Charles Baxter’s “Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age”
Charles Baxter’s “Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age” is a piece of literature that questions the importance of forgetting and its shameful affects on one’s mind. In creating this piece he draws attention to experiences, information, and mental competencies as guidelines to gauge the inchoate make up of our brain. By giving us a correlation between the brain being similar to a computer’s hard drive and how time affects our brains’ usage, Baxter show’s how memory is fleeting despite how it is stored. His goal is to explain how a functioning mind loses its ability to harness permanency despite living in an information age.
Memory for humans entails retaining and recalling past experiences and information. Forgetting pertains to the banishment of past thoughts. Shame reflects feelings of embarrassment. I believe Baxter chose to combine memory, forgetting and shame into a collage. Emphasizing how garbage is obtained due to information overload and lack of usage. By beginning this piece discussing his brother’s inadequacies we begin to see the collage forming. He explains that his brother is an outcast, ashamed of his forgetfulness and who calls himself “the dumb brother.” (p. 141) His brother in light of his shame uses stories and gives gifts as his way of establishing remembrances. In doing so, reveals his brother’s instability in rationalization. Baxter’s brother feels the necessity to physically hoard what his mind cannot comprehend. Ultimately, in his death, he leaves behind some memories, piles of written text, an unused computer, and an unwritten will. The objects he leaves behind does not reveal he ever existed. However, it does show that he lived amid the documents. (p 143)
People take considerable pride in their minds, and more particularly in their memories. (p 143) When we begin to lose our memories it affects our abilities to relate to connect. Drug companies and mental health specialists spend millions of dollars trying to sustain human memory. However, Neil Postman contradicts their efforts. He says that “We have transformed information into a form of garbage.” Yet, despite the vast amount of information available, many minds fall prey to amnesia, Alzheimer’s and dementia. As our minds deteriorate it becomes more difficult to relate to data, experiences and who we are as people. Transforming information to garbage becomes more relevant as disease sets in. When this occurs we become ashamed and frustrated. Throughout this struggle, the mind’s storage bin begins to empty its once treasured database, eventually transforming the mind into an empty waste basket.
Shame in forgetting has prolific implications in this informational age. A proliferation of information causes information-inflation. (p. 146) That is, every individual piece of information loses some value given the sheer quantity. Baxter says, “It is possible that the quantity of data we are supposed to remember has reduced our capacity to remember or even to have experiences; this turn of events was predicted by Walter Benjamin in the 1930s”. (p. 146) However, past presidents have used such informational events to aid their careers. Using forgetting and burying the past without demonstrating visible shame is strength for some, unlike the diseases mentioned above. Forgetting and shame might just serve, under the immediate surface of consciousness, as an escape route of sorts. (p. 150)
In many books referenced by Baxter (The Invention of Solitude, The Duke of Deception, The Shadow of Man and Secret Life), true accountability vanishes. (p. 153) This holds true when analyzing the effects of disease on the brain. Personal histories, memories, trauma, and instability got lost in translation. For the people affected by their actions replaced paternal accountability with strategic amnesia. (p. 153) Jerry Herron has described this as “the humiliation of history.” History is narratable as long as its events occur in some logical way, but when trauma and shame are introduced into the mix, history is corrupted from the inside. As history continues, all memories handed down through story eventually fade until it is no more. Unless accounts are written and saved, strategic amnesia becomes both involuntary and willful. (p. 156)
Baxter’s “Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age” subliminally helps us to look at forgetting about people even in death. The essay explains how a functioning mind loses its ability to function and rationalize, despite living in an informational age. Although many may push to have stories told and may have impacted many lives over time, we tend to forget and leave the person buried in the grave (becoming maggots’ garbage) after death. As time goes on we think of someone less until so much time has passed that the memories are no more reflected. Contextual references, be it wills, memoirs, or stories written help increase the longevity of a memory. However as time progresses, stories change and eventually are forgotten. Despite how well we deal with the information age, we have no control over our minds retaining the permanency of information. In an information age, forgetfulness is a sign of debility and incompetence. It is taken as weakness, an emblem of losing one’s grip. (p. 147) Some use forgetfulness as a way to make the past go away. For others forgetfulness is a sign of being inadequate, shallow and shameful.
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