Memorable Means Meaningful
Version 1.0.1 - June 8, 2025
I read a great article recently by Paul D. Wilke, titled Dystopia of Decadence: Huxley’s Brave New World and Ours as Well, in which he compares the present culture of digital hedonism in the west to the world created by Aldous Huxley in his novel Brave New World. People often draw comparisons between today's world and Huxley's in the way that he predicted many of the technologies that are now available or for which major developments are presently being made, but far less frequently do they make the connection between the perfect hedonistic utopia of Brave New World, and the hedonistic dystopia of the present as Wilke does. The article is absolutely worth a read (certainly moreso than this one), and my project isn't to summarize it here.
I want to call attention, however, to the section of Wilke's article subtitled "Memory Erasers and Experience Vampires" and how it has given me a new way of looking at my own experiences to determine if those things are meaningful and worth doing. He calls attention to the hours spent everyday by most people on the internet, and the thousands of hours he's spent watching videos, sending emails, and sharing memes himself—He remembers so little of it—Compared to just a handful of other milestone experiences that, in totality, were only a few hours and many years ago that shaped his life and that he will (hopefully) remember for many more years to come.
All of the unmemorable stuff happened mindlessly behind a screen and all of the memorable events were ones in which Wilke was fully present—with himself, with others, and with the world. Not all of those events were wonderful, ecstatic and blissful, or full of happiness. Some were tragic, terrifying, and heartbreaking. But then again, no one can say that mindless scrolling or digital consumption is a path to pure bliss, meaning, or cessation of suffering. Behind the screen you only get numb indifference with your pointlessness; and while doing what matters will sometimes be ecstatic and blissful and other times terrifying and painful (or some beautiful mix of of all of them), it's precisely because they are those things that they are worth doing.
So going forward, I'm going to use Wilke's memory test to judge what's worth doing. If after enough time has passed I still remember the event (the meaning of the event, how it shaped me, what I felt then), then it was worth doing. Now that may not mean it's worth doing again—we can make mistakes, after all, and we should learn from them—but certainly nothing unmemorable is worth doing a second time. I'm not going to bother to keep a log of memorable and unmemorable behaviors, but I will make an effort going forward, when I'm faced with two decisions (or more frequently the option of indecision), to take the more memorable path; the path that will make a more interesting story later on.