How Different Cultures See Memory

Different cultures and religious traditions conceptualise the two aspects of memory; learning and recall, differently. No system of psychology, mythology or culture claims that memory is not necessary for individual identity.

Which animal has the best memory? Find the answer at the end.

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In Indian thought, smriti from the Sanskrit root smr to remember, is the commonest term used for memory. Memory is not only a repository of lessons learnt and experiences, but much more. All that happens in an individual’s lifetime or what the individual learns is short-term memory and long-term memory is spread over several lifetimes. This long-term memory can be accessed using special Yoga or meditation techniques.

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In Chinese mythology, Meng Po, the Lady of Forgetfulness, gives a bittersweet drink to erase all memories just before a person is reincarnated in human form. In Japan, there is Kokūzō Bosatsu 虚空蔵菩薩, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom & Memory, very important especially for the Shingon sect of esoteric Buddhism.

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The ancient Aztecs had a god of ancestral memory, Tezcatlipoca. The Greeks had Mnemosyne. She was a Titaness, a daughter of Gaia and Uranus. Zeus slept with her on nine separate nights and created the nine muses.

The Christian Saint Augustine (354-430 AD) believed searching his memory could take him to God. For him, memory encompasses all of a person's experiences and knowledge. Personal identity, sensations and perceptions, imaginations and dreams, hopes and fears, emotions and awareness of self are all in the memory. 

“Great is the power of memory, an awe-inspiring mystery, my God, a power of profound and infinite multiplicity. So great is the power of memory, so great is the force of life in a human being whose life is mortal.” (*Confessions. *10.17.26).

Islam is very practical about memory. 

“By degrees shall we teach thee (Prophet Muhammad) to declare (the message), so thou shalt not forget, except as God wills ... (Sura 87:6-7, Yusuf Ali)”. 

Ibn Mas'ud reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: 

Wretched is the man who says: I forgot such and such a sura, or I forget such and such a verse, but he has been made to forget. (Muslim: book 4, number 1726, Siddique)

Jung's theory of collective unconscious incorporates Darwin's theory of evolution with ancient mythology. Jung's collective unconscious is a "storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from man's ancestral past, a past that includes not only the racial history of man as a separate species but his pre-human or animal ancestry as well."

Australian aboriginal children of desert origin, from 6 to 17 years, performed at significantly higher levels than white Australian children in visual spatial memory (American Psychologist, 1971, 26, 168-179), Cognitive Psychology 13, 434-460 (1981).

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For Australian Aborigines memory is sacred. The dreaming or Altjeringa is a time out of time itself when totemic being formed the Creation and left jiva or guruwari, a seed power is deposited in the earth. Everything that happens leaves a vibrational residue in Dreaming and can only be accessed through extraordinary states of consciousness. Here is a lovely Australian Aboriginal story.

Many indigenous peoples all over the world use the concept of blood memory to understand how knowledge and memory of traditions are stored in the living human cells or genetic makeup of a human body.

What is the Etymology of the Word memory?

Currently the English word, “remember” hints at something static, meaning that we extract saved fixed items and accumulated knowledge. Accessing our memory is like going to get something out a shelf, where we put it in the past.

Did the word originally indicate a dynamic activity where the person who re-members has a privileged and unique access and control over his/her knowledge of the past which s/he can re-member or process. Could we also say that if we are not consciously aware of something in our memory, we have de-membered it?

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Ancient Celtic Mythology seems to support this interpretation. In Celtic mythology, there are many deities connected to memory e.g. Beli the god of death and king of the underworld, Arianrhod the virgin goddess of reincarnation, Cerridwen the Great Mother or goddess of nature and Taliesin, a mythical Welsh hero could all evoke and bring back memories. But the Merlin the Wizard possessed the most fascinating skills; he could erase memories.

What is Memory?

Is human memory only a physical attribute of the brain like the working of a computer RAM or is memory a cognitive function involving learning?

How is memory defined? The Merriam Webster dictionary definition:

• The power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms
• The store of things learned and retained from an organism's activity or experience as evidenced by modification of structure or behaviour or by recall and recognition

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Talking about memory entails talking about two processes: 

1. Learning new information, skills or behaviour  
2. Recalling or retrieving what has been learnt at a later stage

Another scientific theoretical model of memory is the Stage Model of Memory (proposed in 1968 by Atkinson and Shiffrin). It has three separate stages of memory: 

1. sensory memory
2. short-term (working) memory and 
3. long-term memory

Sensory memory deals with sensory input from the immediate environment and is stored for only a maximum of 3-4 seconds. We are aware of only some aspects of it, which are then passed on to the short-term memory. Freudian psychology calls the short-term memory, the conscious mind. Content here is kept for only 20-30 seconds. If the content is processed and associations formed, it gets linked to long-term memory.

Why Are Memories Important For Us?

If we cannot remember anything about who or what we are, being who or what we are gets frightfully difficult. Imagine going about with no idea of how people would distinguish you from others. In addition to physical attributes like size, gender, looks, clothes we also have other distinguishing features about a person, most of which we should just remember. If you are a student, it is good to remember who is the teacher or the headmaster; if you work in an office, it is good to remember who is the big boss.

We just need to remember who the important people are, in our personal lives and socially. People may not always carry painted signs on their heads saying how and why they are important. People in customer service are occasionally reminded of this need to remember someone’s importance by an angry person shouting ”Don’t you know who I am?”

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A mature attitude to memory is the key to happiness. There is a crucial difference in attempts to erase memory and transcending it, through forgiveness and compassion.

Erasing or suppressing a painful memory does not bring relief from mental torment, but forgiveness does. Fortunately, we can work on our memories. Stop for a moment and think what you were worrying yourself to death a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, ten years ago. Was it really worth it?

If a man chooses to tie himself to past memories, he can hardly live life unfolding naturally and find satisfaction. 

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For him everything is conditioned by the memories that chase him constantly. A more exciting and fruitful prospect is to anchor oneself more in the hopes of the future. 

Cultural Memory

Maurice Halbwachs, the French philosopher who died in Buchenwald, claimed that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one. Further, he argued that memory has a cultural dimension too.

The concept of cultural memory was introduced to the archeological discipline by Jan Assman (1988). He defines it as the outer dimension of human memory. 

There are two ingredients here, "memory culture" (Erinnerungskultur) and "reference to the past" (Vergangenheitsbezug). Memory culture is the mechanism used by a culture to ensure cultural continuity by using cultural mnemonics to preserve its cultural knowledge for later generations. Reference to the past is a historical consciousness, which reassures the members of a society of their collective identity and their uniqueness in space and time.

Test Your Memory

If you want to improve your memory, there are many wonderful techniques like chunking. Here are some sites to help you test and improve your memory.

• BBC Memory Test - Fascinating memory tests
• Memory and Mental Dexterity test
• Braingle memory test with numbers, letters or words
• Word List Recall
• Test your sound memory and if you are tonedeaf
• Animated patterns to test memory and mouse handling speed

Which animal has the best memory?  

Answer: No, it's not your mother-in-law or your spouse's ex. The older female elephant scores highest in memory and leadership tests. 

"Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?"  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

For further reading: 

• Assmann, Jan (1988a) Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität. In: J.Assmann and T.Hölscher (eds) Kultur und Gedächtnis, pp. 9-19. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.  
• Assmann, Jan (1992) Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen.München: Beck.Jonker, Gerdien (1995) The Topography of Remembrance. The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia. Leiden etc.: Brill. 
• Atkinson, R.C.; Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). "Chapter: Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes". In Spence, K.W.; Spence, J.T.. The psychology of learning and motivation (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press. pp. 89–195.
• Halbwachs, Maurice, On collective memory, Chicago (IL), The University of Chicago Press, 1992 

Have You Made Your Bucket List Yet?

What makes the middle-aged teacher pant his way to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, 61 year old Sheila suddenly go Bungee jumping and the portly granddad practise fencing? They are all crossing out items off their bucket list.

A bucket list – What on earth is that? Bucket list comes from the English expression kick the bucket, meaning to die. A bucket list is simply a list of all you want to see, do and experience before you die.

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Different Kinds of Bucket Lists

As there are many kinds of people on the planet, there will of course be many kinds of bucket lists. Would it be natural to assume that action oriented people would like to go for adrenaline rushes like bungee jumping or climb Kilimanjaro while travel oriented people would have visiting places like Lhasa, Tibet or Lake Titicaca, Bolivia on top of their list?

No, not necessarily. A bucket list is not a continuation of activities a person habitually pursues. When one starts seriously thinking about a bucket list, it is an attempt to fathom unexpressed desires, hopes and dreams. A bucket list helps us do what we have always secretly wanted but never dared to.

The different kinds of bucket lists are:

1. Going somewhere:

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• Going places list – Lake Titicaca, Machu Pichu or Barcelona
• Visiting places at certain times – Visiting Paris to experience the blue moment of a late summer evening, attending Hanami or cherry blossom viewing in Japan in May
• Visiting places or venues for a sole purpose – Visiting Louvre to stand before the Oedipus and the Sphinx by Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, being in Valencian town of Buñol to throw tomatoes at other people.

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2. Learning something new:

• Learning new skills – Learn a new language like Portuguese or Swahili or join an evening class to learn digital photography.
• Change your attitude – Start meditating or do Tai-chi daily or pay attention to how your words or actions affects other people’s moods

3. Doing something:

• Doing something you’ve never done – Start making new friends or go and talk with three new strangers every day, or riding a bicycle rather than drive

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• Finish something left undone – Take that manuscript out of the drawer and finish your first novel or start writing your life story or forgive your ex.

Can a Bucket list Grow?

Once you have created a bucket list and start checking items off one by one, a strange thing can happen to you – you meet similar people with their own bucket lists and you may be tempted to add items to your list or revise the list. This is perfectly natural.

There are Internet sites such as http://bucketlist.org where you can register, make your list, read other people’s lists and keep track of how you are completing the goals on your list. Copycats are copycats. Don’t give in to the temptation to live other people’s dreams. Remember, your bucket list is only about your unfulfilled hopes, desires and dreams.

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What to put on your Bucket List?

This is entirely up to you. The most important thing is that the idea should have some meaning for you and come from within. You can ask some questions to help you test the ideas.

• Where did I originally get the idea for this?
• Where can I get more information about this?
• Who will help me realise this dream?
• How can I get in touch with a person who has really done this before?

Notice, there is no question ”Can I do it?” If you are wondering why not, think why haven’t you done any of the things on your list till date. Because you never could imagine yourself doing it. We think of ourselves as too old or too young, too poor or too plump to do certain things. There are so many filters and brakes on your mind, which clamp down the moment you think of doing something out of the ordinary. Remember the Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman movie The Bucket List. 

• The oldest person to have climbed Mount Everest is 76 years old. 
• The youngest person to have swum the English Channel is only 11. 

We can learn a lot from a young person’s bucket list. Alice, a very brave15-year old girl with terminal Hodgkin’s Lymphoma has her online bucket list here. 

An older person’s bucket list can also teach us many things about living. 

• An 82-year-old former Nepalese minister tried to climb Mount Everest (and died) - Embrace death with a smile when it comes.
• And an intrepid 98 years old doing her Master’s degree - It's never too late for great achievements.
• Here is an 80-year-old celebrating 50 years of marriage by skydiving off a plane - Live in style and not full of regrets.

Here’s a funny example of a bucket list. 


But you need not copy anyone else's bucket list or ideas. The most important thing is that whatever you put on that list has meaning for you. 

For as long as I could remember, item number one on my list had been to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Now that I have done it (wasn’t easy but worth every gasp and drop of perspiration!), my list number one becomes ”Learn to limit in myself fear and hate,  the most destructive of all human emotions. ”

There is a saying among the Igbo people in Nigeria: 

Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: “He who will hold another person down in the mud must remain in the mud to keep him down.”

So, get out of the mud, stop limiting others and yourself. Start now! 

The History of Human Resource Management (HRM)

HRM, especially Strategic HRM or SHRM is talked about everywhere nowadays. Is HRM a contemporary invention full of fads? Is HRM or Human Resource Management a product of modern organizations or does it have ancient roots? 

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We can get a better understanding of the history of HRM by splitting the history question it into three sub-questions. 

1. How long has the term HRM (Human Resource Management) been used?
2. How long have functions typically covered by HRM nowadays been studied and managed?
3. How long has there been a dedicated unit, department or system taking care of these functions?

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Definition of Human Resource Management - HRM

Typically Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with diverse issues related to employee compensation and benefits, hiring, employee retention, performance management, organization development, safety/security, wellness, employee motivation, communication, administration, development and training (though some of these may be handled by HRD (Human Resource Development) functions also.

A formal concise definition of HRM (Mathis, Jackson 2007) is 

"The design of formal systems in an organization to ensure the effective and efficient use of human talent to accomplish the organizational goals."

Another way to define would be that HRM is concerned with the policies, practices and systems that influence employees’ workplace behaviour, attitudes and performance. HRM is a process (or a grouping of processes) of managing human talents/skills to achieve the organisation’s objectives. The core aim of all management, to increase predictability and achieve better control of events is central to HRM.

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Examples of processes typically handled by HRM:

• Employee compensation and benefits
• Industrial relations – The relationship between employees and management directly or indirectly, through collective bargaining, affected by union-employer relationship
• Performance and appraisal
• Safety, security and occupational health management
• Staffing – Job analysis, recruitment, selection and retention

Download Human Resource terminology.

How long has the term HRM been used?

The term HRM is not that old actually.

• The term HRM evolved in USA out of the earlier Personnel Management or PM in the early 1960s.
• Merriam-Webster dictionary claims that the first recorded use of the term Human Resource is from 1961. 
• By the mid 1980s, the term HRM or Human Resource Management started appearing and it quickly replaced Personnel Management or Personnel Administration.

How long have functions typically covered by HRM today have been studied and managed?

This is very interesting and requires some myth busting. Most of the functions typically covered by HRM today, have a much longer history than is widely believed. The claim that Performance Management or PM in organisations was created, first in the USA, to deal with the paperwork needed to hire employees and handle the payroll is not entirely true.

Code of Hammurabi

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Though not using modern terms, ancient texts have many recorded instances of current HRM functions.

• The ancient Code of Hammurabi from Babylon in 1750 BC sets minimum wages, obligations for expert craftsmen to transfer their skills to apprentices, quality standards for builders, and healthcare obligations for owners of slaves.
• Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder in the first century AD, warned about the health hazards of employees handling zinc and sulphur. He prescribed the use of protective masks made from animal bladder. 
• In 1556, the German scientist Georgious Agricola in his De Re Metallica describes occupational hazards of employees and suggests methods for improving occupational health.
• In 1700 Bernardo Ramazzini, known as the "father of industrial medicine," published in Italy the first comprehensive book on industrial medicine, De Morbis Artificum Diatriba (The Diseases of Workmen). 
• In 1850 Abraham Lincoln viewed all American workers as potential entrepreneurs.
• The modern usage dates from after WWII, when Personnel Management practitioners in the USA wanted to differentiate PM from other managerial functions.

Personnel Administration (PA) or Personnel Management (PM) evolved into HRM. There are some conceptual differences.

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Main Differences Between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management

• The main difference is that PM was reactive, focussed on the immediate and short-term needs of the labour force of an organisation while HRM expanded into a proactive strategy of aligning the needs of the workforce to the strategic objectives of the organisation
• PM was focussed on traditional models of industrial relations e.g. union- based collective bargaining, HRM has moved towards a more devolved and participative model
• HRM is more involved (often in an advisory capacity) in pay policy and job-design than PM ever was
• HRM has more scope in influencing the nature of the work contract than PM ever had

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How long has there been a dedicated unit, department or system taking care of HRM functions?

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In the modern context, we know precisely when it all began.

• The first recorded modern case of dedicating a separate unit or department for HRM is from 1901 in USA. The National Cash Register Co. faced a disruptive strike yet won the battle with the unions. Learning from this, the president of the company, John H. Patterson, organized a personnel department dedicated to improving worker relations by properly handling employee grievances, discharges, safety and other employee issues.
• Though they were not called such, people dedicated to HRM functions started appearing in the USA in the 1920s when mass production started spreading. Personnel administrators were often called welfare secretaries in the 1920s. Much of the modern theoretical work on HRM began around this period. The studies conducted by George Elton Mayo (1880-1949), especially the Hawthorne Studies is credited as the foundation of the Human Relations Movement in management.
• The Wagner Act of 1935 in USA (also called the National Labor Relations Act) increased the role of personnel managers in addition to strengthening the position of labour unions.
• Only after WWII can we find specially designated units taking care of typical HRM functions. In many Western countries, collective bargaining defined industrial relations and HR gained in importance.

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During WWI, more and more women entered the job market in the industrialised world to fill the gaps left by men gone to the front. This helped create a group of skilled white-collar people who were able to negotiate with labour unions as well as with new employees.

The 1920s saw "labour manager" and "employer manager" job titles in the larger engineering industries. After the great depression, larger corporations in the 1930s, began realising the increased need and value in having specialised staff for recruiting, retaining and motivating employees to perform better. The war effort in WWII, revealed that employment management and functions previously classified as welfare were linked together.

From the 1960s, the rise of Japan as a commercial power also required efficient HR systems being adopted by the Japanese corporations.

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The spread of multinationals and large corporations created a highly skilled professional group of human resource personnel. Globally, the profile of HRM started attracting mention in the 1970s and started becoming widely recognised by the 1980s. 

Universities and Business Schools started teaching different aspects of HRM in the 1990s. Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations  was the first business school in the world for college-level study in HRM.

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In the first decade of 2000, there was a strong movement to see HR as a strategic partner to business rather than as a support function system and this continues.


Challenges Faced by Contemporary HR

The most recent areas where HR faces critical challenges are:

• managing employee performance and turnover
• high attrition of strategic talent
• innovative training, skills deployment and retention methods
• ways to make workforce more responsive to turbulent business markets
• getting high employee performance through right packaging of benefits and compensation in novel ways
• corporate social responsibility 
• sustainable growth both as individuals and as a business
• business innovation
• novel methods of engaging employees as well as stakeholders
• taking care of environmental concerns

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Needless to mention that all this should come along with increased performance and with minimal investment in turbulent markets, which abhors making any long term commitments.

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Human Resource Management/Development Glossary/Terminology here:

Some excellent reference material about the history of human resource management and development:

• BEAGRIE, S. (2004) Article - Events that changed human resources. Personnel Today. 2 November. pp22-24, 26.  
• From personnel management to human resource management: How did this field of work develop? In: TYSON, S. (2006) Essentials of human resource management. 5th ed. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.
• MACKAY, L. and TORRINGTON, D. (1986) The changing nature of personnel management. London: Institute of Personnel Management.
• Mathis, Robert L. and Jackson, John H.  Changing Nature of Human Resource Management (2007) 12^th edition, South-Western, Division of Thomson Learning

• MCGIVERING, I. (1970) The development of personnel management. In: TILLETT, A. et al. (eds).Management thinkers. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
• NIVEN, M.M. (1967) Personnel management: 1913-1963. London: Institute of Personnel Management.