Why do people "need" to be remembered?

[weareunity]

Hello all. Suggestions. A personal general overview concerning the need for a sense of personal significance and how meeting that need motivates behaviour.

I think a certain measure of a sense of personal significance is needed by humans--and maybe by other species--for emotional, mental and physical wellbeing.

I suggest that the "natural" way for this to be established within the psychological make up of a person is through wise loving nurture in infancy by parents, carers, kin and society.

However, if this process does not happen "naturally", or does not happen "naturally" to the measure required for some reason, then the mind concerned will attempt to find that necessary sense of personal significance by alternative means and methods.

Both
(1) The reason(s) why that "natural" process may not happen,
and also
(2) The variety of means and methods which may be chosen in an attempt to answer the need,
are areas of considerable study of themselves I imagine.

If there are other readers who find the suggestions above sufficiently valid to pursue, it would be interesting(?) to explore (1) and (2) above to see if doing so will help to answer the question posed by LoneFlower in the opening post.
cheers. petex

[Starman]

Being remembered is a poor facsimile of actual immortality; and maybe memories are a residue of our immortality manifested in time; as immortality itself is removed from time; so its manifestation in time may be projected as memories, which attempts to keep things alive; this is just a passing thought and not at all a belief.

[weareunity]

Hello Starman. Please could you give me some additional explanatory help regarding your post which I sense is communicating thoughts about an interesting perspective though in terms with which I am not familiar--maybe as a result of being more of a lone ponderer than a reader. Thanks. petex

[Starman]

Originally Posted by weareunity

Hello Starman. Please could you give me some additional explanatory help regarding your post which I sense is communicating thoughts about an interesting perspective though in terms with which I am not familiar--maybe as a result of being more of a lone ponderer than a reader. Thanks. petex

Everything in existence is an extension of everything else which was already in existence; this includes our mental faculties and innate characteristics; they emulate or try to emulate, our divinity because they are projected, filtered or otherwise, from deep within us.

One example is that we are co-creators, and in my opinion that impetus for creation stems from an impulse in our divine nature. In my previous post I am saying that a need to be remembered is tad amount to immortality on a lesser scale and is an attempt to mimic our divine immortal nature.

In my opinion everything extends from that; everything is a reflection of that. That which is beyond words and thoughts, but can be experienced in the here and now. We are beings firmly fixed in the here and now but memory and desire feeds into our illusion of time.

[Shivani Devi]

I was on youtube a few days ago, just surfing around and letting it lead me to wherever it was the waves wanted to take me...

Until I found myself watching this one again:

"If You Don't Reference Other People, They Don't Exist" - Bentinho Massaro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JundExZ4XgA

So, people know that on the superficial, mundane level, they will just fade totally away...into mere insignificance and even 'non existence' if they are not constantly referenced by others.

Hence, they seek acknowledgment, importance, respect, viewability, charisma, fame...because the more people who reference them as existing, the stronger, more reinforced their whole existence becomes!

I had to learn this the hard way when I was ignored to oblivion and back...I lost all sense of being, yet in that I also found all sense of being - totally independent from any point of reference whatsoever.

Seems easy to make something complicated out of this when it's just that
people have the capacity to remember; they have feelings towards others; they
make bonds, the real value of a relationship; support each other, etc.

Then there's the matter of fame-seeking and those who achieve fame without seeking.

Ego gets bad press here but everyone likes to be acknowledged in some way or another
so they put their "I" forward to be able to interact. Difficult to do that without an
identity.

No doubt this could be set into a number of spiritual equations -
certainly psychological ones but it's just how people are.
Seems little sense is deeply searching for a reason beyond exceptional cases that have
a certain weirdity about them.

♥

[Nature Grows]

Well it's nice when your at a funeral and it comes to the part where the photos start being displayed of the persons life up on the big screen, and some song comes on that kinda relates to the person, i really like that.

[blackraven]

Originally Posted by LoneFlower

Why do some people feel like they NEED to be remembered? That to be forgotten is a really bad, scary sort of thing. Almost like it's a personal threat upon them.
Why is it important, though?
It is purely 'an ego thing'?

What do you think about this?

Hi LoneFlower. That's a question that I've thought of a lot more recently. It's mostly due to the fact that my aging parents are planning their funerals, getting headstones, getting their plots. I on the other hand feel like once I'm dead, just cremate me and don't put me in a fancy urn either because my loved ones will just be scattering my ashes somewhere simple, like the back yard. My mom says it's important to have a place in a cemetery where her children and others can visit her and look at her grave and remember her. Personally I don't visit people's grave sites. That's not my way of remembering a person. I don't need photographs either. I remember people from thinking back in time about the past. In some ways it feels like the ego is involved in someone wanting to be remembered, but I have a spouse and a son and truth be told, I would hope they would hold the good things about me in their memory and not the ugly. I guess if they didn't remember me or never thought of me, I would be dead so I might not even be aware of it, but as I live now in this flesh and have a soul I think otherwise.

I have a 94 year old father-in-law who doesn't remember his wife who passed away some 17 years ago anymore. Kinda sad, but his mind is not what it used to be. I'm sure she's tucked in there somewhere deep within, but no one would hold that against him.

More importantly is that we will hopefully be reunited with loved ones once we're all gone at some point.

[Ahriman]

I couldn't care less if I'm remembered when I die, it just doesn't matter to me at all.

[weareunity]

As an observation:-
The opening post asks the question "why do people need to be remembered?"--with the word "need" in capitals. This emphasis on "need" seems to make it a question about the analysis and motivation which shapes behaviour --in this case the behaviour of a person who feels the "need"to be remembered.
It is wonderful that we do remember in so many beautiful and moving ways those who have died. petex