Thanks for the Memory

Thanks for the memory, with a nod to Bob Hope. It turns out that Daniel Kahneman has a great deal to say about memory and experience. Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel for economics, with a great deal of help from his deceased friend Amos Tversky, has written a very large book, Thinking Fast and Slow, that is currently having an impact on the world of business, politics and, of course, academia. I do not intend to review that work here but I need to make the caveat right at the outset that much of what follows comes from that book. Please allow me to escape the charge of plagiarism by making this assertion at the beginning and excusing myself from inserting an unending series of quotes. 

As any lawyer, policeman, or judge can tell you eyewitness and memory evidence is fallible. In fact, it falls to the bottom of the list as far as evidential quality is concerned. Even lie detector tests are not or should not be trusted. That said we can turn to Kahneman to see why. His idea that we have two ways of thinking; one, instinctual and very fast – instantaneous and effortless, and the other slow, analytical and laborious. He and his colleague after a lifetime of extensive study have shown with unimpeachable research results that two things tend to happen: When a problem arises we all tend to respond with our instinctive or fast thought. It is easy, even if not very accurate. To say that it is not very accurate is in many cases a gross understatement. And if we discover that we need to analyze the problem and take some time it is relatively hard work. We often unconsciously avoid a lot of this work by answering a simpler related question instead, essentially missing the point.

The half million or so words that he uses to support these ideas I have no intention of summarizing or reviewing. Instead I want to address a small subset of his ideas related to memory. We make our life story essentially by two related but different means: memory and experience.

As we age we begin to form a life story using our memories as data. We want the story to be coherent, purposeful, and basically good and honorable. I have some fond memories of my dear departed wife Barbara recalling and relating some wonderful experiences we may have had on a vacation or cruise. She had a tendency to conflate two or more occasions and bundle them into the same narrative as if they all occurred at the same time. It made a better story. I found this charming and never demurred. It was her story after all. I would guess that we all are guilty, if I may use that term, of doing the same. How many remembered stories are precisely true as they actually happened? Precious few I would guess.

The other way in which life occurs is through experience. This is a very difficult word. We really never have a repeat of an experience. We may have a memory of that experience but we cannot duplicate the feeling we had at the time. In these modern times we use photography to try and preserve the experience by later replay. This had been going on for well over a hundred years. Most of us have boxes and boxes of pictures, most are of forgotten times and people, none of which actually recreate the experience that photographer had at the moment he took the picture. It still doesn’t really work. Today we can take dozens (I have a friend who takes thousands) of pictures on our holidays. It is a proven fact that we seldom look at many of them or at the most for very long. We have a frantic obsession with attempting to preserve the experience.

Our memories tend to be episodic and as I said earlier are in support of our ‘story.’ I recount here a rather extreme example of what can and surely does occur from my own background. 

During WWII I was a young sailor, an electronics technician aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Nicholson DD442. During the time I served in the Nick we cruised back and forth in the Pacific between Hawaii, Eniwetok, Ulithi, Guam, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and eventually Okinawa for the big battle and then to Tokyo. I have recently been involved with an historian who is writing an account of the Nicholson’s exploits. I have recalled a great deal of material for him and I believe I have made a major contribution. For his part he has gone into the system and been able to retrieve quarterly ship’s muster rolls and monthly battle diary reports, all recently declassified. Much of the material in these reports I recall but a lot came as a real shocker.

My duty station was in the Combat Information Center which is located in the space just below the bridge on a destroyer. There is a rear facing open deck just behind CIC that I often spent time on to watch whatever might be happening or just for loafing if I was off duty. From that vantage point I could see the depth charges being deployed off the rear of the ship during the prosecution of a sonar contact and I had a good view of most of the armament aft of that point, two of the big 5 inch guns, the 40 mm twin mounts and the 20 mm twin mounts. The ammo for the 5 inch guns consisted of a 28 lb. powder cartridge and a 50 lb. projectile for each shot. One night in the anchorage at Okinawa I was rousted out of bed for a general quarters alert and came on deck headed for CIC just as the number three 5 inch gun right over my head was fired. It was very very loud and was a real shock to me. I’ll never forget it. So I know what the five inch guns sound like. The father of my daughter-in-law was also on a destroyer. He had duty in the radio shack and claims his hearing was impaired by the noise of the five inch guns during target practice. The radio shack is just below CIC. The kicker to this story is to be found in the monthly war diaries signed by the captain of our ship. I have read these diaries carefully. They report the expenditure of dozens if not hundreds of rounds of five inch projectiles in routine target practice in the Pacific during the period I was aboard. I heard none of them, only that one. Or so I remember.

My Brief Russian Encounter

My brief Russian encounter occurred during my latest stay at the Queen Victoria Seaman’s Rest in East London. I must begin this account with a caveat; I am not making a political statement, only telling a very short story about my meeting up with a young volunteer at the mission, as many call it.

I have had the pleasure of making fairly extended visits to QVSR during the past four years. The buses stopping right in front go directly to and from the center of London, the food is good, the rent is cheap, and the people are very very interesting. Currently it is available only to men but plans for co-ed are in the works. Most residents are ex-servicemen like me but they accept anyone in real need. And they  come from all over the world; England, Syria, Ireland, Burma, Somalia, Spain, Scotland. It was established by Queen Victoria in 1847. The building was recently repaired and largely rebuilt after the German bombing of WWII. It is currently associated jointly with the Methodist Church and the Salvation Army. Each year they have two volunteers for a one year period to assist in staffing. These young women serve without pay; their families providing travel expenses and pocket money. The mission provides food and housing. They seem to come mainly from East Europe and the Orient and most are from Christian families or organizations. However, the regular permanent staff of QVSR, about two thirds women, are of various faiths.

When I arrived in 2015 for my usual summer visit I noticed one of the new volunteers was a tall blond very good looking young lady. She seemed very quiet and didn’t have much to say. I tried to engage her in conversation a time or two and noticed her accent. I asked if she was German or from some other East European country. They had had a young woman the year before from Romania. She said she was from Moscow. Her name was Maria. I still did not get very much conversation from her.

One morning I decided to try some of my very limited Russian vocabulary, so when I reached her as I was going through the breakfast serving line and as she was dishing up my eggs, I said, dobroye utro (good morning). She immediately brightened up and smiled. I asked her how to say ‘how are you?’ and she gave me the words, kak dela. That’s all it took. From then on we could have some real conversation – not in Russian I hasten to add.

It turned out that she had saved up a college fund that had recently lost half its value due to the fall of the ruble after sanctions imposed resulting from the Crimean takeover. She was struggling with the problem of where she was to go to college after her stint at QVSR - certainly not England, it was too expensive. I broached the idea of an American university which she dismissed out of hand. She said she had pretty well settled on Paris but the financial business was still unsettled. During our brief talks I asked her what she thought of Putin. She said he was OK. I reminded her that he and his cronies seemed very corrupt. Her response to that was most interesting. She said that all Russian politicians were corrupt and that he was probably the best of the lot.

My last glimpse of her somehow gave me a little hope for the world. One morning I was sitting in the lobby, as was my custom, when a very handsome young Englishman in tennis togs carrying a racquet and a small knapsack appeared at the front desk. He asked if Maria was ready. The girl on the desk said she would call her.  As he waited we had a few words. I remarked jokingly that Maria was a very pretty young woman but maybe a very dangerous one. He responded, “Yes, I know.” She soon appeared and the handsomest couple I had seen in a long time disappeared out the front door, tennis racquets in their hands.

Coda: A couple of  pictures of the neighborhood: the first is the front of QVSR on East India Dock Road and the second a view across the street looking south toward the Canary Wharf development on the Isle of Dogs. The little pub across the street is Bum Daddy's, a very small seaman's pub, too small for food, run by a delightful 60 year old lady named Jackie. If you've only been in the West End around Parliament and Piccadilly Circus you haven't been to London. 

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Well, not really! I just thought the title might be eye-catching. It is about breakfast however. The other day I made my way to the ante meridian institutional repast feeling mild trepidation as usual. We are seated more or less at random so we never know who our table companions might be turn out to be. I’m an adventurous sort and am nearly always willing to take a chance in the hope of meeting up with someone who might have a few curious comments. As one approaches the portal on a particular day it is always somewhat daunting to imagine how it might work out on that morning.

I should note at this point that this account may or may not be fictitious--or at least parts of it may or may not be true. This protects both the innocent and the guilty.

On this day I had a very pleasant lady seated at my right, one whom we will call Alice. During the course of conversation Alice said, “I hate California.”

“Oh,” I said, “Did you live there?” 

“No,” she said.

I asked, “Have you visited there?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“Where?”  I asked.

“I don’t remember,” she said. “It was freezing cold with the wind blowing in off the ocean.”

“Was it San Francisco?” 

“No,” she replied. “I think it was San Diego. It was roasting hot away from the ocean and freezing cold near the ocean.”

“Were there other things you didn’t like about the place?”

“Yes,” she said, “They have earthquakes and things.”

“Did they have an earthquake while you were there?”

“---(no reply)---.”  

“Usually earthquakes are fairly local. Most people never experience them. I don’t recall any notable events in San Diego in the last half century or so,” I commented.

"Also, when I walked down the street I heard all these different languages. People ought to speak English," she remarked somewhat tangentially.

I strongly resisted the urge to launch  into a history lesson on father Junipero Serra who came to California in 1770, recently made a saint by Pope Francis. I have learned somewhat painfully as a teacher that persons in their 90s are not particularly susceptible to lessons or new information, specially on history, religion, geography, or politics.
 
 Our conversation ended pleasantly without further comment.

This episode reminded me of a very entertaining Englishman. His name was Sydney Smith. Smith was the funny man of England in the first half of the 19^th Century.  His letters and bon mots were legion and hilarious.  Among his host of correspondents were Daniel Webster, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and hundreds of others.  He was a Minister in the Church of England, but I must say, he had some highly irreverent things to say about bishops and other like creatures.

The quote that particularly applied in the above situation was  - "Don't mind poor Sir Jeffrey, Only last week he was heard to make insulting remarks about the equator"

Fall of Rome, Brexit, and USA Election

Why do I keep coming back to the The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire while ruminating on current events? I don’t know how many of you readers have actually read Gibbon – it’s actually very lively reading – but I have, part at least. It is tough to get through all six volumes. There are an awful lot of side journeys. When it was first published people actually lined up to buy the next volume as it made its appearance at the book sellers. The work is best known for its readability, its reliance on original sources, and its frank (at that time) criticism of Christianity. In light of today’s news it is just a little ironic that the first portion of this landmark work appeared in 1776.

In the classical era things tended to happen a bit more slowly than they do now. It is said that Rome did not fall over night. Well, tell that to the members of the six Roman legions settled in England for the past 425 years when the word came in AD 410 from Emperor Honorius to pack up and get your asses back here to Rome, we’ve got a problem with a fellow named Alaric, a regular barbarian. That departure of the Roman army and much of the sophistication, technology, and culture that went with them started little old England on a downward slide that lasted a thousand years.

Honorius holds the dubious distinction of being the worst emperor in all of Rome’s 800 year history. That might be due to the fact that being appointed emperor at the age of two might not have been the best of ideas. At the outset he had the very able help of his mentor, guardian, and father-in-law, General Stilicho, but he managed to spoil that eventually by having him executed. Nothing however would have affected the grand course of the changes that were in the works. The rot had set in with the death of Marcus Aurelius over two hundred years earlier, the last of the five good emperors (the Antonines), and the accession of Commodus.

           

Many of us have differing views about Rome. It did after all last for 800 years and a major effort was made by Justinian long after their departure from England to put it all back together. Justinian’s efforts were cut short by the Black Plague and for the Western world the knowledge, administrative expertise, and technology slipped away. Rome’s history is long and complex. There was a lot that was amazing, good, and horribly evil about it but one would expect that from such a long lived culture. Much of classical knowledge was rescued by the Arab world. Eastern Europe and the Middle East became the cradle of civilized human culture. The British Isles and Western Europe descended into small fiefdoms populated by minor kings and medieval overlords holed up in their castles and living primitive lives far far different from those enjoyed by the average Roman citizen a thousand years earlier. One might say “yes, but what about slaves? The Romans had slaves.” Yes they did, but so did everyone else. Serfs in Russia and Peasants everywhere were nothing more than slaves, but in Rome there was often a path to freedom and even substantial property ownership. Cicero’s secretary, a slave, eventually owned a large estate and died in luxury at the age of 99.

If Seneca had practiced what he preached, the stoic way, instead of working hard to accumulate a fortune estimated at 300,000,000 sesterces maybe Nero would have listened to him. If Stoicism had succeeded and prevailed with its egalitarian philosophical principles which extended to slaves Christianity may not have gained a foothold. The death of Marcus Aurelius, a good emperor and the most famous of the exponents of the stoic philosophy, was a catastrophe, a major turning point in the history of the world.

What does that have to do with now? I experienced my first shock with the brexit vote in England. I had a whole string of arguments as to why this was a really bad idea, and still think so, but upon reflection I understand the reasons better now as to why it happened. At the time I thought: the European Union, 510 million souls, bigger than the United States, highly industrialized, capable of becoming the world’s major power if they could overhaul a lot of their laws and administrative procedures, a very worthy product and result of the horrific sacrifice of World War II. I even rationalized it in a comparison with the United States of America; forged from very disparate colonies; disparate in size and fundamental interests and culture. I still believe there are fewer differences between the countries of Europe than between many of the states of the USA. The EU could have become a credible balance against the economic power of Asia, India and Russia; could have fostered a more stable world and one maybe a bit more acceptable to Americans. That will not happen. We may slip back into isolationism and xenophobia. I hope not but it looks possible.

Mary Ellen wrote a piece for the New York Times that explained very credibly in a single short page what happened here on November the 8^th. The Civil War is not over (I never thought it was. Barbara and I were married in Charleston, South Carolina). I saw and listened to a man who referred to his role in founding Fox on PBS yesterday complaining that our news sources did not have representatives of the silent majority on their staffs. He was visibly very very angry and filled with hate. It boiled out of the TV screen. He said these newspapers and TV networks needed right-to-lifers, climate change deniers, fundamentalist Christians and the like on their staffs. Most of us may think the expression “don’t confuse me with facts” is a sort of joke. It is not. One editorialist wrote, “A party that can put Palin on the ballot as candidate for vice president and elect Donald Trump is at war with reason.”

Members of both parties have to admit that the Electoral College is a strange creation and makes little sense. One very serious TV correspondent remarked that when a foreigner asks him for an explanation of the system he is at a complete loss as to how to explain it. It is odd that one vote in Wyoming is approximately equal to 100 votes in California, Texas, or New York. A little party puzzle is possible. Take the populations and the electoral votes for each state and rearrange and juggle them and you can show the election of a president with 30% of the votes – 70% to the loser.

Although the world in AD 600 may have been mean and uncomfortable it did eventually survive all the backsliding. The blossoming of art and science in the last few centuries has been a wonder to behold. There is a darker side today. Denying climate change can actually destroy the planet. Have a look at Venus. Our planet is a rare example and is in what I like to call a ‘delicate balance.’ Most planets that we have managed to see close up or even around other stars are not as lucky as ours. Just the immediate effects of our meddling are grim. Read the recent news from Delhi or Beijing where wise people stay indoors and nearly everyone has ‘air purifiers’ (if they can afford them). There are now 7,500,000,000 people in the world, 35 times as many as in 410 AD, and nearly all of them have access to and the ability to burn tons of fossil fuels each year. Although the new international agreement on climate change mitigation has been ratified by over 100 nations including the USA we now have learned that the new administration intends to withdraw our signature.

Alaric and his cohorts were after all people too, and those rich Romans were pretty corrupt and deserved what they got. They no doubt didn’t think in exactly these terms but they must have decided then that it is time that we Goths, Vandals, and Visigoths get a shot at the good climate of southern Europe and some of that stuff they’ve got stashed away. They weren’t terribly interested in plays, poetry, books, and the like and partying for them was surely a more raucous affair.

It has been said that comparisons are odious so maybe we shouldn’t carry this too far, but we should remember that there is an outside probability that the fate of the planet is in the balance, completely aside from all the political and social considerations.