Only Human: Chapter Four
Chapter Four: Memories, Artifacts and Other Evidence
I started this chapter as a blog on Christmas morning 2024… less than three months after Joey died. I was fortunate to be surrounded by family. A cloud of memories surrounded me too. So, what exactly is “memory”?
Memory refers to the psychological processes of acquiring, storing, retaining, and later retrieving information. Memory involves three major processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Human memory involves the ability to both preserve and recover information. However, this is not a flawless process. Sometimes people forget or misremember things. Other times, information is not properly encoded in memory in the first place. - VeryWellMind
I am convinced that some of my earliest memories aren’t real at all. Rather, they are fantasies fashioned from stories about me that my parents told and retold. Some are evoked from old photos. What do I really recall? Is the photo resurrecting an actual memory… or helping me fashion an hallucination? The photo is evidence that something happened in my past. Exactly WHAT is subject to conjecture… and manipulation.
From an amalgam of actual memories, photos, other evidence such as letters, and a dose of pure fantasy, one can fashion a secret life of the mind.
I saw you this morning
You were moving so fast
Can't seem to loosen my grip
On the past
And I miss you so much
There's no one in sight
And we're still making love
In my secret life
In my secret life ——Leonard Cohen, “In My Secret Life”
No matter how elaborate one makes this secret life, it can only ever be a distant second best. I don’t believe anyone can contact the dead.
(Or can we?)
Nor can we go back in time. A second arrives, lasts for an instance, vanishes. And so it goes.
(Or does it?)
What of parallel universes?
Parallel universes are no longer just a feature of a good sci-fi story. There are now some scientific theories that support the idea of parallel universes beyond our own. However, the multiverse theory remains one of the most controversial theories in science.
Our universe is unimaginably big. Hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of galaxies spin through space, each containing billions or trillions of stars. Some researchers studying models of the universe speculate that the universe's diameter could be 7 billion light-years across. Others think it could be infinite.—-Space.com
We —- or at least I —-define living beyond our own deaths as being a self-aware, individual entity… a ghost, a spirit, whatever. But an extension beyond death can take many forms. Film, video and sound recordings are all ways to sustain the individual’s “being” beyond the death and decay of the physical form. But the dead, I fear, are unaware of such continued existences. Once asked if he hoped to achieve immortality through his films, Woody Allen reportedly replied, “No, I hope to achieve immortality by not dying”. Point taken.
So how about having our consciousness being uploaded onto a hard drive? In Fall, novelist Neal Stephenson imagines a virtual world in which individuals are self-aware but have no memory of their past, corporeal lives. I have no doubt that billionaires, such as (especially?) Elon Musk are actively exploring this possibility. (I explore it later in this book.)
Digital immortality (or "virtual immortality") is the hypothetical concept of storing (or cloning) a person's personality in digital substrate, i.e., a computer, robot or cyberspace (mind uploading). The result might look like an avatar behaving, reacting, and thinking like a person on the basis of that person's digital archive. After the death of the individual, this avatar could remain static or continue to learn and self-improve autonomously (possibly becoming seed AI).
A considerable portion of transhumanists and singularitarians place great hope into the belief that they may eventually become immortal by creating one or many non-biological functional copies of their brains, thereby leaving their "biological shell". These copies may then "live eternally" in a version of digital "heaven" or paradise.
—- Wikipedia.
The best most of us can do, I think, is cultivate a version of Cohen’s secret life: mental congeries comprised of memories and fantasies. To the extent we are determined to populate that secret life with real people, viz. our departed loved one(s), evidence, such as photos and videos are highly useful. “Preserve your memories, They’re all that’s left you.” —Paul Simon, Bookends. Not quite. On the down side, our memories are never exact reproductions or recoveries of a vanished reality. On the up, we are capable of embellishing and embroidering them. Consider this snapshot:
That’s Joey and me, circa 1973. I have no memory whatsoever of precisely when this was taken. I know it’s the holiday season; note the wreath in the background. I know we were at the home of a family friend, Kitty Casper; I’ve cropped her out of the picture (sorry, Kitty). The date I can surmise from my haircut and moustache. I was released from active duty by the Coast Guard in March of ’73. That’s when I could let my hair and ‘stache luxuriate.
Joey and I were still living in Cleveland, where I was stationed at Charlie Gulf’s downtown headquarters for the preceding three years as the Ninth (Great Lakes) District’s Public Information Officer until March of ’73. We had spent the summer bumming around Europe. Then I enrolled full-time at Kent State University to complete a master’s degree in journalism. We no doubt had driven home to eastern Pennsylvania for the holidays.
The photo is clear evidence of what we looked like, and reasonable evidence of where we were and approximately when. Beyond a reasonable doubt. Much else can be extrapolated… using my memory. But I cannot place myself back in that room. That pinpoint recollection is non-existent, so far as I can tell. It’s a cliche that in a moment of extreme fear or danger, “my life flashed before my eyes.” A recent article in Psychology Today contends, “Our Life Really Does Flash Before our Eyes When We Die.” This implies that it’s all stored inside our heads, our whole lives. However, it’s recently been suggested that, like a meat-computer, the brain might have a storage limit.
The human mind does have a memory limit. The average adult human brain’s memory capacity is 2.5 million gigabytes. However, it doesn’t run out of storage capacity, per se.
A single human brain has many different kinds of memories. And there’s no physical limit to the number of memories we can store.
That’s because new memories keep on replacing the old ones. That happens because new neural connections are formed from lifelong learning.
***
The brain does have limits to its memory capacity. However, the brain does not “run out of memory” as a computer can run out of storage space. The neurons determine the memory capacity of the brain.
The brain has an estimated 100 billion neurons. Each of them can have thousands of connections to other neurons. However, there’s still a limited number of neurons and synapses in the human brain.
They can store trillions of bytes of information, just like a hard drive. But these neurons can become saturated with information over time.
The brain can compensate for this by forming new connections. It also prunes unused connections and reorganizes information to allow for efficient retrieval.
Bottom line, it looks like there’s a lot more inside a cranium than we realize, or that we readily can retrieve. But, apparently, old memories, old vine or tree branches, can get “pruned” by our cerebral gardener. Some say that hypnosis can retrieve these misplaced cuttings. Google AI isn’t so sure. On August 6, 2025, I asked it, “Can hypnosis retrieve memories?” Here’s what I got back:
While hypnosis can sometimes be used to help access memories, it's not a reliable method for retrieving lost or repressed memories, and can even create false memories. The process can make individuals more susceptible to suggestion, leading them to believe fabricated details as genuine memories.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
How Hypnosis Works (and Doesn't Work) with Memory:
Age Regression:
Hypnosis can induce age regression, where individuals feel like they are reliving a past experience, which can include spontaneous recollections.
During hypnosis, individuals are more open to suggestion, meaning they may fill in gaps in their memories with fabricated details or even create entirely new memories based on suggestions from the therapist or their own imagination.
People who recall memories under hypnosis often feel very confident in the accuracy of their recollections, even if they are not true.
Hypnosis is not a reliable way to determine the truthfulness of a memory. It cannot distinguish between genuine memories and false ones.
Why Hypnosis for Memory Retrieval is Problematic:
· False Memories:
The risk of creating false memories is a major concern with using hypnosis to recover memories, especially in cases of potential trauma.
Re-traumatization:
Trying to recover traumatic memories through hypnosis can be re-traumatizing for individuals, even if the memories themselves are not accurate.
Misinformation:
Memories are not static; they can be altered by subsequent experiences and interpretations.
Alternative Approaches:
·
Therapies like inner child work can help address the emotional impact of past experiences without necessarily requiring the retrieval of specific details.
Addressing the emotions associated with past events can be more effective than trying to recall specific details.
In conclusion: While hypnosis can be a useful tool for some purposes, it is not a reliable method for recovering lost or repressed memories. The potential for creating false memories and re-traumatization makes it a risky approach, particularly when dealing with sensitive topics like trauma.
More briefly, according to Gen AI, hypnosis shares the same fault as Gen AI: the tendency to generate hallucinations. Perhaps this is a fundamental human fault; Gen AI is a creature of human invention and training, after all.
People often reassure themselves --- Joey and I did --- that “no one can take our past away from us.” Here’s the note she wrote to me on the day that I retired from Rider University:
Note: “What an incredible history we have. And it’s ours, no matter what happens.” She was dead a little more than five years later. What is “ours” now”?
Come down the rabbit hole with me.
Did any of this “history” ever really happen? How much of what I remember really occurred? And how much is my hallucination, seemingly confirmed by photos and videos, but embellished by fantasy? Perhaps it’s all just a figment of my imagination. Perhaps I am a figment of your imagination. You, my dear reader, may be the only self-aware being in all creation. Might that make you God? My God?
I know if I were God, I’d organize a lot of things very differently. So even if I am the only self-aware being in the universe, I can’t possibly be God.
Perhaps we all are prisoners of the Matrix. Per Wikipedia:
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in the Matrix film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano. It depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality created by intelligent machines. Believing computer hacker Neo to be "the One" prophesied to defeat them, Morpheus recruits him into a rebellion against the machines.
Is life but a dream? Merrily, merrily.
Is the past back there somewhere to be rediscovered, reexamined… reexperienced? Or is it gone, second after endless second, gone forever?
Is the evidence of the past ---such as photographs and notes --- only a collection of artifacts which, like history itself, are open to all manner of interpretations and embellishments?
I have no absolutely-certain answer. And neither, my friend, do you.
I do know that for this past year my Joey Cain has been gone from me. I lost her somehow.
But what if I could bring her back?
