I've been on facebook now for over six months now and a few things have happened recently that have caused me to reflect on the relationship between facebook, memory and truth. I recently made a facebook friend with a person whom I've not seen for about 28 years. It was the girl that I first kissed, so in some ways a very significant memory. When I saw that she had requested to be friends with me I hovered over the accept button wondering what this would do. By saying yes, there is the potential that my memory of that first kiss, will be changed forever, whatever I had constructed in my mind as the truth of that innocent childhood kiss would be challenged by this. Memory constructs truth, we remember what we want to in a particular way and suppress those memories that we chose to deny. By becoming a facebook friend with this person my memory was going to be challenged, and my truth of that particular moment would be altered.
Following on from my previous post regarding absolute truth I've been re-reading Miroslav Volf's stunning book: 'Exclusion and Embrace'. Volf explores the relationship between truth and memory and how those who hold power in the present have control on the memory of the past. History is almost always written from the side of the victor and therefore a certain deception takes place as marginalised voices are quieted and the losers voice is silenced.
When we apply this to our personal lives maybe our memories construct a truth of the past, of a particular moment and as that moment gets further and further away it becomes more idealized. It becomes a memory that has no real bearing to reality, yet in a strange way it still holds a very powerful truth within it. My memory of that particular moment is true, but the question is can we accept that as true without wanting to find out the actual facts of the situation?
This of course has massive implications on the way that we read particular religious texts, which were of course constructed from memory. Does the text become an idealized account of the reality of the moment? and when we look back on Christian history we read from the side of the people who constructed what truth was in this context. We read from the side of the powerful truth holder rather than the side of the oppressed. My question is: Is this a bad thing?
Should we always be looking back to try and find the true historical Jesus? Or can we accept the truth of the construct that we've got of him at this present time, that truth maybe idealized, it may not be historically accurate but it maybe that the truth of the memory is more valuable that the truth of the reality, and it could be that the idealized picture has a greater bearing on the truths that need to be challenged in contemporary society.
Moving back to facebook, it seems to me that facebook is destroying memory as a constructer of truth by allowing that memory to become a reality. What if i discovered that the person who I shared my first kiss with had then gone on and kissed one of my brothers, (she didn't btw), my memory of that moment would be warped, it'd be changed and perhaps that is not healthy. Perhaps idealized memories are better than the reality of a moment.
I don't think it's as simple as a straight divide between either memory as the constructor of truth or the historic reality as the constructor of truth. There will be times when we need to go back to the historic reality, times when memory can be used to oppress and therefore the historical truth needs to be discovered. But maybe just, maybe there are time when the memory as constructor of truth is a positive thing and the truth of the idealized account of the memory is a more healthy truth than the historical truth of a moment.
