Is forgetting really so bad?

Foer states that the old desire for a trained memory was not to provide internal storage of information, but to strengthen the moral character of the person in question: “What one memorized helped shape one’s character…the secret to becoming a grand master of life was to learn old texts” (Foer 110).  Simply by virtue of completing a task that is inherently very difficult, the individual embarking on this gargantuan task would become a more complete person regardless of the religious or literary merits of the text memorized. While the pursuit of difficulty for the sake difficulty is worthwhile, I am nonetheless a little haunted by the descriptions of the mental athletes that Foer describes as well as the lifestyle that Foer himself maintains in training. But of course, mental athletes should perhaps rationally be upheld as an extreme rather than an ideal. Is our reliance on external memory so terrible? Should we change our lifestyle to include more strengthening of our inherent abilities? Is forgetting really that bad?

“We all do the same thing when we try to recount conversations, because without special training our memories tend to only pay attention to the big picture” (Foer 124). Foer writes that the whole point of our nervous system is to best perceive what is happening in the present and predict what will happen in the future; in the simplest concept of the organ, the brain is primarily “prediction and planning machines” (Foer 124). It is incredible that the range of our human abilities can include the kind of memory feats describes by Foer. If all we are in essence is the sum of our memories, I can’t help but wonder if our increasing dependence on external memories means that we are becoming a culture whose brains will eventually begin to adapt to our lifestyle of quantity over quality.