This is http://www.essayz.com/a9604141.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %FABRIC LIVES PERSONAL COMMUNAL LEADER GENETIC LIFE+960414 %MIND BRAIN CELL SURVIVAL EXTINCTION MEMORY SUCCESS+960414 %INDIVIDUAL PERSON LONG TERM MID SHORT INFORMATION+960414 %COMPUTER PRESS WRITE TEXT PROCESS RETRIEVAL WAY 960414 For the purpose of seeking to understand the fabric of our lives it may be helpful to recognize, name, describe and talk about the variety of ways in which the individual threads of our personal and communal lives lead to the development of our personal and communal lives. Much depends upon genetic evolution which leads to genetic memories about what kinds of behaviors lead to survival, and what kinds of behavior lead to extinction. Collectively embedded in our species is a genetic memory of our past, of what has worked and what has not worked. Genetic memory is long-term memory because recent events do not get embedded as quickly in our species genetic memory as they do in other forms of memory. Individually we as persons have short term detailed memory of our most recent events. The details of such memory quickly fade away and only a general residue remains in mid-term memory---so we can make generalizations about events in the recent past; that they happened, where, when, with whom, under what general circumstances, etc. But many of the details of the events are lost long before the general nature of the events is forgotten. Such mid-term memory is often the focus of attention in court-room judicial procedures. We have some hints of how such memories are embedded in brain cells and their connections. Individually and collectively we as persons have long term general memory of our individual and collective recent past. This memory comes from both personal individual experiences in relationship to the events; and from communications among us about such events. There comes a time when it is not easy to sort out which memories are rooted in personal experiences; and which are rooted in communications about personal experiences. We are trying to make guesses about how such collective memories are stored and where they are stored. It is not clear how any of the above memories may or may not be embedded in genetic materials in the long term. We do know quite a bit about how many of the above memories get embedded in personal, private and public formal memories: paper records, news-media, governmental documents, scholarly publications, scientific papers, and religious writings. There is a continuing revolution in the formation of new media in which such memories can be stored and retrieved: hand writing, printing, typing, photography, movies, magnetic recordings, video recordings, computer bit records, CD-ROM recordings, etc. We can barely anticipate the implications of this revolution in intentional recordings of information and the possible processing and retrieval of information. We need to recognize, name, describe and talk about the ways in which there are associated with the above information processing embedded realities such as: descriptions, prescriptions, proscriptions, expectations, anticipations, hopes, desires, fears, demands and remands; personal, private, corporate, and formal. These all exist in conjunction with the wide variety of ways in which information is stored: genetically, in nerve cells' inter-actions, in traditions, in printed materials, in myths, in stories told and retold through oral traditions, in books, and in modern high-technology media connected to the INTERNET, in music, in drama, in the arts in general. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================