Tuesday, September 17, 2013

the dreams we have as children, fade away

Childhood, as a frame, will inspire and motivate because it allows us to reflect back to a time before things became so complicated.

As we get older we get conflicted. Life gets messier and nothing is as simple any more.

Like Noel Gallagher occasionally nailed it...

'When I was young, I thought I had my own key,
I knew exactly what I wanted to be,
Now I'm sure,
You've boarded up every door.'


So it may be the case that when 'memories' of childhood are evoked then our own moral standards can be temporarily rebooted, and therefore we might just act in a more prosocial manner with some of our choices.

Memory, of course, is not the correct description.
While we have a handle on the general gist of what happened the actual details are long gone and so therefore any memory of childhood is largely an idealised fiction.
This is as true when we try and recount what happened yesterday as much is something from many years ago.

You may be surprised, as I was, to know that our memories are actually reconstructed afresh every time we bring them to mind. It's nerve pathways that firing anew each time, and your mind will also fill in any gaps with made up stuff that seems plausible, but these will seem as real the original event.

It's basic human need to make sense out of events, so we create these memory illusions to give a sense of coherence or narrative. But they are illusions none the less.

Anyway, back to the topic, the latest Chipotle trailer seems to be a classic example of pulling those childhood moral compass strings, and to good effect.

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