Stanisław Lem's Reflections on the Objects of His Childhood Home

Stanisław Lem's Reflections on the Objects of His Childhood Home
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

I went gradually from level to level, each time learning the next version of the thing, and in this there was nothing remarkable. Everyone knows it — everyone first learned the version of the stork and then the more realistic explanation of his own genesis. The point is that all the earlier versions, even those as patently false as the one with the stork, are not discarded completely. Something of them remains in us; they mesh with succeeding versions and somehow continue to exist — but that is not all. As far as the facts are concerned — say, in the case of my father’s diploma — it is not difficult to determine what the correct version is, the one that counts. It is otherwise with experience. Each experience has its weight, its authority, which does not admit of argument and depends only on itself. And herein lies the problem, for the sole guardian and guarantor of the authenticity of experience is memory.

Given it's Christmas Eve, I think our memories of Christmas and what it means is a good example of this. As children we explain gifts on Christmas as something Santa Claus provides overnight. The forward-motion of life eventually teaches us that it is, in fact, our parents giving gifts... Yet the original belief and magic stays with us, and the chronology of beliefs superceded by new beliefs and realities feeds the myth and power of Christmas.

Borges also discusses the subjective experiences we have when producing work in a number of his works[1], which is also magical in a way that Lem's paragraph is -- our lived experiences forever bias us in a ways that we might never expect.

Merry Christmas everyone.

[1] For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...