Coprolite Newsletter, August 2008

Seniors have so much to contribute to the world, if only people would pay attention. I’m not talking about whatever stack of wisdom and experience we’ve accumulated, although that could just possibly be worth something. I’m talking about specific abilities and talents we have that younger people lack.

I know, most people assume that natural abilities tend to decrease, not increase, when you get older. That just shows how misunderstood we seniors are. There are lots of important things that we do better than anyone else.

A prime example is the ability to forget. I’m not kidding – this is an important function that just may turn out to be key to the future of society.

I’m worried that younger people nowadays have way too much to remember. It’s hard for them to avoid it, exposed as they are to constant stimuli.

We just spent a delightful couple of weeks traveling and camping with our 14-year-old grandson, Colin. He is able to recite funny scenes from every movie and TV show he’s ever seen. And he’s apparently seen a lot of them. He also knows the music and lyrics of every song recorded in the last fifty years. With so much great stuff stored away in his brain, how is he going to find room in the coming years for trigonometry or accounting or rocket science?

It’s important to remember the good advice that Sherlock Holmes gave Dr. Watson in Arthur Conan Doyle’s first story, “A Study in Scarlet.”

“You see,” said Holmes, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out... Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic.”

Holmes went on to explain, “It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent... It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

For most of the younger generation, it’s too late to follow Sherlock’s advice to simply avoid filling up their brains with excessive stuff. TV, comics, and even textbooks have already done their insidious work. Those mental attics are overflowing. Young people need to free up more room in their attics by forgetting some things. And that just happens to be a skill that seniors are really good at.

I’m not sure just how we could impart our forgetfulness to younger folks. Transferring an ability – whether it’s painting watercolors, composing symphonies, or forgetting why you drove to the grocery store – is much more complicated than just teaching some facts.

I’m thinking of putting together a team of seniors who are expert in different types of forgetting. My own specialty is woolgathering. This technique involves daydreaming about some comfortable subject until you forget what street you were supposed to turn on to get to wherever it was you were driving. Other experts on our team might specialize in the forgetting of phone numbers, bills to pay, or appointments. Through demonstrations, we could perhaps teach a class of younger people how to empty their mental attics of superfluous facts. I’m sure Sherlock Holmes would approve.

But teaching the general population how to forget some things could actually accomplish a lot more than simply leaving room in their minds for more important knowledge. It could lead to the realization of every beauty-contestant’s dream – peace in the world.

Most human conflicts could be avoided if people were able to forget about any disputes or insults that irritated them. Wars have mostly been caused by personal disputes between rulers. The world’s awful religious conflicts – Shiite versus Sunni in Iraq, or before that Anglican versus Catholic in Ireland, or before that the Hundred Years War in Europe – were not based on tremendously profound differences in doctrine, but originated mostly as personal disagreements between individuals.

All those terrible conflicts could have ended quickly if the people involved in the original spats had been able to forget whatever it was that made them angry. They would never have passed their irritation on to their successors for ages afterward.

That’s why learning to forget is so profoundly important. We seniors need to share our very special ability with the world. I’m going to get a bunch of my friends together and start working on our anti-memory seminar. Now, where did I put their phone numbers?

––Wayne Adams
wayne@coprolites.com

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