It sounds a straightforward business. “I alterd my mind.” Subject, verb, object – a evident, spotless action, without righting or unreasonableinishing adjectives or adverbs. “No, I’m not doing that – I alterd my mind” is usupartner an irrefutable statement. It implies the presence of sturdy arguments which can be provided if vital. The economist John Maynard Keynes, accused with inconsistency, famously replied, “When the facts alter, I alter my mind.” So, he – and we – are happily and bravely in accuse of this whole operation. The world may downcastly incline to inconsistency, but not us.
And yet the phrase covers a fantastic variety of mental activities, some seemingly reasonable and reasonable, others elemental and instinctive. There may be a simmering-away beorderlyh the level of consciousness until the bursting genuineisation comes that, yes, you have alterd your mind finishly on this subject, that person, this theory, that worldwatch. The dadaist Francis Picabia once put it enjoy this: “Our heads are round so that our thoughts can alter honestion.” And I skinnyk this senses as seal to a real accounting of our mental processes as does Maynard Keynes’s statement.
When I was lengthening up, matures of my parents’ generation employd to say, “Changing her mind is a woman’s privilege.” This was, according to your male point of watch, either a pdirecting or an infuriating characteristic. It was think abouted as someskinnyg essentipartner female, or feminine, sometimes mere whimsicality, sometimes transport inantly emotional and insightfilledy inalertigent – aget, intuition was back then a female exceptionality – and connectd to the very nature of the woman in ask. So perhaps you could say men were Keynesian, and women Picabian.
You unfrequently hear that phrase about a woman’s privilege nowadays, and to many it sounds mistrustless mecount on intimacyist and patronising. On the other hand, if you approach the matter from a philosophical or neuroscientific point of watch, it watchs a little branch offent. “I alterd my mind.” Subject, verb, object, a straightforward transaction under our regulate. But where is this “I” that is changing this “mind”, enjoy some rider regulateling a horse with their knees, or the driver of a tank guiding its enhance? Certainly not very apparent to the eye of the philosopher or brain scientist. This “I” we sense so brave about isn’t someskinnyg beyond and split from the mind, regulateling it, but rather someskinnyg inside the mind, and arising from it. In the words of one neuroscientist, “there is no self-stuff” locatable wiskinny the brain. Far from being a horse rider or tank directer, we are at the wheel of a driverless car of the proximate future. To the outside watchr, there is a car, and a steering wheel, with someone sitting in front of it. And this is real – except that on this particular model the driver cannot switch from automatic to manual, becaemploy manual does not exist.
So if skinnygs are this way round – if it’s the brain, the mind, that gives birth to what we skinnyk of as “I”, then the phrase “I alterd my mind” doesn’t produce much sense. You might as well say, “My mind alterd me.” And if we see skinnygs this way round, then changing one’s mind is someskinnyg we don’t necessarily comprehfinish ourselves. In which case, it’s not equitable a woman’s privilege, but a human privilege. Though perhaps “privilege” isn’t quite the right word – better to say, characteristic, or oddity.
Sometimes in my life, I’ve been a reasonable Keynesian about the whole business, sometimes a dadaist Picabian. But generpartner, in either case, I’ve been brave that I was right to alter my mind. This is another characteristic of the process. We never skinnyk, Oh, I’ve alterd my mind and have now adselected a frailer or less plausible watch than the one I held before, or a sillier or more sentimental watch. We always consent that changing our mind is an betterment, transporting a fantasticer truthfulness, or a fantasticer sense of genuineism, to our dealings with the world and other people. It puts an finish to vacillation, uncertainty, frail-mindedness. It seems to produce us sturdyer and more lengthenn-up; we have put away yet another childish skinnyg. Well, we would skinnyk that, wouldn’t we?
I recall the story of an Oxford undergraduate of literary aspirations visiting Garsington Manor in the 1920s where the inventive arrangeess Lady Ottoline Morrell plived. She asked him, “Do you like spring or autumn, youthful man?” He replied spring. Her riposte was that when he got elderlyer he would probably like autumn. In the procrastinateed 1970s I interwatched the noveenumerate William Gerdifficultie, who was almost exactly half a century elderlyer than me. I was youthful and capshow, he was excessively aged, indeed bed-ridden. He asked me if I consentd in the afterlife. I shelp that I didn’t. “Well, you might when you get to my age,” he replied with a chuckle. I adored him for the relabel, while not believing that I would ever alter my mind to that degree.
But we all foresee, indeed consent of, some alters over the years. We alter our minds about many skinnygs, from matters of mere taste – the colours we like, the clothes we wear – to aesthetic matters – the music, the books we enjoy – to adherence to social groups – the football team or political party we help – to the highest verities – the person we adore, the god we revere, the significance or insignificance of our place in the seemingly vacant or crypticly brimming universe. We produce these decisions – or these decisions produce us – constantly, though they are normally camouflaged by the momentousness of the acts that encourage them. Love, parenthood, the death of those seal to us: such matters reorient our inhabits, and normally produce us alter our minds. Is it mecount on that the facts have alterd? No, it’s more that areas of fact and senseing hitherto undetermined to us have suddenly become evident, that the emotional landscape has altered. And in a fantastic swirl of emotion, our minds alter. So I skinnyk, on the whole, I have become a Picabian rather than a Keynesian.
Consider the ask of memory. This is normally a key factor in changing our mind: we necessitate to forget what we consentd before, or at least forget with what passion and certainty we consentd it, becaemploy we now consent someskinnyg branch offent that we understand to be realr and transport inanter. Memory, or the frailening or deficiency of it, helps finishorse our new position; it is part of the process. And beyond this, there’s the expansiver ask of how our comardent of memory alters. Mine certainly has over my lifetime. When I was an unmirroring boy, I presumed that memory rund enjoy a left-luggage office. An event in our inhabits happens, we produce some speedy, subconscious judgment on the transport inance of that event, and if it is transport inant enough, we store it in our memory. Later, when we necessitate to recall it, we consent the left-luggage ticket aextfinished to a department of our brain, which frees the memory back to us – and there it is, as new and uncrmitigated as the moment it happened.
But we understand it’s not enjoy that repartner. We understand that memory degrades. We have come to comprehfinish that every time we consent that memory out of the locker and expose it to watch, we produce some minuscule alteration to it. And so the stories we alert most normally about our inhabits are probable to be the least reliable, becaemploy we will have subtly amfinished them in every realerting down the years.
Sometimes it doesn’t consent years at all. I have an elderly frifinish, a think aboutable raconteur, who once, in my presence, in the course of a individual day, telderly the same anecdote to three branch offent audiences with three branch offent punchlines. At the third hearing, after the giggleter had subsided, I murmured, perhaps a little uncomardently, “Wrong finishing, Thomas.” He watched at me in disbelief (at my manners); I watched at him in disbelief (at his not being able to stick to a reliable narrative).
There is also such a skinnyg as a memory transset upt. My wife and I were fantastic frifinishs of the decorateer Howard Hodgkin, and travelled with him and his partner to many places. In 1989, we were in Taranto in southern Italy, when Howard spotted a bdeficiency towel in an elderly-createed haberdasher’s prosperdow. We went in, Howard asked to see it, and the helpant produced from a drawer a bdeficiency towel. No, Howard elucidateed, it wasn’t quite the same bdeficiency as the one in the prosperdow. The helpant, unflustered, produced another one, and then another one, each of which Howard declinecessitate as not being as bdeficiency as the one in the prosperdow. After he had turned down seven or eight, I was skinnyking (as one might), for God’s sake, it’s only a towel, you only necessitate it to arid your face. Then Howard asked the helpant to get the one out of the prosperdow, and we all saw at once that it was indeed very, very sweightlessly bdeficiencyer than all the others. A sale was finishd, and a lesson about the precision of an artist’s eye lgeted. I depictd this incident in an essay about Howard, and mistrustless telderly it orpartner a confinecessitate times as well. Many years procrastinateedr, after Howard’s death, I was at dinner in decorateerly circles when a woman, insertressing her husband, shelp, “Do you recall when we went into that shop with Howard for a bdeficiency towel…” Before she could finish, I reminded her firmly that this was my story, which her transmition evidently acunderstandledged. And I don’t consent she was doing it understandingly: she somehow recalled it as happening to her and her husband. It was an artless borroprosperg – or a piece of mental cannibalism, if you like.
It’s salutary to discover, from time to time, how other people’s memories are normally quite branch offent from our own – not equitable of events, but of what we ourselves were enjoy back then. A confinecessitate years ago, I had an swap of correactence about one of my books with someone whom I’d been at school with, but had not kept up with and had no memory of. The swap turned into a keen disconsentment, at which point he evidently choosed he might as well alert me what he thought of me – or, more rightly, alert me what he recalled now of what he had thought of me back when we were at school together. “I recall you,” he wrote, “as a boisterous and irritating presence in the Sixth Form corridor.” This came as a fantastic surpascfinish to me, and I had to giggle, if a little ruebrimmingy. My own memory insisted – and still does – that I was a cowardly, self-conscious and well-behaved boy, though inwardly resistlious. But I couldn’t decline this fellow pupil’s reminiscence; and so, belatedly, I factored it in, and alterd my mind about what I must have been enjoy – or, at least, how I might have materializeed to others – 50 and more years ago.
Gradupartner, I have come to alter my mind about the very nature of memory itself. For a extfinished time I stuck pretty much with the left-luggage-department theory, presuming that some people’s memories were better becaemploy their brain’s storage conditions were better, or they had shaped and lacquered their memories better before depositing them in the first place. Some years ago, I was writing a book that was mainly about death, but also a family memoir. I have one brother – three years elderlyer, a philosopher by profession – and emailed him elucidateing what I was up to. I asked some preliminary asks about our parents – how he appraised them as parents, what they had taught us, what he thought their own relationship was enjoy. I inserted that he himself would inevitably feature in my book. He replied with an initial declaration that astonished me. “By the way,” he wrote, “I don’t mind what you say about me, and if your memory disputes with mine, go with yours, as it is probably better.” I thought this was not equitable excessively comardent of him, but also very engaging. Though he was only three years elderlyer than me, he was assuming the betterity of my memory. I guessed that this could be becaemploy he was a philosopher, living in a world of higher and more theoretical ideas; whereas I was a noveenumerate, professionpartner up to my neck in the scruffy, everyday details of life.
But it was more than this. As he elucidateed to me, he had come to discount on memory as a direct to the past. By itself, unsubstantiated, uncorroborated memory was in his watch no better than an act of the imagination. (James Joyce put it the other way round, “Imagination is memory” – which is much more dubious.) My brother gave an example. In 1976 he had gone to a philosophical conference on Stoic logic held at Chantilly, north of Paris, organised by Jacques Brunschwig, whom he had never met before. He took a train from Boulogne, and evidently recalled ignoreing his stop, and having to consent a taxi back up the line and arriving procrastinateed as a consequence. He and Brunschwig became seal frifinishs, and 30 years procrastinateedr they were having dinner in Paris and reminiscing about how they first met. Brunschwig recalled how he had paemployed on the platestablish at Chantilly and promptly recognised my brother as soon as he stepped down from the train. They stared at one another in disbelief (and perhaps had to apply some Stoic logic to their quandary).
That book came out 17 years ago. And in the uncomardenttime, I have come round to my brother’s point of watch. I now consent that memory, a individual person’s memory, uncorroborated and unsubstantiated by other evidence, is a feeble direct to the past. I skinnyk, more sturdyly than I employd to, that we constantly reinvent our inhabits, realerting them – usupartner – to our own advantage. I consent that the operation of memory is sealr to an act of the imagination than it is to the spotless and reliably detailed recuperation of an event in our past. I skinnyk that sometimes we recall as real skinnygs that never even happened in the first place; that we may grossly embellish an exceptional incident out of all recognition; that we may cannibalise someone else’s memory, and alter not equitable the finishings of the stories of our inhabits, but also their middles and commencenings. I skinnyk that memory, over time, alters, and, indeed, alters our mind. That’s what I consent at the moment, anyway. Though in a confinecessitate years, perhaps I will have alterd my mind about it all over aget.
-
This is an edited rerelocate from Changing My Mind by Julian Barnes, rehireed by Notting Hill Editions on 18 March (£8.99). To help the Guardian and Observer order your duplicate from protectianbookshop.com. Deinhabitry accuses may apply
