale. The works of Love-de-lic, in that sense, live on far past the original work, which I just find amazing, that such an obscure and unknown work can be, essentially, resurrected years later by a random individual who can use it to make something that gains steam. This can be done from any point in history, and can be done as long as we keep archives, which will be around in some way or another as long as we are, I think
A different topic strayed over in this direction before, and could be interesting to revisit.
I particularly recall Wistellias response as very helpful describing how old memories change format.
Since making that post, I've kept up a much stricter sorting and clearing of my digital photos, aswell as taking out specific photos to my notes and writing a few sentences about it. It's been quite nice.
Loosing memory clarity of old events are inevitable i feel. But physical objects and "pointers" to the events can to a long way.
I didn't intend for this thread to just be about memory, but about the general idea of things disappearing, buildings collapsing, media being lost, cultures dying out, books being burned out of existence.what actually triggered me to make a thread was a video titled "the internet didn't die, your'e just not on it", a video about people keeping the old style of the internet alive with personal sites made with pure html css and javascript like neocities and using webrings (linking to others sites in a ring to make it easier to surf). This reminded me about how so much of the internet that used to exist just doesn't anymore, and all of that has been forgotten, only saved from falling into the abyss by the internet archive... well... those lucky enough to be captured.
Digital preservation
This is something that I love exists. Saving the data that no-one else seems important enough to save, that companies deem 'not profitable enough' to allow any way to access it. I would love to be someone collecting some of this data and being a place for someone else to access it. This is exactly what the internet archive does, a place for anyone to access digital data like a library, however its been showing some cracks recently. For years they have been operating using the same rules and loopholes that make libraries possible, but a recent lawsuit ruled they have to abide by copyright which.... makes preservation almost impossible, as IA saving and sharing anything that they never got permission to or is public domain is therefor piracy. This issues then puts everything on IA at risk of being lost again. Even for the stuff that is there without breaking copyright, all it takes is enough lawsuits to cause it to collapse. Looking at how much storage they are reportedly using, its 212 PetaBytes (as they store 2 copies) of the data. That's just soo much is almost impossible for a hobbyists to make a backup, requiring millions worth of drives. Some people have taken it up themselves to back backups of specific sections of the archive, but still potentially still leaves the possibility of sections being left out, sections at risk of being lost forever, becoming lost media.
(I have lost my train of thought a bit, so will be back again to say more)
i feel the inpermanance of all my actions biteing at my hobies like i cant just sit and play games i cant just leave nothing
and then i do art and im like ah yes compared to the vast everything this is truely the same
but theres some of me that feels like makeing someones life easyer or provideing some sort of comfort is imortal and permanent i will have always done that, mabee its the fact that the action isnt made to be remembered or intending to have an experience that i would want to remember
so you will have always done that kind thing and the net kindness of the universe will be forever slightly more kind
I have many thoughts with impermanence, but i will only take the time to write on a few of them.
Here, tomorrow, yet again.
Memory after one is gone.
There is something cool about day of the dead, and many people see it in many different ways, sometimes i heard people say that "Mexicans love to eat so much that they come back each year after they die to taste food once more", i have also heard that "we come back beacuse we love so much those who stay living". Dead of the dead is a cool festivity where we get to honour those who are gone, and it mostly is about the people, but i find something curious in this festivity, many times, there can be the photos of pets, loved companions who made our life so wonderful bwwe can't help but remember them and make them a space in the altar, but oddly enough, there can also be their artwork, something they made, something they loved to wear, something they taught us how to cook or whatever you can to let them know, they still matter to you.
The after life of the Mexicas, sorry i like to yap about reigions
The oirign of this belief, as i understand it, it was a long process of four years, this is not arbitrary spent of time, in four years what more or less took a body to decompose, and, the people believed that each step the soul went through some sort of nine level purgatory to finally have eternal rest, when the bones is all that remains, that means the journey is complete.
When someone died, they have to be acompanied by a loved animal through the underworld, the journey is hard and difficult, but it serves a purpose.
First you cross the river called Chiconahuapan, in the Itzquintlan[1], its so violent and strong that you cannot swim alone, so you have to ask the spirit of an animal who acompanied you in life[2], it's believed that if you treated animals wrong when you lived, you wouldn't have any help here.
Then comes Tepectli Monamictlan, this is the place where it's believed the god of earthquakes resided, and it's an area where you would have to avoid getting crushed by moving mountains, where a soul with doubt would remain until they left it behind and avoided the mountains.
After that the souls have to climb the iztepetl, a mountain covered in obsidian blades, the cliffside it's so rough and sharp it was thought you lost your blood as you walked it.
Then the souls have to face the razor winds of the Itzehecayan, a frozen mountain where the freezing winds take away your clothes aond other adornments.
After that comes the Paniecatoyan, the place where peole fly, a place with no gravity, where any item you had from this world you lose it, as it floats away from you.
Then, you have to walk a bridge floating on nothingness, here, all shots fired and lost are aimed at you, and you have to go through.
Almost at the end, there is a deep forest or jungle, where Jaguars hunt you and separate your heart of your soul. Here is where what is left of your soul is separated from what you knew.
And, finally, the purified souls flow down to the core of the underworld, where the god of the dead will guide you to your final resting place.
For those who died on the waters, will rest at the tlalocan, "plane of water".
For the warriors who perished, their resting ground is in the sun, in some sort of valhalla where they will help the sun shine on.
For those who were too young, they are planted into the ground awaiting to be born again so they have another chance.
There are many more kinds of resting places, but, these are the ones from the top of my head
I have wondered recently how people from another culture percieve permanence, mainly beacuse i have noticed that the sentiment here is that death is natural, it happens and we shouldn't dwell too much, but that is beacuse most of the people i know are deeply spiritual when it comes to these beliefs.
I just like that one thing someone said about mexicans.
Mexicans are so irreverent and love to eat so much that they literaly cheat death to come back to eat each year.
and, yet, despite how much death is integrated in our culture, we are so afraid of dying that we literally made a belief basede on the fact that there is always something after death.
Okay, i wanted to do more thoughts on memory and death, but i shall indulge you dear reader into something that is not memory.
The everchanging world we live in, aka the meta. [3][4]
One of the most shocking things that comes with the pasage of time is to witness how things we thought of as everyday just are no longer there, and, I have seen this all my life, given that my city, and, the neightborhood i live in, is one of the "central" ones, i have seen countless shops, stores, restaurants and people come and go, there is not a single place that has remain the same, except for one or two.
As i understand, way more people experiment this feeling less extremely, but this is a sentiment that lots of people resonate with, no matter where are they from, where they see this.
Be the internet, be their neightborhood, be the people that live around or the smaller stores and vendors,
There is something that was there when you were growing up or when you were younger that now is replaced by something else, on the worst cases, they have disappeared and nothing replaced it either!
And this feeling acentuates whenever they see how children grow up these days, and, most of the times they feel sorry for them, they get sad when they think that these children won't have it as nice as the people that came before, like, my generation didn't quite have technology growing up, regarding internet, only basically me and like 1/10th of the people i knew had internet in their houses while growing up.
We now see the next generation and feel sad and, well, i don't know, but i think this applies to the way people are raised, some people look back missing the days when things were simpler, i am relatively young, my friends are too.
This is something that bothers people, many times i have heard or read from people of the flesh dimension something like...
this usually was a xoloesquintle dog, beacuse they represent nature ↩︎
Meta this, meta that, have you ever met a cute boy before? ↩︎
I mean this regarding the meaning of the prefix meta, which is, to change, something that changes, metamorph, meta-game not the blasted (REDACTED) company ↩︎
Well I guess I'm going back to talking about memories again. There is a phenomenon I have noticed recently with how I experience time. Occasionally I have these moments where the last few hours that were fresh in my mind suddenly loose their details and time, and its just so frustrating knowing if my brain decides to, the fun I've just had hanging out with friends can instantly become "yeah I know it happened, but don't really remember it" despite being literally an hour ago.
Literally yesterday I went to wetherspoons (the British pub chain), I got a bit unluckily with busses to get home and it took an hour but in that time I got one of those moments where those memories got compressed and chucked into long term storage.
There is more for this, but its not for this thread (maybe a future thread)
Its especially noticeable with hobbies and leasure time. Whats the point of cooking nice food, watching a good movie, talk with a friend, play a game; if it all washes away afterwards into a glorified checklist. "I talked with my friend this weekend"
it feels less bad when there is visible result from the action; a doodle, a paragraph of text, progress in a savefile. It also feels less bad if it is skill building; doodling and burning the pages still had purpose of if got better at doodling.
But, that thought can be extended to almost anything. I dont remember what i talked about with my friend, but my understanding, trust and appreciation of my friend became a little more vibrant and detailed in my mind [1]. They're hard to see but they're always there.
The brain threw away the chronological events and ground them into blobs of paint, to then put down a few strokes of on 20 different mental paintings; paintings I'll continue to refine the rest of my life.
Still feels bad. But it helps a bit too think of it that way.
Self esteem, social skills, empathy, listening skills, verbal skills ↩︎
I don't remember where I first found it, but I've become quite fond of the partner: phrase
Memento Vivere: "Remember to Live".
Life is not slain by death, but apathy can be it's poison. A candle will not burn forever, but it will still give light while it does. Memories are never perfect records, but we are still here to rebuild and tell the stories again and again.
I'm not sure I've full processed the ideas of death and impermanence, but I think something we forget is that we aren't naturally tuned to think on the scales of hundreds of years. We experience time at a constant pace, from a single point in space. As such, I think that can be a good place to start. Trying to find a way to prepare for tomorrow while living in today. A hopefully fuller life, built upon the construction of meaning. It's not easy, but one could argue the hike is as much part of the trip up the mountain as the end. The view at the top may be the endgame, but perhaps there are good sights hidden among the gravel paths. Golden Hours spent watching the sky and nursing aching feet, maybe. I'm not sure and I think this metaphor is getting away from me.
