The Elders have been exploring the concept of “Collective Amnesia”, especially as it relates to recent global pandemic.
UC#2 passed along a Guardian article on this very subject:
Covid was so bad for so many – why aren’t we talking about it more? My friend, who suffers badly from long Covid, struggles to understand the refusal of many people to think or talk about the pandemic; their reluctance to understand what it has taken from her and from so many others. She’s baffled by the apparent desire to pretend it never happened, or that it wasn’t a big deal. – The Guardian
Ms. Beddington references a term used in Indigenous psychology: nallunguarluku.
Ms. Beddington also references the book Pale Rider, by Laura Spinney
The book was reviewed by the Guardian, two and a half years before Covid.
As always, the APL rocks….
What is “Collective Amnesia”?
Melanie Altanian, of Cardiff University (Cardiff, Wales UK) prefers a more direct approach:
“I find this both epistemically inaccurate and problematic and instead propose putting the analytical focus on the phenomena of active ignorance and denialism.”
https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/openfordebate/a-case-against-the-argument-from-collective-amnesia-and-forgetting/
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“Thus, in contrast to amnesia and forgetting, the notions of active ignorance and denialism do not diagnose an absence of relevant knowledge. Rather, they presuppose the existence of knowledge and other epistemic inputs and highlight epistemically problematic ways in which agents engage with them.”
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Those who are ignorant out of privilege either do not need to know or inquire further (displaying laziness or arrogance) or need not to know (displaying closed-mindedness).
Ms Altanian puts this in the context of the Armenian genocide, saying the “forgetting” is “a cultural code for Turkey to avoid facing the dark annals of its past.”
Social Amnesia as a Health Concern
The biggest threat to the health, well-being, and persistence of humanity is not COVID-19 or climate change. It is not the extinction crisis or the destruction of wild habitats nor global terrorism or the rise of artificial intelligence. It is collective global amnesia. This metaphoric disorder is manifested by the tendency of societies to recognize a new potentially catastrophic threat, react to it for a few years and then move on. – Craig Stephen, Clinical Professor, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia (via NIH site)
Tangentially…. History Majors
Tangentially related, Edwin Grosvenor, in an American Heritage editorial, expresses concern in the decline of history students.
A lot of attention has been paid to the recent surveys that show a marked decline in knowledge of American history and government. According to a recent Newsweek survey, 40% of Americans couldn’t correctly identify what countries we fought in World War II. And that was in a multiple-choice test.
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Now, more than at any other time in my lifetime, we need to understand the stories that make us all Americans — the courage and creativity that gave us the freedoms we enjoy.
https://www.americanheritage.com/nation-collective-amnesia
This concept connects directly to a feature article on the current American Heritage web site: “Killers of the Flower Moon” and a Hundred Years of Healing”.
There seems to be different “flavors” of collective amnesia that serve different psychological, social, financial, and (most pernicious) political purposes.
Collective Amnesia / Covid in India
In a book review in The Hindu, author Harsh Mander reflects on India’s Covid experience.
As with many countries, the government was not fully transparent. There are disputes over how many people lost their lives, but it is estimated that it could have been anywhere between half a million to five million people.
https://www.thehindu.com/books/i-write-to-rage-and-rescue-ourselves-from-collective-amnesia-says-harsh-mander-speaking-on-indias-covid-experience/article67126759.ece
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I write because I’m convinced that we must not forget…. It was very clear that the priorities of the government were never to help people through the greatest humanitarian crisis of the Century, but to divert attention from their failures, to hide facts, to scapegoat targeted communities, and to launch massive publicity campaigns.
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[The prime minister] said we should all stay at home. Did he forget nine out of ten workers are informal workers, who eat what they earn from day to day?
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There are certain events in history which are meant to be remembered as lessons, but also as a warning to do better for the future. The Covid-19 pandemic is the latest of that kind of unforgettable and traumatising event.
Psychological Causes
The amnesia associated with the Covid pandemic has aspects of all four, but is perhaps unique in its psychological aspects.
Jemima Kelly, of the Financial Times, explores this phenomena:
https://www.ft.com/content/be70b24e-8ca0-4681-a23b-0c59c69a2616
….lockdowns not only seem to belong to a long gone past; they also appear to be fading, rapidly, from our consciousness.
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In a survey conducted this week by market research firm Prolific, shared with the Financial Times, a quarter of a representative sample of almost 1,000 respondents said they only have “a vague memory” of how they spent their time during lockdown…. Lockdowns, the researchers concluded, had a similar effect on our memory to that which has been observed in people who have served time in prison — our ability to recollect distinct points during that period has been impaired.
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Arash Sahraie, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Aberdeen, tells me that monotony is partly to blame: during lockdowns, the days and the weeks repeated themselves. “You need landmarks to be able to remember things,” says Sahraie. “When you remove those, you don’t have any anchor points left in your timescape, and everything merges together. Time disappears.” Stress and unhappiness probably contributed too…. “Psychological stress changes the way we perceive things and our perception of time,” Sahraie tells me.
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The Spanish flu outbreak, which killed more people than the first world war, is sometimes called a “forgotten pandemic”. Perhaps what we experienced so recently will one day be dubbed the “forgotten lockdowns”.
From the Washington Post:
“A basic assumption that we can make is that everybody forgets everything all the time,” said Norman Brown, cognitive psychology professor researching autobiographical memory at the University of Alberta. “The default is forgetting.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/13/brain-memory-pandemic-covid-forgetting/
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In addition to information overload, the pandemic was monotonous for many people stuck at home. “It was very much the same and the same thing over and over again,” said Dorthe Berntsen, professor of psychology specializing in autobiographical memory at Aarhus University.
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“I would say the pandemic, for many people, will be remembered as this kind of gray interlude,” Brown said. “And for some people, it will be a life-changing kind of event or period. And they’ll remember differently.”
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Without cultural artifacts — books, movies, statues, museums — the same may happen for memories of the covid pandemic, consigned to the entropic dustbin of history. As of now, there are no official permanent memorials for the pandemic.
Collective Amnesia and The Shadow
[Chat] While Jung didn’t explicitly use the term “collective shadow,” the concept of a collective shadow can be inferred within the context of Jungian psychology. It would suggest that, just as individuals have personal shadows, societies and cultures may have collective shadows. These are the aspects of a culture or society’s psyche that are hidden or denied at a collective level, but that still influence the group’s behavior and can manifest in negative or destructive ways. This could include societal prejudices, taboos, and other aspects that are collectively suppressed or unacknowledged.
