what is the art of forgetting

One of Nietzsche’s constant themes is the need to forget

but how?*

  • One line questions are go again right?

In order to avoid confusion, most of the signals which actually exist – are blocked out and filtered away from the conscious mind. If I remember correctly, over 90%. This was studied/discovered by neuro-sciences in modern times, but I guess N. knew about it already, back then, or so it would seem…

But it seems like sleeping forgetting is one of those weird things where you are consciously trying to annihilate a form of consciousness.

So the harder you try the more conscious you are of tring and the harder it gets - with regards to sleep after to much trying I usually just say feck it and get back up again.

(In the same way maybe the best way to forget would be to “get back up” eg to re-live it through till you wear “it” out!)

  • Or can you some how upgrade those unconscious automatic house keeping kind of forgetting up to one that would seriously take care of some stuff that is nagging you at a very conscious level

Sorry that’s actually very hard too express clearly!

Kp

The conscious frontal-left, especially the “logic” – has a very short and limited spectrum of what it can handle. It’s meant to be controlled at all times by the rest of the self, but later, as deception became one of the greatest dangers to man, he begot “self-control”, and extremely suppressed his overly-abused, wild and automatic instincts.

One way that some people gain precognition or energy-sensing or remote-viewing capacities, etc., is by slightly removing part of the mental block, and then learning how to understand/use/apply those signals which are normally blocked out.

The block is applied to everything unused or unexperienced,
Whilst the attraction is to everything used-often, everything common and everything usual.

The conscious mind wants habit, it wants slavery and it wants of the same. It is the slave which commands.

There are some incredible problems that arise from this certain mental order and situation… Most of which I cannot even use english to describe… But one example would be:

When the Chinese found all of the accupunture points and the chakras, they did so via meditation exercises. They basically opened a bit of the unconscious-mind and made it conscious, thus learning about maridians and chakra points. The collective intelligence of the body, when its entirety of cell-memory is collected, that intelligence is so vast that it all can barely be applied. In the same way as a governer does not personally know many of his subjects, and the collective intelligence of a nation is millions of IQ, their disconnection and non-use of eachother makes that whole society not act very intelligently… That’s just the result of such a conscious order, which I cannot properly explain…

Or rid your consciousness of unneeded material. Just because we don’t use all our mind’s capacities doesn’t mean that we should just use the capacities we’ve mastered as much as possible. Maybe it’s because we cling desperately to the mental faculties we already know about that we fail to develop and master the other ones. Like if you only work on improving the strength in one arm you can’t expect your whole body to get stronger as a result.

Have you ever meditated? It isn’t possible to think of nothing in a literal sense, but it is possible to escape the ongoing associations between ideas, words, sensations and so on that constitutes a person’s mental history. If you keep thinking in a certain way then the likelihood is that you’ll keep on thinking in that certain way. If you deliberately break up this process then you’ll find yourself thinking in different ways as a matter of habit.

Well, however it is that one forgets, that one breaks a set of habitual mental associations, the point is that one can (and should).

There’s that metaphor again. One of the first and easiest steps in forgetting is to force yourself to stop using easy to remember catch all expressions, such as using ‘level’ to refer to ANY aspect of ANYTHING. ‘The book works on different levels’. No, it fucking doesn’t. It works on different pages. Sloppy and vague use of language leads to and is produced by sloppy and vague use of thought. Break the cycle. Forget the cliches.

You see where I’m going with this?

Sure, it’s not an easy topic. Putting mental processes into language has always been a bitch. Much easier to describe a tree or a pizza.

ask a stoopid question and still get good answers!

Thanks Dan~ and SAID

That’s a nice formulation – maybe its easy to cling on and very hard to move to a new way of thinking - anyone seen Jacobs ladder?
The story there was that the dieing man clings to a rapidly shrinking world of the mind as an alternative to:

Nothing!

Dunno about that sometimes its valid – it seems to be the conventional thing to have sub-conscious “under” conscious – hence the “sub” – of course there’s clearly implications of rank and importance put in there which maybe shouldn’t be.

Sorta yeah – though I’ll probably cling to my “easy” formulations
I do get your point tho’ in general

But I think sometimes “vague”/poetical/aphoristic thinking (a la Nietzsche himself) around things actually brings out more then going straight in with the knife of precision especially when starting point of the problem yet to be established (you will tell me I’m waffling again – with justification!)

The one way I have found to release nagging problems or memories is to let them run loose in my head and wear themselves out, then clean up the mess or reorganize. Say someone hurts you mentally, a dear friend. The memories of the event nag you and are mixed up with the good memories of this person. The bad builds resentment and sticks with you.

But lets just say you sit down somewhere quietly and alone. You relax and allow that painful stuff to fill you and run loose everywhere in your head. Don’t control it. just let that crap go. You will after a span of time lose the emotional ties to that memory. That memory will lose its energy and just become an experience. You at this point reorganize your thoughts and memories. Put your lfe into a better perspective. You ask yourself questons, like What did I actually learn? What good is there? Turn your thoughts to positive.

It takes time to do this, generally a few hours ought to be allowed. Especially if you are not used to this form of meditating. I am an emotional person so I find this method works well to relieve me of painful nagging things. LOL You would also be amazed at just how many things you can remember. Like lost keys or books etc… When you allow things their full head in your mind, you seem to trigger little nagging things that you have forgotten.

I have been sitting here for quite a few minutes now trying to think of something I’d like to forget. I finally came up with a relationship but it was so long ago I had forgotten. Without knowing, the non self-destructive strategy I used to deal with the preoccupying unpleasant memory was to put beside it pleasant memories so that I dwelled on the unpleasant memory less and less.

The ideal of course is to prevent unpleasant memories. One that I can think of which I wouldn’t want to remember is the horror of war. In my view the source of all conflict is our efforts to fill the void. So if we quit trying to fill the void, we no longer fight, and thus we have no further horrifying memories of war. It is as simple as that. On a personal level, if you enter a relationship thinking it will fill the void in your life you will create a very unpleasant memory. On the other hand, if you fulfill yourself by reaching out to the limits of your capacities while reaching out to others and to God you will create memories you will never want to forget.

Hi Kriswest I might try your method - have a feeling its not going to be fun - hmmm maybe next week! :slight_smile:

LOL, its not boring thats for sure. Just make sure you are alone, Others might think you have gone bonkers. Let your mind and body react without control ,thats the part that could scare the hell out of others. :laughing:

How is post traumatic stress disorder explained in all of this? As a scientist (?) Nietzsche is a century out of date. Some who have experienced wars or other such human atrocities do not appear to have some will to forget. N.'s will nonsense was borrowed from Schopenhouer {sic}. Some of us have it and some of us don’t, depending on our abilites to react to trauma rationally.

That I don’t know. It is possible that clinging to the bad preserves the good for some, maybe they can’t seperate all the emotions tied to memories that have senses.

If the wind gets above 20mph. I feel my guts start to quake and I feel a tinge of fear, Katrina survivor. Its not as bad as was the first year I am controling it better. Perhaps there is an answer. Veterans see, hear and smell many things during battles. Perhaps senses trigger memories. Perhaps retraining the senses will help PTSS. I fly a kite in the wind, It makes me laugh. I started doing that at the end of last year. I can’t swear it has helped. but, at least I can find some beauty in wind again.

I can only perhaps and suggest, I can’t seem to find a pack of willing volunteers for crazy experiments :laughing:

I would suggest trying to rebuild the senses and triggers to new happier ones. First, I would try not controlling the emotions tied to the memories let them run amok, then rebuild the senses.

Either way pyschology is still an infant science. We have more questions than answers and more answers than proof.

The art of forgetting is a precious transformation and very spiritual.

First you pick up a bottle of Jack Daniels pour it in a cup and then you begin to drink the liqour.

In case the first step fails just repeat it until said goal is accomplished.

( Warning. Side affects may including blacking out, drunken fighting and slurred speech.)

There I think you’re just posponing the inevitable and adding to it a mighty head ache!

kp

Historically. Nietzsche led the way by becoming a demented vegetable. Barring the possibility of a cure, many of the rest of us can look forward to Alzheimer’s Disease which should do the trick rather nicely.

They have medication for Alzheimers now. You just have to remember to take it and remember where you put it when you last took it, noooo, put down the Pez dispenser that is not it. Yes, its the one that says M&M on it. The colors are for days of the week dear. No the paper bag is for easier recycling. Recycling? Well dear that is what we are going to do with you. Umm where did you put that will? :laughing:

I wanted only to counter the Nietzsche worship here. The will to forget is, to say the least, not universal, hence not subject to any ideas about universal morality or descriptions of what “most” humans should know.

Ierrellus is correct to remind us that not all of us are bent on forgetting some subset of our past experiences.

Your present state of becoming has been determined, in part, by the sum total of your past experiences. If you were successful in purging blocks of memory from your consciousness, your prospect of self-understanding would become little better than that of an amnesiac. Forevermore you will have lost the possibly of fully answering your exclamation, “Oh my god, why did I do that?”

Rather than strive to forget, why not instead strive to be stalwart enough to remain cognizant of your entire past history, and yet go on to flourish?

Best,
Michael

Your probally right. #-o :slight_smile: It does get the job done however.

Hey good to see you back in action.
Many would argue that this was what Nietzsche meant - eternal recurrance could be seen as retaining the past (or possibly “the best” of the past??) but some how integrating it into your perspectives - however not by “dwelling on it”

One way or another aspects of it are going to be painful and shouldn’t be avoided - maybe the trick as Kriswest was putting it is to make it available to yorself - but some how loose the emotional sting - Or maybe again you’re right and the whole shooting gallery can/should be retained at some level.

There’s surely stuff I’ve repressed and live “easier” for having done it

kp