I was watching this documentary on a person who has a working memory of 7 seconds, after which she doesn’t remember anything, due to Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) Encephalitis, an extremely rare condition affecting one in a million persons.
This can be terrifying from all aspects. What if someone tries to get advantage of you and exploit you? And what of your moments with people? What of your life?
Memories are not simply information, I think they are what makes a person. Memories become a priori structures that shape personality. And what do you do when they disappear?
Ms. Mizuta (the person in the documentary) is a special case. She’s probably the only one who didn’t completely give up on live and herself but instead built an external scaffold to keep her sane. She built an entire external brain to store, review and understand what her own brain cannot.
She takes meticulous notes every second, on paper. A compulsive habit, but one which gives her a sense of security and allows her to store vital information. After each 7 seconds, she has the exact information she needs to continue what she was doing. She holds conversations, goes shopping, tries living a normal life.
Then at the end of the day she reviews the notes that she took on her daily wares, triage and summarise them neatly. And endless reflection of herself, but without remembering anything. It must seem like a dream forgotten.
But again, the main thing is: she didn’t give up. She lives. And systems helped her do so.
I’ve had this thought before:
What if I get short term amnesia? What will make me remember myself and the way I view the world around me?
I want to create a ever-living “compendium” of my ideas, worldview and the memories I’ve made so that just in case, if something happens to my memory, I’ll not be left stranded.
What will you do if you had a 7 second memory?