#192 / People's Republic Of Amnesia

The latest in brain science suggests that we "create" memories as we remember them. And of course, we know that where memories are social and historical, not individual, the facts of history can be expunged or rearranged. George Orwell said that. 

Louisa Lim's recent book, The People's Republic of Amnesia, suggests that this is what is happening to memories of the massacre at Tiananmen Square:

For younger Chinese today, the Tiananmen Square massacre is a story "made up" by the Americans - or if anything did take place is was "a CIA conspiracy

I was a history major in college, and I think history is valuable. Thinking back on my own, and my country's history, I remember how I resisted the draft, in 1968, and refused induction into the Army at the Oakland Induction Center. I remember the Vietnam War. 

But are we, collectively, forgetting?

And the Vietnam War was a long time ago. What about Iraq?

China is not the only nation susceptible to the kind of manipulation of memory that Lim's book describes.

Image Credit:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-peoples-republic-of-amnesia-by-louisa-lim-tiananmen-exiles-by-rowena-xiaoqing-he-1401486452