Which is more powerful, living memory or written memory? How do you feel differently about things you lived through, versus what you have read about?
Share why if you wish.
Asking — and answering — life's interesting questions
Which is more powerful, living memory or written memory? How do you feel differently about things you lived through, versus what you have read about?
Share why if you wish.
For me, this resonates most in terms of national tragedy. I recently had reason to think about how the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 must have seemed to someone born after that date, someone who only knows that tragedy as a historical event. We remember it quite differently.
Of course, the same might be said of, say, the assassination of JFK in 1963, years before I was born. I can only imagine what it must have been like to people actually living through the moment.
Clearly, living memory is more powerful. But it might also make it harder to think about things through a critical lens.