Collective Memory

Njideka Akunyili Crosby Dwell: Me, We, 2017

Akunyili Crosby said in an interview  "for a long time, there was just one main Nigerian soap opera and everyone watched it Thursdays at 8 PM because we didn't have a lot of choice not only in terms of TV programs but things like products music there was a very limited selection so the selection that we did have became a part of everyone's memory and life story."


With the onslaught of perceived choice,  the late stage capitalism era that has created the firehose of content that is shot directly into our face at every moment we glance toward a screen. Have we as a society lost that commonality and has it been replaced with distance increasing algorithm.

I think there's something to be said about the collective place of engagement for a society. Touch points that help us connect and relate, ideas, moments, or things that we find commonality with those around us.

It existed before the age of content.

There is something to be said about the wonderfulness of choice but in doing so it's provided another route of distancing between everyone and everything. My Millennial colors are screaming at you right now as a longing for the society before the disconnect of being connected. 

There were moments in history that connected us, times when we let out a collective social gasp, events that shocked up back into a collective humanity. Before the current generation we shared events that connected us, because the content we could consume was limited. 

Reading that comment by Akunyili Crosby reminds me of how if I talk to any millennial each one can describe where we were, what was going on, the time, the day, the reactions, when 9/11 happened, I think of when we landed on the moon and how I can ask any one of that generation what that was like, and magically all the political or social barriers break down and people just share what it was like to be part of that moment, when the Berlin wall came down, I even think when Y2K happened.

It's because of the limited selection of content we were afforded that these touch point moments brought everyone together. We all became humans experiencing something together. That doesn't mean we had the same opinions that doesn't mean we had the same views that doesn't mean we had the same experience that doesn't mean we're even on the same side of the event. We just all came together and experienced something as a collective. The current model of content seems to be hell-bent on destroying the idea of a collective memory. 

I think sometimes these moments have a way of scarring over trauma and are a way for people to have some form of instant connect and reset. We are drifting away from one another and creating rifts and division, but then one of these moments happen and we are sometimes quite literally shaken out of our drift and reminded that we are all in this together.

What I'm trying to get out is that there are cultural touch points that exist in a collective memory of a society when we are connected, and sometimes that connection is through a lack of choice of content or media.

This sounds really grand and fantastic, but I'm also brought to mind when the world read the Da Vinci code or we were obsessed with Fifty Shades of Grey, but there's still something in the unity of a culture, talking about something collectively that I think is disappearing from the world, globalization has a lot of pros but one of the cons seems to be the loss of a sense of community.

The beauty of rambling like this I don't necessarily have to have an answer or a point just an interesting idea or thought. And a way to reminisce on old collective memories. They seem romantic like a time lost or something that I don't know if I can see happening again. Everyone has their own source of information or content. We all head to a different place which spins the memory in a different way and in doing so we lose the ability to experience it as a collective together. And at its core maybe that is what I am really referring to, we have replaced the initial experience of something with someone else's take. We have learned to hedge our bets and look for the right narrative rather than building one ourselves. That sounds like an old man rant, but I think there might be something to it.

I think maybe what Akunyili Crosby is touching on is the connection that comes from having the ability to walk out the world with an understanding that the person you bump into will have shared a similar experience to you. A literal connection.

Maybe the sad reality of it is that people don't care enough to experience things together anymore there's that David Foster Wallace quote about how pleasurable it is or will become for a person to look at a screen and how it's great and small doses, but that it can overtake you and essentially a paraphrasing but essentially kill at society. Aldous Huxley got it right, societies don't collapse because of authority they collapse because of inactivity and pleasurable rot, hedonism is a far better tool to overthrow than most rebellions. 

Maybe that's what I'm hoping for some sort of rebellion where the things we view aren't weaponized against us, but the pessimist in me is not sure that's possible anymore.   How do you ask trillion dollar companies to forgo their profits for the goal of unity and companionship in a society? 

There is a wonderful irony that in the collapse of those companies or algorithms we will have created a collective memory.


Ramble completed. I want to write more and in a space that I can be weird, so welcome.
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