Presentation Title
The Desire for Significance & Memorability in Popular Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective with a COVID Postscript
Presentation Type
Paper
Abstract
“Memory” is associated with phenomena, from personal to collective, historical to cultural. As part of a study on memory in philosophy and science (slated for academic publication October 2021), I theorize that A) the primary human will (drive) is to significance, in that every human action and expression can be rooted in a most primal desire to be cosmically significant (however that is individually perceived); and, B) that the will to significance manifests as the will to memorability, an innate desire to be remembered by others. In support, I offer a review of various popular culture “touchpoints,” historic and contemporary records spanning literature, film and television, traditional news media, and social media that demonstrates how this very theory is repeatedly expressed (and has been for a long time) by some of the most popular public figures as well as “everyday people.” Though developed before COVID, the crisis has only increased the theory’s relevance: so many people were forced to die alone, leaving them and their loved ones to face even greater existential angst than what ordinarily accompanies death since the usual expectations for one’s “final moments” were shattered. To underscore this issue of, and response to, what can be considered a sociocultural “memory gap,” I conclude with a summary of several projects launched by journalists at the height of the pandemic to document the memorable human stories behind COVID’s tragic warped speed death toll that, when analyzed through the lens of Viktor E. Frankl’s psychoanalytical perspective on “existential meaning,” shows how countless individuals were robbed of the last wills and testaments to their self-significance and memorability typically afforded to the dying and the aggrieved. The resulting insight ought to inform how government and public health officials determine what is truly “non-essential” to human health, physical and mental, at times of crisis.
Keywords
Cultural memory, collective memory, memorability, popular culture, Viktor E. Frankl, will to meaning, COVID, interdisciplinary, memory studies, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, philosophy of memory
COinS
The Desire for Significance & Memorability in Popular Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective with a COVID Postscript
“Memory” is associated with phenomena, from personal to collective, historical to cultural. As part of a study on memory in philosophy and science (slated for academic publication October 2021), I theorize that A) the primary human will (drive) is to significance, in that every human action and expression can be rooted in a most primal desire to be cosmically significant (however that is individually perceived); and, B) that the will to significance manifests as the will to memorability, an innate desire to be remembered by others. In support, I offer a review of various popular culture “touchpoints,” historic and contemporary records spanning literature, film and television, traditional news media, and social media that demonstrates how this very theory is repeatedly expressed (and has been for a long time) by some of the most popular public figures as well as “everyday people.” Though developed before COVID, the crisis has only increased the theory’s relevance: so many people were forced to die alone, leaving them and their loved ones to face even greater existential angst than what ordinarily accompanies death since the usual expectations for one’s “final moments” were shattered. To underscore this issue of, and response to, what can be considered a sociocultural “memory gap,” I conclude with a summary of several projects launched by journalists at the height of the pandemic to document the memorable human stories behind COVID’s tragic warped speed death toll that, when analyzed through the lens of Viktor E. Frankl’s psychoanalytical perspective on “existential meaning,” shows how countless individuals were robbed of the last wills and testaments to their self-significance and memorability typically afforded to the dying and the aggrieved. The resulting insight ought to inform how government and public health officials determine what is truly “non-essential” to human health, physical and mental, at times of crisis.