Memorisation as Firmware Programming

As part of my Maximum New York class, I had to memorise Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus". This sonnet, famous for the couplet:

With silent lips, give me your tired your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

was inscribed into the base pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

When I first read this as part of the Maximum New York syllabus, I thought the assignment was silly. I was reminded of pulling all-nighters as a second grader learning Mandarin when I moved to China. We had to memorise one Tang Dynasty Poem a week in front of the whole class as a requirement. Meeting this punishing schedule when I could barely string a Chinese sentence together was the source of endless anxiety in my early education.

However, after completing the class, being forced to memorise this poem ended up being one of my favourite parts of the class. I wanted to spend this blogpost talking about some of the virtues of memorisation.

Memorisation is like firmware. i write software that interfaces with an embedded system for a living. The firmware on the Contactless Payment Module on our validators defines a set of primitive operations on which the rest of the computer operates. Firmware is harder to modify and is flashed onto the device. This contrasts with the code I write, which is more easily modifiable.

I spend a lot of time learning human languages because I think we've developed some of the best social and technological infrastructure around language education. There's no shortage of online language learning apps and spaced repetition flash card tools to help someone build a sizeable Russian vocabulary in a short few weeks.

There are clear measures of language fluency. One assesses written and spoken fluency as well as reading comprehension. These tests are, by-definition, closed book. Mastery of a language means being able to survive in it without constantly referencing a dictionary. To succeed in learning a language is to operate in it seamlessly, as if existing in it were part of your core functionality, just like a firmware.

No matter where I am now, whether I'm on the R train stuck in a tunnel with no cell reception, or in a JetBlue flight hurtling through the sky at six hundred miles an hour, The New Colossus is mine now. I can meditate on it without having to pull up my phone or open up a book.

At the end of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, I'm reminded of Montag finding a ragtag group of "Readers" in the forest as the world teeters on the precipice of nuclear war. Montag, as one of the few people who remembers a fragment of the Book of Ecclesiastes, becomes the Book.

I bring this up not to make the case for memorisation based on the worry of nuclear war or book burnings, but based on the idea that we can become what we memorise. There were many moments, growing up, where I had to make a snap decision and the only moral compass I could reach for handily was the Scout Oath and Law. I asked myself: Would making a choice violate my duty to be "trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteus kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean or reverent?" That's the power of memorisation. A text becomes truly alive when it lives in our mind.

With that in mind, The New Colossus has become a gateway to a hunger to memorise. I treat my Line By Line sessions as religiously as my Duolingo streak now. I'm currently working to memorise some core Christian teachings: The Beatitudes, the Nicene Creed and some Psalms. I'm excited to internalise these teachings and see what outwardly changes occur after.