The Gift of Forgetting

There are many attributes of human behaviour that are considered "deformed". One of them is poor memory retention. But as this story cited in by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (in Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age) illustrates the ability to forget things is a gift from God. 

Researchers have recently published the case of AJ, a 41-year-old woman in California, who does not have the biological gift of forgetting. Since she was 11, she remembers practically every day—not in the sense of a day that passed, but in astonishing, agonizing detail. She remembers what exactly she had for breakfast three decades ago; she recalls who called her and when, and what happened in each episode of the television shows she watched—in the 1980s. She does not have to think hard. Remembering is easy for her—her memory is “uncontrollable, and automatic” like a movie “that never stops.” Instead of bestowing AJ with a superb facility, her memory repeatedly restricts her ability to decide, and to move on. It seems that those that have the capacity to store and recall unusual amounts of what they experience, feel and think, would like to be able to turn off their capacity to remember—at least temporarily. They feel shackled by their constantly present past, so much so that it constrains their daily lives, limits their decision-making ability, as well as their capacity to forge close ties with those who remember less..

In a world where there's no forgetting, human relations would be fractured. Life would be boring. Many experiences would not be exciting. The list of disadvantages is endless. Of course this does raise the question - is forgetting a product of the fall of man or was it there from the beginning? If, as I suspect that forgetfulness is part of the original pre-fallen state of man, there's no reason to assume there's anything deformed about forgetting. It is not a form of imperfection of man per se. But all of this is mere logical conjecture. But I mention it because of other related questions natural creep in mind - can and does God will himself to forget? And, if so, how is that consistent with his divine omniscience? Crucially, what is really divine omniscience and how does that relate to the nature of reality? Questions all worth pondering and some we shall return to in due course, if I don't forget!