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The Forgetting Pill

In Wired, Jonah Lehrer brings us news from the future: This new model of memory isn’t just a theory—neuroscientists actually have a molecular explanation of how and why memories change. In fact, their definition of memory has broadened to encompass not only the cliché cinematic scenes from childhood but also the persisting mental loops of […]

In Wired, Jonah Lehrer brings us news from the future:

This new model of memory isn’t just a theory—neuroscientists actually have a molecular explanation of how and why memories change. In fact, their definition of memory has broadened to encompass not only the cliché cinematic scenes from childhood but also the persisting mental loops of illnesses like PTSD and addiction—and even pain disorders like neuropathy. Unlike most brain research, the field of memory has actually developed simpler explanations. Whenever the brain wants to retain something, it relies on just a handful of chemicals. Even more startling, an equally small family of compounds could turn out to be a universal eraser of history, a pill that we could take whenever we wanted to forget anything.

And researchers have found one of these compounds.

In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.

Read the whole thing.  If you’ve ever known anyone debilitated by painful memories — of trauma, of abuse, etc. — you will grasp instantly what a godsend this kind of therapy could be. However, there is enormous potential for political manipulation, a fact so obvious it hardly needs elaboration here.

The more interesting philosophical question Lehrer article raises, at least for me, is how memory defines our character. I know people whose characters have been warped by the pain of indelible memories. Holding those memories in their minds has not been character-building at all, but to a certain extent character-destroying. To have these memories erased would be the psychological equivalent of setting a broken bone so it can heal. And yet, it is perhaps a more common experience for us to learn from painful experiences, and to build our character. Paul Fussell, whose book “The Great War and Modern Memory” explored the way British literary figures “remembered” their experiences of World War I created Modernism, once told the NEA president that an especially terrible memory of his World War II experience was useful to him:

Hackney: You write in one of your essays — your essay “My War” in The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Observations, which is a wonderful collection — you say toward the end of that essay, “Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.”

Fussell: They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality. As I say in this new book of mine, not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody’s neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way. It’s those things that you learn about yourself that you never forget. You learn that you have much wider dimensions than you had imagined before you had to fight a war. That’s salutary. It’s well to know exactly who you are so you can conduct the rest of your life properly.

If you take a pill to forget who you are — at least a troubling part of who you are — will you be able to conduct the rest of your life properly? Isn’t it also the case that some people are not able to conduct their lives properly because the power of a particular memory debilitates them? What is “properly”?

If someone offered me a pill to take away one memory, or set of related memories, I would be tempted to “forget” those two years in high school when I was bullied. But I don’t think I would, in the end, take the pill. For one thing, if I hadn’t had that experience, I think it would have left me a lot less empathetic, and aware of my own capacity for cruelty. I struggle with selfishness, and the memory of what it is like to be a mistreated outsider often calls me to reconsider my position and behavior.

Besides, a wonderful — almost miraculous — thing happened after my sister died. I don’t know how this happened or why this happened — well, I kind of know, but I think it is above all a gift of grace: the emotional pain those memories caused me was taken away. I remember the exact moment I became aware of this. I was driving home from work in Philadelphia on a rainy afternoon, not long after we had returned from the funeral. I was about to turn onto a particular road, and for some reason my hometown came to mind. For the first time in forever, my stomach didn’t clench, and I realized that whatever had been there for 27 years to make me behave that way was no longer present. It was gone. I burst into tears and thanked God, aloud, and thanked Ruthie.

If I had been able to take a pill and erase those memories, perhaps I would have been able to have moved back home a lot sooner. But my homecoming wouldn’t have had the meaning it did, or be as full of unmerited grace as it has been. If I had been 30 years old, and offered this pill, I would have taken it for this memory. At 45, though, I am glad it didn’t exist for me then.

Are there any memories you would be tempted to erase with a pill? Would you do so? Why or why not?

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