Corona Daily 259: How Lockdown Affects Our Memory: Part IV

Earlier, I talked about people in lockdown unable to remember today’s date or day. It happens even to those working online. Why?

We usually follow two systems – a 24-hour clock and a 7-day week. The twenty-four-hour clock is natural, biological, the time earth takes to rotate around its own axis. The seven-day week is completely artificial, man-made. We could have constructed a week with 5 or 10 days as easily. Then we split the 7-day week into weekdays and weekend, to denote work and rest. The two-day weekend is an outcome of another historic crisis, the Great Depression. US president Herbert Hoover, instead of laying off thousands of workers, decided to reduce the working week to a 5 day-40-hour week. (I recommend the world uses the pandemic to reduce the week to 4-day-20-hours. We have an incredibly unequal situation with some of us overworked-from-home, and others out-of-work).

The time system is relatively new. In 1883, the USA had 300 different local sun times. Only the following year, a global 24-hour time zone system was introduced with the adoption of GMT.

Our memories and our life are built around these time systems. As a child, my Sunday mornings were defined by my dressed-up Catholic neighbours leaving for church.

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Psychologists talk about the concept of “time stamping”. A young baby lives in the present. She cries when hungry, she smiles when happy, but she has no concept of the future. As we grow, we start time stamping our biography. Our life memories have associations with public and personal events. Our past connects us to the future. Aristotle described memories not as archives of our lives, but as tools for imagining the future. People who hate their jobs imagine their wonderful post-retirement life.

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As we have often experienced, time is relative. Chatting with your girlfriend/boyfriend for 20 minutes is much shorter than waiting in a queue for 20 minutes.

When we return home from a 10-day exotic holiday, it feels like we spent 30 days out. Because everything was new and exciting. In the lockdown, it is the reverse. Eight months in lockdown feel like 4 months or less. Because all days are like one another. Catherine Loveday, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Westminster compares it to “playing a piano that has no black keys to help you find your way around.”

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Cutting short our future horizon is a great shock for our cognitive ability. For the past several years, by December, I had confirmed my family’s travel plans for the next summer (school holiday), with all bookings done. This November, I know nothing. It’s like a driver on a long journey suddenly reaching a dead end.

Lera Boroditsky, a researcher says roughly half of us see the future coming towards us, while we are static. The other half sees themselves moving towards the future. To find out which group you belong to she asks a simple question: “Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward two days. What day is the Wednesday’s meeting now?”

The static lot, who wait for the future to come towards them, answer “Monday”. Those moving towards the future answer “Friday”. The study found the answer may defer based on the context. In airport departures, bored and waiting, people tended to answer “Monday” more, while in arrivals, moving and active, people answered “Friday” more often. Psychologists wonder if in the lockdown, many of us will become Monday people waiting for the future to come to us.

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Time is an intrinsic part of our cognition. Losing a sense of time can result in losing a sense of self. Our personal identity is built over time, the fourth dimension if you like. We have developed a time structure to stamp our past and future. Without structure, people can go crazy.

Tomorrow, in the final chapter on “Memory”, I will discuss the possible remedies to minimize the damage, to keep ourselves sane.

Ravi