Tag: memory

Sex, Memory & Imagination

You’re living a long time. One hundred and five is now the average age of a human. That average is creeping up. We’re all living longer as medical technology monitors and addresses issues 24/7. People aren’t being born, and some children are being kept as children.

Thereby is an argument: if a child is kept physically, emotionally and intellectually at six years old because that’s the age their parent(s) prefer them, but they’ve been alive for forty years, how old are they? Most planets, corporations and governments hold that if they’re maintained at an age, they count at that age if it’s an age whereby they’re somebody’s wards or in a protected status. So, for example, some are adults (which varies mightily in the future) but look like they’re twelve, because they liked how they looked then, so they’re counted as their true age. But if they’re twelve and are treated as twelve years old even though they’re fifty, they’re treated as twelve.

Civilization is more complicated in the future.

One decision many face is what to embody. As memory is augmented to provide greater storage and enhance recall abilities because people are living longer, people typically embody their memories as an avatar that can be compiled as a physical presence. That way, instead of just engaging in internal dialogue with themselves, they can call out their memory and invite them to have a drink or share a meal while they discuss their recollections. Brett’s memory is a tanned blonde woman in a red dress (who doesn’t have a name) and Handley’s memory is a pirate named Grutte Piers, based on the real Piers Gerlofs Donia. These aren’t their first memories but they’re their current memories in ‘Long Summer’.

Something similar has evolved for sex. Many people have decided that fake sex with an avatar of their design is more enjoyable than having sex with another actual person. People have foibles. Foibles can be very irritating. The foibles can be mitigated to some degree but people are a bit unpredictable. Many people have learned that they don’t like their sex partners to be unpredictable.

To solve these issues, people often create one (0r more) sex avatars (sexatars?). Like the memory, it’s an embodiment that’s compiled to exist for a period. People can decide exactly who they resemble and how they’ll act. If they want, they can create animal avatars and have sex with animals as a human or compile or modify themselves to be animals and enjoy their sex. Whatever creepy depravities humanity enjoys can be indulged by creating sex avatars. A few people have married their sex avatars. Avatars are people, too, my friends, except they have different rights.

Sex and memory are the two main items people have embodied as avatars but a few people create others. Some have their intelligence or imagination embodied as an avatar that they can call out for visits. Brett has created an embodiment of his personal computer and communications systems, and calls it Carl. Others have gone the good and evil routes, creating twins of the opposite end of their moral spectrum (as they see it). A few enjoy themselves so much that their have avatars that are exactly like themselves created so they have themselves as company. Most find this doesn’t work well, that as people, they’re not the wonderful companions they thought they are.

All of the avatars are as that as anything humans create. Maintenance is needed or the avatars break down and cease functioning.

With all these facets acting in parallel, the population of humanity is slowly cresting, and the average age is creeping up. The oldest humans are upward of three hundred years old. Despite proliferation of new communication technologies and people living longer, people are living more and more in isolation, with only their memories, sex and other embodiments as avatar companions. Sometimes, they miss family or friends and have ideal avatars of them created, too. It makes for happier holiday meals. Meanwhile, Mom, Dad and Sis are alive on other worlds but never hear from Bro.

Yes, it’s an interesting and complex civilization, in the future. Another day of writing like crazy is in the books (ha, ha).

This post has been brought to you by coffee. Coffee: it’s good for thinking (and bowel movements).

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The Interlude

One movement has ended. Another is to begin.

I pause here to consider the movement that’s finished, reviewing the highlights. There are many. Look for flaws and shortcomings. Relieved to find nothing niggles. Worry that I’m blind to the faults. Sigh and dismiss it. Hope I’m wrong.

I sit in the space between the movements, looking back, looking forward. Back draws me with pleasure. It’s a job done, a project accomplished, an achievement – a novel written, revised, edited, polished – and I felt fulfilled while working on it. No matter whether others read and enjoy it, I have read and enjoyed it. More, I’m always amazed by the process of turning over points, asking what if and why, and planning a move.

But writing a novel, like many things, twists in unexpected ways. Characters take over and lead down surprising paths. Reaching the end, asking now what, I ask what if and why, plan the next move, and something happens and the writing train speeds on.

I’m bemused sometimes when people tell me they’ve attempted to write a novel and reached a point where they weren’t sure what to do next. Don’t know what the characters will do. So they’ve stopped.

Well, of course. That happens all the time to me, probably once a week. That kind of road block must be navigated. I do so in multiple ways. Read, edit and revise what’s already written. Think about the ending and what’s been unresolved, what’s blossoming. Walk and consider my life and how the character(s) would behave if my life was their life. Put myself into their life (in the novel) and consider what I would do, if I were them, and why that’s not what they would do. I read other books. Something recommended to me by others. Or mind candy, a page turner without much depth. Or an award winner. Or a new finding by a favorite author. Or blogs and articles. I walk, eat, think, sleep. Whatever. What I don’t do is worry about being paused. That’s all the roadblock is, a pause. If I think of it like taking a road trip, this is heavy traffic, or construction, just something that must take place and be passed before the trip resumes.

Ahead, after this interlude, I see the challenge of re-engaging the next book, because this is the editing phase for it (although it’s been edited, revised and polished before), and the insecurities and worries that always accompany re-visiting my writing, that the visit will reveal all the flaws and shortcomings, that the characters will be flat, the settings empty, the story silly and the novel will be a mess. That’s not how I remember it, but I was reading the other day that memories aren’t actually that efficient, that small details are recalled and we build the rest into something that works for us.

Funny to read and reflect on that item about memory. The book to be edited is all about memory (and, naturally, perceptions, and competing, conflicting perceptions, and how reality  is constructed and maintained). Most of my books are about these things. Memories inform characters and readers, shaping experiences and expectations. My characters are like me, flawed and searching, struggling to grasp what happened and what’s going on, trying to forge a way forward. Their odds against them are always much larger than my odds, and their risks are greater – life, death, reality….

So I’ll go as usual to my writing place, the physical one first, the coffee shop. Find a table and get my drink. Then I’ll go to my writing place, the mental one, and move into the editing department. Then I’ll open the manuscript on my computer.

Then I’ll play games. Surf the net. Post to FB. Read the news. Think about other things. Twenty, thirty minutes will pass. Then I’ll say, okay. Enough. Let’s go. Get to work. Do what needs to be done.

And then I’ll begin.

But right now, I’m just going to sit in the moment.

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Expectations for the Brain

This week, I enjoyed discovering and re-discovering reading regarding the brain and how it works, how we can change its workings, memory, and meditation’s effects on the brain. This all seems to be about practice, expectation, and changing expectations.

DelanceyPlace.com is a website that publishes excerpts from fascinating non-fiction. Back in 2015, they published an excerpt from a 2014 book. By Matthieu Ricard, Antoine Lutz and Richard J. Davidson, the book, Mind of the Meditator, is about how mastering a task transforms the brain’s pathways.

“The discovery of meditation‘s benefits coincides with recent neuroscientific findings showing that the adult brain can still be deeply transformed through experience. These studies show that when we learn how to juggle or play a musical instrument, the brain undergoes changes through a process called neuroplasticity. A brain region that controls the movement of a violinist’s fingers becomes progressively larger with mastery of the instrument. A similar process appears to happen when we meditate. Nothing changes in the surrounding environment, but the meditator regulates mental states to achieve a form of inner enrichment, an experience that affects brain functioning and its physical structure. The evidence amassed from this research has begun to show that meditation can rewire brain circuits to produce salutary effects not just on the mind and the brain but on the entire body. …”

Addressing how ‘the adult brain be still be be transformed through experience’, HuffPost had a related story this week, To Increase Your Well-being, Train Your Brain. Mimi O’Connor wrote, “Dr. Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that practice is the key element in changing our brains for the better. He is well known for his pioneering study with Buddhist monks. In that study he hooked the monks up to fMRI machines and observed their brains as they meditated. The monks produced gamma waves, indicating intensely focused thought, which were 30 times as strong as the control groups.’ Additionally, large areas of the meditator’s brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions. This study showed that conscious effort can change the neural structure, activity and function of the brain.” Dr. Richard Davidson was one of the other book’s authors, of course.

“Similar to the inspiring theme of the film Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come,” Davidson’s motto seems to be, “Exercise them (neural pathways) and they will strengthen.”

Offering another point of view that affirms the same was Sophie McBain in Head in the Cloud. Her article addressed human memory and studies regarding the impact of computers and digital systems on our ability to remember. What becomes clear from her intriguing article is that, part of what affects our ability to remember, is our expectation of a need to remember. Here, in essence, we’re seeing the opposite impact of the other articles, where people who have computers to help them remember, don’t practice remembering, thereby weakening their ability to remember.

They’re all ripple effects, aren’t they, a sort of Doom Loop on the one hand, of expecting less and trying less, and so spiraling into achieving less, or conversely, a Halo Loop, of expecting more and trying harder.

Of course, I need to tie this back to writing. Practice writing, pursue it, try to master it, and the pathways and areas of the brain used for writing can be strengthened and transformed. Instead of believing you can’t, believe you can, and try. Being human, it’s rarely that simple, and people like Judith Sherven, PhD, can inject insights and ideas for re-working the subconscious programming behind the Doom Loop.

I’d also like to tie all of this back to time, reality and the nature of existence, but that’s for another post. Instead, I need to go off and write like crazy, at least one more time.

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