Why?

[Knowledge]

Why no one remembers their very first memory?

[ivankiss]

In a sense; any memory is 'the very first memory'.

[JayG84]

Well, the way I've come to think of it is that we're born at a very low stage of consciousness, and at lower stages we find it hard to remember things. Kind of for the same reason that animals have very poor memories or like if we go through our day to day lives in a low conscious manner (just going through the motions, doing the same things every day), then we won't register much memory of the events at all. It's only when we are aware of the moment that it gets registered in our memories. At a certain point kids will raise their states of consciousness to where they will 'come online' so to speak, or become conscious enough to become self aware and begin to know who they are. 

In your purest form (or formlessness), you already have memory of everything that has ever happened or will ever happen, but life is the process of remembering. First, forgetting (Birth), then trying to remember for a few decades (Learning skills and consciousness work) and finally remembering all of it (Death). The process of remembering is the raising of Consciousness.

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by JayG84

[TripleFly]

I feel that I would need to try really hard and push against many great barriers to reach that deep. And I don't know if there's even an end, I can't speak about past lives, but that's where your logic is headed.

[Rilles]

4 hours ago, Knowledge said:

Why no one remembers their very first memory?

I remember my first memory, but I dont know if thats really my first memory, I dont know what memories I've forgotten. Mind. Fuck.  

[cnfvm]

if a memory or an event doesn't matter anymore, why should we remember? 

[Carl-Richard]

I don't know. One of my first memories was when I was 3 years old. My mom told me I was starting kindergarten, and I vividly remember asking her "is that a thing where you do things at home?" and she said "no" and I got really upset  

[Someone here]

Because there can't be a first distinct one.  It's like if you have a spectrum of the difference degrees of the color yellow slowly shifting into orange.. Can you actually pinpoint where exactly does yellow "completely" turn into orange??  Ofcourse you can't because it's a spectrum.. It's all yellow and it's all orange simultaneously but in different degrees.

You can't remember your "first" memory because there never was one!  How could you say that this particular event was my first memory without a frame of reference?  That is a prior experience to that to judge what's before and what's after that event.. And so you will keep looking for something prior and prior and it's infinite regress.. You can't determine the exact point that awareness popped at.  Just like in dreams at night.. You can't say when does the dream begin or what was the first appearance in the dream.. It just begins with no beginning!!

Edited July 16, 2020 by Someone here

[Artsu]

As infants, we don't understand what's going on around us. We don't remember because we can't process things well enough to base a memory from. As infants we don't even have an ego yet, so there's little in the way of an identity we can use to process ourselves. As young children we also lack the ability to analyse and critique our previous actions, so that also hinders the accessing of memories.

Once we have a picture of how the world works and what is normal, we can process the situation we're in with more nuance and produce memories.

[lmfao]

@Knowledge Pointless question here no? So the way I'm reading this question, you're asking why we've forgotten our "first memory"? What you mean by memory here is confusing. But that aside. Isn't the answer just that people forget their first memory. So doesn't that make your question become "Why do humans forget memories they've had?" ?