Chang CruzSean Dominise

Janine GoMartin JurillaDong Won LeeAleandro Penas

INTFILO “Memento”

What to you are the central themes in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave?

Skepticism - We only believe in something if we witnessed it with our own eyes or it is based on our own experience.Cave – Limitation of a person’s belief.Escaped prisoner – realityChained prisoners – skeptics

How does the mind separate false reality from true reality?

Our perception of the truth makes us separate false reality from true reality. True reality is what is out there and what will be a fact no matter what happens. However, our minds create false realities to comfort us from the harsh and painful truth. We are afraid to suffer so we tend to make up our own truth and believe in them.

The movie closes with a saying, “We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different.” Lenny’s “mirrors” were his memory devices. What sort of “mirrors” do people with normal memories rely on to remind themselves who they are?

Lenny had many sorts of memory devices like tattoos, photos, written reminders, and his own hand writing. but even though he had many sorts of memory devices, these aren’t reliable still because it still uses his memories. Lenny's memory devices can be manipulated easily. That's why Lenny couldn't live a normal life because his "mirror“, refers to our memories, isn’t reliable. Without these “mirrors” he forgot who he truly is and his purpose

Memories are our mirrors. Normal people like us, rely on the people around us and our environment as memory devices. Our friends, partners, families are reflections and the ones who influence who we are. They play a factor in our interests, beliefs, hobbies, personalities. But the best memory device and mirror is our past. Our past tells us what we've done and what we've been through, and it tells us who we are today. Past is a way to remind us who we are in the present, and past is the perfect mirror to look in.

When Lenny jots down Teddy’s license number, he asks: “Do I lie to myself to be happy? In your case, Teddy... yes, I will.” What does that say about truth?

Lenny’s statement implies that the truth is not always something we’d like or are prepared for. The truth can be so powerful that we are frightened or angered by it. Due to this, we often distort the truth and construct lies we accept to be reality. What we construct to be the truth can even be convincing for a time.

There are times when this construction of false reality does not only concern us, there are times when even others come to believe this ‘truth’ as well. This gives temporary happiness, satisfaction, or purpose. However, since we cannot escape from the truth, not accepting it leads to suffering.

The subject of psychoanalysis tries to avoid trauma. The truth, to the extent that it can cause trauma, is entirely unexceptional in this regard. The defences are the primary means by which the subject guards against threatening stimuli. Freud discovered several defences. Other psychoanalysts have added to the list and today a quite astonishing array of operations can be seen as mechanisms of defence--testimony to the extraordinary complexity of the human psyche.

The Truth Hurts: Psychoanalytic Speculations on Reconciliation

By Naidoo, Udesthra

The Truth About LyingYoungsters, like adults, sometimes lie to

demonstrate power, to maintain privacy, or to protect a friend. When a child lies, she is essentially trying to change a situation, to reconstruct things the way she wants them to be.

What Justifies the Adoption of Convenient Fantasy and Denial of Inconvenient Truth?by Steve SalmonyCultural TransmissionsA term of art in psychology is useful here,

“folie a deux.” The term means that two people share an identical distortion of reality. This understanding leads to other terms, “folie a deux cent million” for a social order or “folie a deux billion” for a culture. These terms refer to a misperception of reality commonly held by many people of an organization or culture. One way to define the highest standard of what is “normal” for the individual and for human aggregates could be looked at in terms of what is free of illusion, what is in scientific fact real.

This desire to shield patients from the reality of their situation usually creates even greater difficulties for patients, their relatives and friends and other members of the healthcare team. Although the motivation behind economy with the truth is often well meant, a conspiracy of silence usually results in a heightened state of fear, anxiety and confusion not one of calm and equanimity. Ambiguous or deliberately misleading information may afford short-term benefits while things continue to go well, but denies individuals and their families opportunities to reorganize and adapt their lives towards the attainment of more achievable goals, realistic hopes and aspirations.

The first noble truth says that life is characterized by suffering and as you can see Lenny is suffering from short term memory loss and people are making good use of Lenny because of his condition. He is also suffering because he hasn’t moved on and can not accept the death of his wife, and continues and endless search for the “killer”.

Discuss how Lenny’s actions follow closely either some of the 4 Noble Truths or all of them.

The 2nd noble truth says that there is a cause for this suffering, the cause is he got by the head making him having short term memory loss, finally there is a way out of suffering but Lenny made the wrong path since he lied to himself about teddy and he denied the truth making him suffer more.