People tend to easily forget facts that don’t affect them directly. Any news worth its salt makes room for another in a matter of minutes. The enormous flow of information disseminated through fast-paced technology keeps us constantly occupied. The thought that ‘we now know the full set of facts’ remains a source of psychological solace. Hardly any time is left for any ‘information’ to become ‘knowledge’. Immediate course correction being the first objective, we tend to trust the news as such without questioning the possible verisimilitudes. Likes and dislikes come into play and soon an unverified news item unknowingly becomes part of our memory. The good news is that our short-term memory refuses to store any information that does not affect us directly. The bad news? Truth being somewhere in the air, all of us believe in the veracity of our information base, unconsciously rejecting all others.
Ask any Pakistani history student about the significance of 1948 and one would be dilating upon the first military encounter between India and Pakistan. One might not remember 1948 as the year of independence of Burma and Ceylon. For the people of Pakistan and India, 1965 is remembered as the year of war. In 1965, another significant world event took place too. Singapore became a sovereign independent nation. Old hands in the Foreign Office would remember in which year Pakistan and four other countries co-sponsored the all-important Bandung Conference. 1955. Perhaps, they would not recall that the same year, another important event took place in the international arena. Austria attained independence. Selective memory…!!
Secondly, the human brain tends to remember only what one wants to remember. For one Sheikh Farukh Iqbal Puri, 1975 is the year he matriculated. He might have to dig deep to recall that the same year, Mujibur Rahman, and King Faisal were assassinated; the Suez Canal was re-opened; and the Red Cross forced the Cambodian Government to surrender.
Thirdly, the details of any specific event are not likely to come to your mind straight away, but your mind may not accept this memory slip. Cognitive psychologists believe that the human mind has the capacity to store only a small amount of information and that too for a very short period. If the aim is to retain the information for more than a few seconds, short-term memory must either be rehearsed or actively maintained. Psychologists maintain that such information is highly susceptible to interference as any ‘new information that enters short-term memory will quickly displace old information.’ Short-term memory lasts for fifteen to thirty seconds. The memory that lasts beyond these few seconds is known as long-term memory.
The immaculate nature of short-term memory helps us forget unnecessary information soon enough. Also, it keeps us out of trouble as those who keep dwelling on certain undesirable past events could go into depression. If you have a strong-willed mind or the capacity to analyze past events in a purely objective manner, you might escape depression. But the chances of developing a perpetual angry or complaining attitude are more if everything happening in the world affects you. Worst still, you form an opinion on all or any information that you receive.
All of us know sub-conscientiously that today is important, yesterday is a reference point and tomorrow is elusive. As we are not in the habit of rehearsing short-term memory or actively maintaining it, we encounter a ‘surprise’ every now and then. On the other hand, ironically, we believe we are in control of today, aware of yesterday and we have a future well within reach. If that were the case, why are some of us more successful in life or understanding in life than others? Pondering over the answer, you might be able to ascertain why some of us are extremely good at mathematics while others hate it as a subject.
Some nations have memory issues as well. They keep repeating past failures without rectifying the related mistakes even after learning lessons. One of these nations is Pakistan…!!!
Finance Minister announced the budget for 2023-24 last week. Does anyone know how the government calculated the GDP growth rate at 3.5 per cent? Would anyone remember that the total outlay of the budget was Rs14.46 trillion while the total current expenditure stood at Rs13,320 billion? Does anyone care to ask why an amount of Rs 7,303 billion has been allocated for debt servicing without addressing the menace of continual borrowing? If the government would have to take ‘extremely painful steps’ for economic rehabilitation, why not go in the right direction? For instance, whether the ‘rich and powerful’ be liable to pay taxes to increase the revenue from Rs12,163 billion to at least around Rs 17,000 billion in the next financial year so that the fiscal deficit could substantially be decreased?
All in all, government employees and pensioners would soon forget the meagre increase in their salaries and pensions. Employers would soon forget the minimum wages announced for Islamabad. The budget engineers would forget the fact that a family of four could not possibly survive on just over $100 per month. The officials of the Line Ministries would wish to overlook the fact that the budget document had indicated no inflow from the IMF for the remainder of the year. Talk about short-term memory…!! Meanwhile, the poor will get poorer without even knowing the details of the budget. Just like all other previous budgets, this one too shall pass.
The government would like to completely ignore the opposition’s accusations on presenting a ‘figure fudging, artificial’ budget. Instead, the government’s institutional memory demands that the budget draft be kept in files to use it next June and after amending a few lines here and there, to be announced by the next Finance Minister, leaving behind several important questions, never to be answered….!!!