“The general loss of memory is not to be explained solely psychologically; it is not simply childhood amnesia. Rather it is social amnesia—memory driven out of mind by the social and economic dynamic of this society.”

Source: Glasshouse (2006), Chapter 17, “Mission” (p. 288)

The Day After the World Ended, notes for a speech at DeepSouthCon'79, New Orleans (21 July 1979), later published in It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs (1995)
Context: Science Fiction has long been babbling about cosmic destructions and the ending of either physical or civilized worlds, but it has all been displaced babble. SF has been carrying on about near-future or far-future destructions and its mind-set will not allow it to realize that the destruction of our world has already happened in the quite recent past, that today is "The Day After The World Ended". … I am speaking literally about a real happening, the end of the world in which we lived till fairly recent years. The destruction or unstructuring of that world, which is still sometimes referred to as "Western Civilization" or "Modern Civilization", happened suddenly, some time in the half century between 1912 and 1962. That world, which was "The World" for a few centuries, is gone. Though it ended quite recently, the amnesia concerning its ending is general. Several historiographers have given the opinion that these amnesias are features common to all "ends of worlds". Nobody now remembers our late world very clearly, and nobody will ever remember it clearly in the natural order of things. It can't be recollected because recollection is one of the things it took with it when it went...

Source: Dark Age Ahead (2004), Chapter One, The Hazard, p. 3
Context: This is both a gloomy and a hopeful book.
The subject itself is gloomy. A Dark Age is a culture's dead end. We in North America and Western Europe, enjoying the many benefits of the culture conventionally known as the West, customarily think of a Dark Age as happening once, long ago, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. But in North America we live in a graveyard of lost aboriginal cultures, many of which were decisively finished off by mass amnesia in which even the memory of what was lost was also lost. Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past.

My Memory Has Changed

Source: Social Costs of Business Enterprise, 1963, p. 12. Cited in: M. Rangone & S. Solari (2012) "Southern European capitalism and the social costs of business enterprise". in: Studi e Note di Economia, Anno XVII, n. 1-2012, pp. 3-28

Part V: More Rage. More Rage., page 191.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)
Context: One reason why our society has failed to curb bullying is that we like bullies. Hell, we are bullies. Research has shown that bullies are not the anti-social misfits that adults, in their forced amnesia, want them to be. Rather, bullies are usually the most popular boys, second only on the clique-ranking to those described as friendly, outgoing, and self-confident. The Santana High kids and parents both felt that there was no point in complaining to the administration because they wouldn't have done anything anyway, a reflection of the fact that popular winners are treated better than losers. At Columbine, parents and students both felt that bullies were favored by teachers and administrators, and that complainers were often ignored or blamed. Indeed, losers pay for being losers twice over in our schools, taking both the punishment and the blame.

Source: Social Costs of Business Enterprise, 1963, p. 12. Cited in: M. Rangone & S. Solari (2012) "Southern European capitalism and the social costs of business enterprise". in: Studi e Note di Economia, Anno XVII, n. 1-2012, pp. 3-28

p, vii (1974)
1960s, Fights, games, and debates, (1960)

Die Erinnerung ist das einzige Paradies, aus welchem wir nicht getrieben werden können.
Jean Paul's Geist; oder Chrestomathie http://books.google.ca/books?id=UMwMAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA6&hl=en, Vierter Theil [4th part], Weimar/Leipzig, 1816