17 October

Henri Bergson was a trippin’ dude, even though he looked like a minister at the local parish church. He won the Nobel Prize for literature, although was actually a philosopher (he wrote very well). His speaking tours were like Beatlemania, people queued to see him. One of the most amazing books ever written is his ‘Matter and Memory’. Bergson describes there how we really don’t understand some basic things - time, the brain, and memory. - Time doesn’t pass, it’s not like some river that flows. - The past is not something that happened before and is now gone, it’s always just here. - The brain doesn’t contain any images, nor is it where we ‘think’ or where ‘we’ are. - When you have a memory, you enter the past directly, it’s not a picture or image stored in your brain.