The Purpose Of Collective Memory In The United States

One example I think fits best here is political parties. Political parties allow the American citizens to associate themselves with a group that they think represents their views the most.

According to Salmon, 1985 (Salmon 1985, p171), development and change are not limited to childhood but continue throughout our lives. It is however argued that personal identities are similar to social identities, and include group or collective identities.

A man walks into a bar and begins to converse with a local—the man is not from the area. Intrigued by the unfamiliar face, the first thing the local asks is: “where are you from?” Instead of asking for the travelers name, he seeks to identify a larger organization. These simple conversations display the tendency for humans to associate with groups. Democrat or Republican, lower, middle, or upper-class, family, education, ancestry, these communal affiliations are what define an individual. Governments are run by a community of people, and those that are not often collapse, as displayed by many failed dictatorships and monarchies. Even the most intimate component of a human, the mind, is divided into a community of different selves, as explored in the article “First Person Plural” by Paul Bloom. As demonstrated by Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, the rule of one body or persona is neither permanent nor healthy, regardless of the setting; true success comes from a conglomerate of distinct perspectives with a mutual goal in both a governmental and personal setting.

Memories of the past has influenced many of the early traditional historians in creating their ideas of early Texas History. Personal narratives passed on to historians became the foundation for many of the early writers in developing an early identity for the state. Unfortunately, many of the early histories supported and primarily Anglo culture and a Top-Down approach to history. Most of the early history was written relative to the Anglo viewpoint and biased opinions. Fortunately, many underrepresented cultures now have a voice and the capabilities to provide personal accounts and history as passed down within said culture. Now, new historians can use personal narratives and memories from within other cultures to validate or

TRCs create a collective dominant narrative that does not necessarily adequately reflect the past. The amalgamation of individual stories produces a national identity that some

national identity, but most of the time, they represent the community’s own views. The way

To some extent a historian knowledge on an event rely on some of the ways of knowing. For example, when I was doing the assignment where we had to find different eye witnesses to an event some of the documents found relied on the ways of knowing. I did the assassination of JFK and when reading different accounts of what happened some used their memory and sense perception. One of the witnesses heard the gunshots from the west side of the building another witness saw one of the bullets hit Kennedy. The thing is when sense perception comes into play it may distort your memory. An example of distortion of your memory is if you participated in any of the wars we’ve had over time. Some of the soldiers seen and heard things no other human has ever seen or heard before so when they come back from war they have post-traumatic stress disorder and they can’t help but remember things that happen but is their memory distorted in a way? What you envision is probably worse or not even that bad compared to what it was before.

Both articles emphasise the importance of political myths, symbols and memories which unify the nation as well as functioning as a mechanism of

A shared sense of history is about acknowledging that Australia already had a history long before European settlement, or ‘colonisation’, in 1788. It is about acknowledging that the Australian continent was not ‘terra nullius’, an empty, uninhabited land. It is about recognition and taking ownership of the history of Indigenous Australians, and also about looking at the chain of events, since colonisation, from their perspective. Up until the late 1960’s it was celebrated that Australia’s history was uniquely peaceful. There was no mention in Australia’s history books of the frontier conflict, or even one mention of Aboriginal people. Indigenous Australians ‘have always been here’, they are the sovereign peoples of this land and historically the oldest culture in the world. A shared sense of history is about telling the silent history and untold stories of Indigenous Australians. It is about acknowledging the pain and suffering that has been inflicted, through prejudiced legislation based purely on the colour of skin. The past history still has an impact today, however acknowledgement of our ‘shared history’ can hopefully balance knowledge, awareness and facilitate the healing that has to happen in Australia. Cultural identity is fundamental to the construction of this shared history.

I am seventeen years old and I have lived in America for all of my life. My family has always lived here as with me and all have been raised here. Family members of mine have served in the military as well. It is a peaceful place to be and I plan to live here forever.

National identity is the transmission of each generation’s legacy to the next and the enabling of the nation citizen to take pride and identification of the country (Stephan, 2009). A nation positive unique identity breeds patriotism which consequently

In his article, Bell criticises the broad usage of the term “collective memory” and its role in framing national identity, and instead he argues that what is normally classified as collective memory - our shared understandings and representations of past events which is considered vital in forming group identity - is not truly mnemonic but mythical (64, 65).

Ideologies reflect social beliefs and values that motivate individuals and collective visions of the future. These beliefs and values, combined with collective commitments, inform individual and collective citizens’ responses. Citizenship comes from a sense of belonging to the community and wanting to work with others to achieve the common good producing its relations with others, which in turn creates a sense of group identity.

a collective, an expression of the collective’s conception of itself and its role in history.

Memory is defined as "the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information." Our memory can be compared to a computer's information processing system. To remember an event we need to get information into our brain which is encoding, store the information and then be able to retrieve it. The three-stage processing model of Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin suggests that we record information that we want to remember first as a fleeting sensory memory and then it is processed into a short term memory bin where we encode it ( pay attention to encode important or novel stimuli) for long-term memory and later retrieval. The premise for the three step process is that we are unable to focus on too much