Memory, Creativity, and Identity

Without memory, we could never form our identity and sense of self. Memory is one of the defining traits of human conscious experience. What we remember shapes a significant part of who we are, and we could never learn without remembering what happened before. 

  Our brain is like a biological computer. It stores data, processes it, and analyzes it just like a computer does, and that data is the recorded memory of the information we encounter over our lives. On top of the storing of data and the processing of information, the human brain and mind has a factor of will and choice involved that I believe artificial systems lack. 

       Humans are not only data gatherers and storers.  Through the advanced system of neurons and our neural network that allows for a level of will or choice, our brains not only ingest and store data/information, our brains have a level of advancement that allows for high creativity in some individuals, and some of us can create new information and broadcast relatively original ideas from the information we ingest through our senses, analyze, and restructure.

None of this would be possible without memory and information recall. You can't construct anything without a foundation, and memory is the foundation for the constructing of new concepts and ideas. None of those things come out of a void or vacuum. Humans can only create new information out of the arsenal of information provided to them through their learning experiences such as their schooling and leisure.

 Life experience in general provides the foundation for a creative mind. Even some of the harshest, most traumatic life experiences can shape a person's identity and provide a deep, complex, and rich conditioning that can add to the arsenal of information necessary for the individual's creativity to be demonstrated to a very high degree, albeit at the heavy price of severe trauma and pain. Some might ask, "is a gift worth it if the price is a sense of normalcy or an immense loss?"

It depends on what the gift is and it depends on who you ask. However, no learning experience comes without a test, and tests aren't possible without memory being a factor. We can't learn from our past and learn from our mistakes, or even learn from our studies, if we don't remember the information. 

Memory is essential for the conscious experience, and some people have better memories than others. There have been hypothetical arguments for concepts like collective memory of a culture or nation. Some of these arguments have a degree of validity. 

When a group of people share a common history, a common experience, and/or a common cultural and social circumstance, there is a level of collective, shared memory common throughout that group of people, and their is a shared identity brought about through that collective memory and experience.

        An example of this would be the shared experience of an attack or oppression, or a shared national experience during war or crises. All of these things play a factor in the collective culture and memory of a group of people.

 Memory is our history, and without both our personal, and our collective history, none of us can form our identity of who we are and where we belong.