K-Linesː A Theory of Memory (1980)
Context: A memory should induce a state through which we see current reality as an instance of the remembered event — or equivalently, see the past as an instance of the present.... the system can perform a computation analogous to one from the memorable past, but sensitive to present goals and circumstances.
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
“I, for instance, don't see any smells whatsoever.”
While tasting tap water
2015
Source: * Я не вижу запаха и ни слышу привкуса.Мэр Киева Кличко. ** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_tjA3US0ps ** en ** 2022-06-13
“Some instances of strength of memory are very surprising.”
Coleman v. Wathen (1793), 5 T. R. 245.
Billy writing a letter to a newspaper describing the Tralfamadorians
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Context: The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."
Variants: One of the schools in Tlön has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the present is undefined, that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that past is no more than present memory . . . Another maintains that the universe is comparable to those code systems in which not all the symbols have meaning, and in which only that which happens every three hundredth night is true...
The history of the universe... is the handwriting produced by a minor god in order to communicate with a demon.
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)
Context: One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified an mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. Another, that the history of the universe — and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives — is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon. Another, that the universe is comparable to those cryptographs in which not all the symbols are valid and that only what happens every three hundred nights is true. Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.
Session 300, Page 154
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 7
Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics (1948)
