Memory and five kinds of mental garbage. It ensures that we never forget how to ride a bike — a truly wonderful aspect. But it also means we can’t escape the far less pleasant memories: the sting of a shameful failure, the deep roots of ideological indoctrination, learned helplessness, addiction, and our entrenched beliefs and judgments. All this mental debris accumulates over time, making us more rigid, narrow-minded, and less curious. We miss out on opportunities and lose the joys available to us. As Alvin Toffler wisely noted, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Throughout our lives, we accumulate significant “mental garbage.” Consider the following:
1. Seligman’s dog or learned helplessness.
Like Harlow’s monkeys in the “pit of despair”, we fail to act in situations where we have all the necessary means because past actions were punished or rendered futile. The solution? Take this proverbial dog and carry it — retrain yourself through proactive intervention.
2. Skinner’s pigeons or false causal relationships.
These randomly rewarded pigeons began performing “dances” to trigger feeding. Similarly, we often form random, erroneous assumptions about our behavior, acting blindly and potentially leading to severe issues. It’s crucial to view both failures and successes skeptically, always remembering the role of randomness (as Taleb would suggest).
3. Olds-Milner rat or addiction.
In experiments, rats continuously pressed a lever that stimulated their dopamine centers. Studies of former addicts, even those in remission for over 15 years, show that their nucleus accumbens lights up when exposed to drugs — the brain hasn’t forgotten, and the addiction hasn’t vanished. However, developed cognitive control can tame compulsivity and impulsivity.
4. Two-year-old Peter from the shelter or phobias.
Mary Cover Jones pioneered research on combating phobias, laying the groundwork for exposure and behavioral therapy, which effectively ended the baseless ideas of psychoanalysis. We can conquer fear only by confronting what frightens us; hiding from it merely incubates the phobia.
5. Pavlov’s Dogs and PTSD.
During the 1924 flood, research dogs were nearly drowned in cold water; rescuers had to submerge and pull them through doors, causing long-term behavioral changes reminiscent of PTSD.
What can we do with these memories, and how can we learn to forget and unlearn? There are many strategies: we can outgrow trauma, overcome addiction by forming stronger cognitive desires, and face our fears head-on. We can manage this by enhancing neuroplasticity, fostering a growth mindset, avoiding self-deception, practicing mindfulness and meditation, surrounding ourselves with enriched environments, maintaining high levels of physical activity, cultivating curiosity, and embracing new experiences with a “beginner’s mind.”
And, of course, don’t jump to conclusions. Hasty judgments create biases that distort incoming information. Allow yourself the luxury of not knowing, of being uninformed — because many things, once seen, cannot be unseen. Therefore, informational hygiene is also mental hygiene. Adopt a barbell strategy: do not allow anyone or anything to shake your fundamental value system while also embracing the luxury of not knowing and the wealth of being uninformed. This means having the courage to withhold opinions and judgments in areas where you lack sufficient knowledge.