Boring Pleasures
One of the pecularities about pleasurable experiences is that we remember them as pleasurable without really remembering them. Let’s say that you are recalling a time when you were on the beach listening to live music. There were the sounds of the music and the ocean, there was the sea breeze on the skin, there was the colors in the sky, the taste of the pina colada, and the unique smell of the ocean air. If we can remember all of these aspects of an experience, we can feel the same pleasure again. But we don’t remeber things this way. Normally we gloss over the little pleasures that sum up to the general feeling. We just remember the general feeling, i.e. it was relaxing, or it was really nice. And this is how we describe it to other people, which, of course, for them, is boring.
2 Comments:
This is just wrong. The scenario described is neither "normal" nor "one of the pecularities [sic] about [sic] pleasurable experiences." To the extent that the post says we "usually" and "normally" "just remember the general feeling," I would ask what the basis is for the assertion. I'd say that most memories entail far more than general feelings. In fact, to say "I was relaxed," without any further description (e.g., "on the beach in Florida last weekend") indicates a very strange *failure* of memory. And to the extent that the post describes the failure of memory to capture every detail of life, it's not peculiar at all -- no one remembers all the details of everything. Duh.
So, stripped of the incorrect adverbs, all this post says is "we sometimes remember feelings and certain associated details," which is so obvious a statement that it doesn't really 'pique' anything.
I think I have succeeded in piqueing something, even if it's not your interest.
Think about a pleasant experience that you might have had. Until you make a concerted effort to bring up details, there is just a general feeling, say that the experience was pleasant or relaxing. Upon further remembering you can reconstruct aspects of the experience, but at first these are not there. Do you disagree that your memory works this way?
If you agree with the observation, then I don't see why you don't see what is interesting about it. Consider why it might be that we remember things this way. Consider the effect that this has on communication when we recall an experience to someone else. Consider what it would be like if we did not remember in this way, but rather had all the details at our disposal all the time (which, incidentally, is the way I think a number of people do, in fact, think).
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