You never realize what a good memory you have until you try to forget something.
-Franklin P. Jones
One episode in particular really struck a chord with me. In it everyone has an implant behind their left ear that records everything they do. It’s basically a video camera in the eye and it records your entire life. You can rewind that interview you had and analyze the future employer’s remarks; you can re-live the one night stand you had ten years ago; you can replay a fight you had with your wife. And not only can you replay it for yourself, you can project the images onto your television and have anyone you want to watch it. Imagine the argument one has with his wife about the one night stand he had in college. It was a brief fling and never meant anything, but the wife isn’t so sure so she asks him to replay the night only to discover that he dated this girl for six months. In the future you can’t lie; you can’t reinvent your past; you can’t remember an event happening differently to suit your own conscience. It’s all there digitally stored forever. Unless, that is, you decided to erase the memory. Erasing the memory is possible but then you are left with a blank screen for that duration. You can’t really erase it then can you?
In this episode the protagonist comes to realize that his life with his wife has been a lie and he removes the device from behind his ear. Suddenly the screen goes black. End credits roll.
By removing the implant has he erased his memories. Is he now a tabula rasa?
If you could erase a memory from your life, would you?
I’ve asked myself this question a lot over the past few days. I haven’t experienced anything truly terrible in my life, thank goodness (and knock on wood!) but there are some things I wonder if I would be better off forgetting I went through. If you could erase the memory of a relationship or the presence of a person from your memory, would you? Would it change the person you were now if you didn’t have the memory of it? Or are we forever changed because we experienced it? Are we better off remodeling our memories to suit our own conscience or is having a digital record better?
I wish I knew.
Would not erase, personally. I survived it and that makes me proud. Not everyone will feel that way which I completely understand and do not begrudge. Good post! Gonna have to check out this show, now!
You should! The Brits know how to do television!
Sometimes I wish I could erase something from my memory but I fear if I did it might change me and that’s what scares me. Not that I’ll change in a bad way, but rather that I’d change for the better.
The Butterfly Effect in chaos theory…
So true! Gah!
Oh wow. I ask myself that question every day! I agree with Victo, though. We want to erase to get rid of pain and suffering from that memory, but without all that difficulty, we wouldn’t have learned anything from that experience. Every time i wish I could go “eternal sunshine” with something, I try to think about what I have learned or what I can still learn from that moment.