Integrity

"There was a time when I could hear everything and listened very little.

See?

"Now that my hearing is on the decline, I have noticed a sharp increase in my listening capacity. Is it age? Probably deeper than that.

"If the data is recorded faithfully, listening can catch up. Though it may takes years or even decades."

Optimized for experience capture, a human's hearing mechanism (ears, real-time categorization etc.) does not guarantee a level of meaning commensurate with the pristine acquisition. The architecture, unassisted, does not support it.

"So seeing the Oscar winner again two decades later, I could not hear all the dialog. But I understood the context. It is not that much of a conceptual leap to assume the meaning had been percolating over the intervening years, below the level of conscious awareness."

When shame is relegated to appropriate tagging of experience (rather than a tool for obedience to predators), the mind has an opportunity to thrive, even if the real-time sensors have degraded with the march of time.

© 2011 Buzz Hill