Memory

Latin memoria — remembrance. From memor — mindful. Related to mourn — both from Proto-Indo-European roots meaning to be anxious, to care about. Memory and grief were linguistically adjacent from the beginning.

Individual memory is unreliable in ways now well documented by psychology. Collective memory — what a culture chooses to remember — is shaped by power. Monuments, holidays, and textbooks are memory management systems. 'Never forget' is an instruction to override forgetting that would otherwise occur naturally.