Human Cognition - Collective Memory

“Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory--part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective instruction....What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.”  ― Susan Sontag

French sociologist, social psychologist, philosopher and the father of sociology, Émile Durkheim, introduced the concept of “collective consciousness” in his 1892 book “The Division of Labor in Society”.  Durkheim's work focused on what he called “social facts”, physical or mental constructs that have a coercive influence on the behavior of the individual.  Such constructs have an independent existence that is greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals who compose a society. 

Durkheim argued that society, in general, and all social institutions, by their nature, are sets of social facts.  The glue that holds a society and its institutions together is collective consciousness. While he conceded that all humans are “self” centered, Durkheim concluded that a society is bound by the norms, beliefs, and values that individuals hold collectively.  This collective thought produces social integration, or culture, as humans become aware of each other as social beings.  Our brains construct many “I’s” that take on the role of “self” at different times depending on how the brain assesses its needs.  The natural progression of “I” construction leads the brain to attempt to create a controller for its “squadron of simpletons”, an overseer of observers.  Durkheim argues that humans become bound to their culture when the emotion of their collective consciousness overrides the “self”.  Stated in terms of self awareness, collective consciousness molds the construction of this overseer “self” that identifies with and garners support from the culture to which it is bound.

Maurice Halbwachs, a student of Durkheim, is the first sociologist to use the term “collective memory” in his 1950 book “La mémoire collective”. Collective memory offers accounts of emotionally salient events and persons in the past who have particular relevance to how a group understands itself and the challenges it faces in the present and future. These accounts are not simply the details about the past.  Instead, they act as moral, political and social lessons.  As such, Halbwachs separates history from collective memory; the former is about facts, specific events and truth, and the later is popular memory as experienced through the eyes and minds of participants in the events and their descendants. There are limits to this distinction, however, as both historical accounts and collective memory are built around plausible explanations and accounts about the past found in a group’s narratives.  Halbwachs also suggests that all individual memory is constructed within social structures and institutions. He claims that individual, autobiographic memory is understood only through a group context; which may include families, organizations, nation-states and religions. 

The emotion of collective consciousness molds the construction of “self”.  Further, decision based, tactical and strategic social interaction is couched in our recall of prior experience which is understood through collective thought. Therefore, what a society chooses to include in collective memory becomes very important.  Given that success of our behavior is measured in how we adapt to change, the survival of mankind is likely a function of what we choose to include in our collective memory. 

Picking the right or best collective memories isn’t easy.  All reality is relative and all experience is subjective.  There are many world views and just as many collective memories.  Even when humans share memories, they may not share cultural identities.  Identity groups are not neatly defined or bound in the same way as citizens of a state or members of a voluntary organization.  There are no rules and requirements for membership or leadership of such groups.  There is often significant diversity among people in large collectives, such as religious or national communities.  Such diversity can produce significant variation in memory content.  People who share the same culture don't necessarily agree on all details. Cultural variation in thought, feeling, and behavior, however, doesn’t preclude understanding.  Emotions and beliefs contained in the memories can to be translated into actions that are for the good of all concerned.  Narratives, ritual enactments, and symbolic landscapes can be used to develop, reinforce and transmit collective memories.  These tools can become a reflection of a group's core assumptions, the dynamics of culture and memory that direct a collective’s expressions and actions. 

Narratives are verbal accounts that articulate stories about the past, attributing motives and meanings to key actors.  They become explanations for events in the form of short, common sense stories that often seem simple.  However, the images they contain, and the judgments they make about the motivations and actions of one's own group and opponents, can be emotionally powerful. Narratives are not always internally consistent. For example, group narratives often alternate between portraying one's own group as especially strong and as especially vulnerable.  The present, the historical past and group memories are used in complex ways as a group selectively focuses on events, individuals, and how they are linked. They are central to understanding “who we are,” what in our past is shared, what dangers we face, and our dream for the future.

Powerful narratives are far more than simple verbal accounts.  Music, drama, and art which are often filled with richly powerful images, metaphors and lessons, enact and reinforce the past and the future.   Repetitive cultural events are a crucial way of creating and solidifying narratives and collective memories. While they are often communicated as timeless rituals, these performances are regularly invented and reinvented to meet the present needs of the group. Examples of this connection abound. Group holidays and rituals that assert relationships between the present and past through sacred objects, holy sites, special foods, and prayers are common across all collectives and cultures.

Physical objects and sites, referred to as symbolic landscape, can be used to convey messages of group inclusivity and /or exclusivity.  A society's symbolic landscape communicates and frames its messages through specific public images, physical objects, and other expressive representations.  It includes public spaces and especially sacred, but not necessarily religious, sites.  The ideas conveyed by landscape reveal how a group views itself and how it represents itself to others.  Exclusion of groups from the symbolic landscape is an explicit form of denial and assertion of power. In contrast, an inclusive symbolic landscape is an expression of nurturing that communicates mutuality and a shared stake in society. It renders the previously unseen visible, gives a voice to those who may have been voiceless, and can offer powerful messages of acceptance to the young. 

Religion is the essence of collective memory.  It is the most fundamental social institution.  Almost all other institutions, at some point in history, were born from it.  However, searching for an absolute origin or the instant where religion first came into being is impossible.  Metaphysically, the origin of religion, like all other social institutions, was born from the collective memories of a group that saw purpose in explaining its past and forecasting its future.   

In his 1912 book, “Elementary Forms of Religious Life”, Émile Durkheim laid out his theory of religion which he based on the concept of “collective effervescence”, a moment in societal life when a group of individuals came together to perform a ritual. During such a moment, the group communicated the same thoughts and participated in the same actions.  Collective “electricity” was created and released, leading participants to a high degree of emotional excitement or delirium.  It lifted them up, outside of themselves, and made them feel as if they were in contact with an extraordinary energy.  As such, the group had a collective religious experience.

According to Durkheim, following this religious experience, the group projects the collective energy it shared onto an external symbol.  The power becomes abstract, is objectified and made sacred.  The sacred object is infused with the power of the community and the group gains a tangible idea, or representation, of itself.  Durkheim uses the words “sacred object” to describe what is traditionally understood as a god.  The same concept can also be applied to other abstractions like the four Buddhist noble truths and the humanist individual. Further, our history is replete with physical objects such as rocks, feathers, totem poles, and crosses which have become infused with the force of the collective. A society’s sacred object is the collective’s projected abstraction; a universal controller of each individual “self” acting as the agent for the collective. The collective, just like its members who empathically imagine what others are thinking, imagines the powers of its sacred object, the mind of god.  In doing so, a society is empowered.

Eric Hobsbawm suggests that when social change destroys or jeopardizes a collective’s customs and religion, the group will invent new traditions for the purpose of maintaining authority, control and solidarity.  In some cases, they will use the imprint of a nonexistent past, a past that ignores the current situation, to create hope of a better tomorrow.  Social identity is reaffirmed using new rituals and symbols to unite and energize the society in distress.  In effect, the collective memory of the group becomes a construction of those who maintain the power and status to define such memories.  Durkheim remarks that if the societal forces central to religious life are not re-animated, they will be forgotten, leaving individuals with no knowledge of the ties that exist between them. Durkheim believes this is why religious ritual has been necessary for the continued existence of most societies.  Adding to this thought, Pierre Nora reaffirms that religious collective memory is an interpreted past which becomes increasingly detached from the historical past.  Further, Nora claims that religious groups select certain dates and people to commemorate while deliberately eliminating others from representation.  A process he calls “collective amnesia”.  He also suggests that societal elites produce “simulations of natural memory” to support the emergence of humanity in a contrived collective memory which is used to reinforce the imaginings of the collective.

As such, collective memory can be both a tool and an object of power. 

Alph awoke the morning of the first spring ceremonies to the clamor of another clan coming into camp.  By his count, there were now six clans that would be participating this year.  He thought there must be at least 160 people camping along the river, not counting the group that was just coming in.  It would have been more but the people had a rule, no Neanderthals.  There had been a scuffle two years ago when they had tried to join.  Ra had declared, while she was clan Shaman, that they didn’t understand the Mother Goddess and weren’t allowed into the cave.

The excitement was so thick that you could almost see it.  People were in the river bathing. Women were sitting together having their faces and breasts decorated.  Alph walked around counting the number of women that would go up to the cave.  The ceremonial chamber would hold only 20 people at one time.  There would be 40 women this year. That meant four morning ceremonies over four days, with ten women and ten men in each.  Alph was also excited that there were many more young people this year.  Mum would hold sessions in the afternoon for the children, giving instruction in the ways of the Mother Goddess.

As Alph shared the count with her, Mum told him to take the last of the bedding up to the cave.  His feet hardly touched the ground as he climbed the plateau.  Once the torches were lit and the floor had been prepared with furs, he stood at the cave entrance and waved down to her.  Mum raised her hand and 10 men began to beat sticks together, as was always the tradition.   Ten women gathered next to Mum and began to chant.  It was time.

As they climbed the plateau together, Mum explained that the group would make its way to the very back of the cave.  When they reached the entrance, Alph was there to greet the group.  He showed them into the first chamber where they could disrobe.  The women then moved into the second chamber alone where they applied fragrances and sacred oils.  Alph then led them into the back of the cave.

 

The women were immediately overwhelmed by the extensive paintings of lions and their prey that covered the walls.  They giggled. They knew that the men would find the art very stimulating.  The women sat on the fur bedding and began rocking back and forth, chanting, reducing the breathable air supply in the room. The torches began to dim and the chanting grew even louder.  Then, the men entered the room, aroused and ready.  They paired off with the women.  Mum entered the room glowing with oil and sweat.  She made her way to the middle of the chamber and began caressing the rock formation that hung from the ceiling. The rock was Mum’s new alter, painted with an image of the Mother Goddess preparing to be mounted.   She danced around the rock alter singing Her praises as the chanting quickly turned into moans of oxygen deprived passion.  Screams of ecstasy filled the chamber.

Alph sat at the cave entrance feeling the cool spring breeze.  He held the statue that Ra had given him at birth.  He knew that she was watching today’s event at the Mother Goddess’ side.  He smiled and whispered, “Ra”.