This is a fascinating article making
the rounds on the internet recently
about how the Instagram generation now experiences
the present as an anticipated memory.
The success of photo filtering apps on social media
has created a generation of individuals
who now believe that every present moment needs
to be experienced as something that
will be reflected upon later.
And we take it upon ourselves to design
what that later moment is going to feel like.
We're living in two realities at the same time.
It's what Daniel Kahneman use to refer
to as the experiencing self and the remembering self.
And they're working in concert.
They're saying, be happy for this moment,
for this moment is your life.
But guess what, this moment is going
to be gone like this and all you're going to have left
is that photo filtered vintage photograph.
All you're going to have left is how
you choose to remember this moment.
So you're given a pen.
You're given a chance to decide how this moment will
be remembered, and I think that is fascinating.
We all become artists.
We all become architects of our mental narratives,
of our historical, digital paper trail.
We decide who we are.
We're building maps and those maps are subjective.
I don't think it's a bad thing.
I just think it's fascinating.
I think it liberates our desire to be artists, our desire
to be the authors of our own lives,
and to decide how we remember things, to decide how we deal
with the fact that every moment passes,
how we deal with that tragedy, how we deal with that entropy.
At least, we're going to italicize the memory of it.
And so yes the present is lived as anticipated memory
because that's all we have is the anticipated memory.
The present's gone.
It's rich, but it's gone.
And that haunts me, but we deal with it.