brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Brin ([personal profile] brin_bellway) wrote 2021-02-15 03:10 pm (UTC)

Yo dawg, I herd you like memory play

[addenda from January 28th, 2021]

Me: *gets blindsided for the umpteenth time by porn with untagged memory play, because of course everyone's into that, right, we don't need to content-warn for that*

Me: *witnesses mainstream romance novels with memory-play scenes*

Me: *grumbles about selection bias in the kinds of people who get incarnated onto this planet*

---

There's this bit of Jewish folklore that says that God grants fetuses access to divine omniscience, then takes it away and makes them forget right before they're born. This makes people more inquisitive and eager to learn, as they desperately try to heal the wound in their psyche where that knowledge was first ripped from them.

Which, one, asshole move there, God, but also it implies that this or similar feelings are common enough for people to create just-so stories about them.

Do other cultures have legends that specifically frame the loss of pre-this-life memories as traumatic? Is this feeling particularly common among Jews for some reason?

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