Has the practice of WRITING helped man to REMEMBER or FORGET?

Answer 1

To forget. Something that is discharged or express through writing (speech, art, or action) leaves the mind. This is why journaling is an effective tool for so many in terms of discharging their psychological connection to the past.

It's a case that writing "gets it out of your system".

Answer 2

This is really the question of the Greek "pharmakon" addressed by Socrates and later addressed by Derrida. We realize that Socrates saw writing as dangerous because he never did it; all accounts of him are through the writing of Plato. The "pharmakon" (a term used by Plato and appropriated by Derrida) means BOTH "poison" and "remedy." It is like the word "drug" which can both harm the health of a person (e.g., crack cocaine) or help the health of a person (e.g., amoxycillin).

Writing too takes on this feature because on one hand it constructs a way in which communication can last over a greater span of time (for example, speech only lasts for the moments it is spoken, but if written lasts as long as the paper is maintained). On the other hand, writing becomes a crutch where people begin to forget BECAUSE they could "always just look it up" (since it is written some where). Why remember all the US presidents, if it only takes a moment to find them in the Encyclopedia, the web, or any other textual medium?

For Derrida, this "pharmakon" (that which is BOTH good and bad simultaneously) cannot be resolved and must, by its very nature, remain undecidable.

Answer 3

The practice of writing SHOULD help man to remember but apparently someone forgot to tell him to go read.

Answer 4

The funny thing is, I will often remember those things I have written down and do not need to remember, and forget those things I was unable to write down but desperately need to remember.

Answer 5

I think it's a little bit of both. I write sometimes, and when I write something, I forget it after I've written it. But I can always go back and see what I've written later, which in turn helps me remember it.

Answer 6

I would say that writing has helped man to remember. I think that efficiency systems, like classifying, or library systems, and computers have liberated our minds from carrying around information we don't use everyday, thus freeing it for our personal benefit. It's not how much we know, but where the knowledge can be found.

Answer 7

It has helped us to forget the truth and to remember that our government lies. They hide all the books and real teachings of spirit. They burn books just like the nazais in germany. The truth is out there people just wake up. We are lied to every day.

Answer 8

Writing helps release memories so that others can learn from them. If you lived through something horrible and you never said anything, then you would still remember, but when you die, people would soon forget it. Writing is the way to help everyone remember things we don't want to repeat, so we never have to go through them again.

Answer 9

Very strange - a question that begs for oblivion! It is the practice of vague generalization, "practice of writing", that the questioner has not thought through with discrimination.

What has been written can withdraw ontologically. Men, and "man", can withdraw into oblivion, too. In the proper place, which is primal, not accessible to us, indeterminate recall occurs. Pure thinkers like Socrates light the way precisely because they CALL FOR THINKING. What persists through the written word ABOUT Socrates is an infinitesimal but extremely potent approximation to Being. Evidence of our impurity comes in the practice-form of grouping philosophers in a all-to-easy-to-forget manner, "pre-Socratic", an awkward and forgettable attempt to think about Socrates.

*Keith M has the right idea (eidos) here, well exposited, however, this is his, mine, Plato's, and Derrida's error. It looks good on the page, but it doesn't call us to think.

Answer 10

writing stimulates the brain to remember things from the past the present and possibly wishing for the future.