We Need a New Theory of Memory

There are simply too many of them to fit inside an individual cranium:

• "Daddy, how do you spell 'clapboard'?"
• The fact that Susie Wiles is the daughter of Pat Summerall.
• The color of your first pencil box.
• How much salt to put on the skin side of a duck breast before pan frying it.
• The cylinder configuration of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine that powered the P-51 Mustang in WWII.
• The difference between magnetic and true north at Boston in 2025.
• How to close a window in the Windows operating system.
• The purpose of the indentation in one button only among the many buttons of a Crucianelli accordion.
• The taste of a blade of grass.

And so on and so on.

"The idea that the brain is a computer is simply a metaphor."

But if the memories are stored elsewhere, the implications of that are profound indeed.

When we each reach our point of personal extremity, do we release the memories in a structured way?  Are they organized in "arrondissements" around a core?  Or are they all held, democratically if you will, for the life review, the review in which you will experience vividly the impact that your pilfering of that yellow pencil box from the lost and found had on its true owner?