How we Remember Things in the Social Imagination and How/Why a Disappearing Middle Class Won't be Remembered...

    

    Many think of long-term memory as a permanent “bank” within the brain. Once a memory arrives there, the mind stores it completely and indefinitely. In truth, this is not the case. Although the long-term memory process allows information to remain in the brain for an extended period, nothing in the brain avoids risk. Information stored in long-term memory can stay in the brain for a short while (a day, a week) or last as long as a lifetime.

    When long-term memories form, the hippocampus retrieves information from the working memory and begins to change the brain’s physical neural wiring. These new connections between neurons and synapses stay as long as they remain in use ~ [https://lesley.edu/article/stages-of-memory].

In truth, this is not the case. Although the long-term memory process allows information to remain in the brain for an extended period, nothing in the brain avoids risk... For the sociologist, this is the most poignant aspect of memory. Why? Because, it exactly describes the social imagination. How?

Firstly, the social imagination is essentially a giant cloud where we share information. After all, if I haven't said it enough on this blog, the social imagination is the social reality. There is no other place to experience 'reality'. Even if raised by wolves, our reality would be socially constructed. 

Risk is something that the brain does not avoid. It cannot avoid. Sure, you think it does but that's a protective illusion or lack of engagement in it in the social imagination. Not only is the social imagination, the place where we all experience social reality (true for every culture/society), it thus necessarily houses the collective memory, a bank of necessary information that includes the risk aspect of existence ... in the social imagination. 

In the realm of the social imagination, your brain (an organic machine) has made instant quantified calculations of all information shared and experienced in the social imagination that it either determines to be a hindrance or encouragement when it comes to making a decision which is often a risk; all that data is kept in the collective memory bank. 

Risk is always calculated because of what is remembered in which there is stored previous calculations. The more memory we have accessible, the more we can engage risk evenly, the less chance of failure in the social imagination, the social reality. The only chance of failure really comes from a lack of social engagement among like minds or when there is brain damage or lack of social development. Children have this problem obviously as they are not mature in the experience of the wider social imagination. 

When an individual has more experiences in the social imagination and certainly in the wider version of it, risk is more easily ascertained, calculated and evenly shared as in dispersed. 

How does any of this discussion on risk in the social imagination lead up to another discussion on the disappearing middle class and how or why it won't be remembered in the social imagination? And, is that really a concern? Yes, because... risk is essentially built into the social imagination. Sharing risk creates a more stable social reality in the social imagination.

I chose to look at the middle class since because it is the most obvious illustration of shared risk taking that is in the hands of those who take it... not held back from them and neither allowed to overcome them. 

The middle class was/is certainly the most obvious catalyst for the growth of the American capitalist republic. To an extent, that same social imagination grew out of and or grew up in England, Canada, Australia and spread further into Europe proper after the Fall of Eagles - the Fall of Royal families/dynasties in Europe after WWI. 

The middle class is the entrepreneurial and or working populace en masse; which essentially makes it also foundational for a government to stand on a preamble that it is for the people and by the people. And, there you go... for the people and by the people. 

No top down social engineer be it a dictator or super quantum algorithm can allow that. How? Because of the risk factored in. Again, whether we are talking about a dictator or Ai presence, the risk of billions of people having such liberty is a risk that is not affordable to either one man or one machine. The global social reality is at hand and bigger is not better for everyone.

It won't be enough to cause the middle class to disappear... it must be forgotten in the sense as never recalled ever again. We have seen attempts at that in Europe and including far eastern Europe and Asia which though limited amounts of it may exist there, its been kept from growing. 

Why would that have to happen? In an ever escalating technological social reality, such people, the middle class, in their social imagination are no longer necessary.  They essentially becoming useless eaters.

The risk factor of having them around won't be part of the new numbers. A limited populace will be found but only among the extraordinary populace or those who consider it their moral right to restructure the social reality in the wider social imagination; thereby reducing risk. 

Indeed, the brain does NOT avoid risk, human existence, its continuity, sustainability in view of global warming and overpopulation, will be the goal. Thus, risk in the eyes of elites will be the key in the restructuring of social status in the wider social reality of the wider social imagination. Isn't that the agenda today? Yes, it is. 

The new restructuring will be voluntary at first using propaganda images and useful rhetoric that describe the risk at hand (the risk of humanity's continuity) and will be aimed at the middle class (a huge group) and not excluding those even lower than the middle class. 

Such an agenda seeks to steal, kill and destroy the rights of the middle class, i.e. to own property, to buy and sell and to eat... their very existence in the social imagination in jeopardy. Why? Essentially, it will be and is now deemed necessary in order to reestablish the social order in which only extraordinary people exist; because is a strange way that will appear to be the best practice to reduce global risk. 

Largely, those 'extraordinary' people are those who have power and money. They are Not the middle class nor the underdogs or the quick rise to stardom sport extraordinaire or the latest movie stars... Make no mistake, the 'extraordinary' are nefarious - wicked.

They are the power elite that C.Wright Mills wrote about in the mid 1950s; and, they will make sure you won't remember the middle class because it is a risk for them and you will believe its a risk for you too in the social imagination. But, if you can't remember that risk, there will be no risk to avoid. Remember, the brain does not avoid risk. How? It remembers it in the social imagination; the collective memory bank. Eliminate that memory and voila.

*You will own nothing and like it... Klaus Schwab! Remember that...