Ari I would approve
by CJ | Aug 14, 2014 | Journal | 11 comments
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NPR’s All Things Considered had a feature on this some time ago; listen to ‹npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100754665›. The potential is enormous—in both meanings of the word.
“Ari I would approve” is a rather chilling recommendation.
… but that wasn’t the program I remembered; it was this: a segment of a program about memory by WNYC’s Radiolab called “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Rat”. (The rest of the episode is also well worth the listen.)
Ari I had her more altruistic moments, and sincerely cared—about the azi. But if you consider Josh Talley—the technique could have a darker side.
I sometimes think that the worst crimes committed against persons are done ‘for your own good’.
I think where this is applied it should be very very carefully considered, extensive interviews done to figure how the item integrates with other thinking…and then it should be done only if the patient is counseled and wants a specific memory gone or modified.
I also think being of a certain age should be a prerequisite: there are things early in my life I would have considered real deleterious…being kidnapped as a small child and left out in the woods as a prank would be high on some people’s list; but now I know such things shaped me as I am. Are there a few later traumas I’d as soon not recall? Maybe.
But would I like having a black hole in memory where I couldn’t recall even something bad—? Not so sure. Remembering my mum coming through the woods is actually kind of a favorite memory.
Doing something like this for a person who has ptsd from a terrorist incident and cannot abide sudden noises—dangerously can’t abide them, as in—afraid to climb a ladder because the reaction is twitchy and unstoppable—that’s another question. I have a friend like that. And if something could wipe or rearrange that moment? Maybe.
I think “softening” the memory would be a good thing, rather than removing it. I think of it kind of like a box. The memory is at the top of the box and is the first thing you see when you take the lid off – it just needs to be moved down a layer so it’s not so present in daily life. Remove the charge, so to speak.
Hm, I suppose that’s what Ari 2 did to Justin, really.
It is so hard to know what relates to what else, and what bad event shaped which good or survival-adaptive part of someone, what has made them think and do and believe as they do, to make them the person they are.
It also gets to that old question, if there was something in your life you could go back and change/undo, what would you do? Which event would you choose? What would do to change it? — And again, how has that event shaped the whole person, the good things or positive adaptive things about them?
—–
If I had my wishes, I might wish to find out what would’ve happened if…in one case. (But I never got to find out, because it was prevented, to both my friend’s and my dismay.) That one’s more a wish, because I think whatever it was would have been more positive than the prevention. (It was probably just a wish to talk privately, though I wished it might’ve been more. I would’ve liked either.)
There is, though, one fairly early experience, that if I could, I’d want to go back and change. It has reverberated through my life ever since, and it didn’t have to be the way it was, if only it could’ve been a little different. It has certainly shaped who I am, some ways negative, other ways positive. — But I don’t have the chance to hop into a time machine and go back and redo it, and anyway, that would’ve been for the me at that time and the other person. I also don’t have a handy alternate universe where I know it did turn out fine for the alternate me and friend back then. But I sure wish it had.
There are other things I might wish to change. I’d certainly want to sit my late high school / early college age self down and explain a few things to him, to convince him to change how he goes about things, and maybe avoid a lot of useless flailing around, to end up with a better outcome and a better life from then on. But well, that me had to learn the hard way, apparently. I just wish he’d learned it faster and more easily, instead of all the baloney, much of it self-induced. … But hey, I was a college kid, so sure I was supposed to be a certain way and that was the right way. Hah. No, I wasn’t right about that, and should’ve known it.
—–
In cases where something went wrong that really caused ongoing problems?
I would wish for a better solution, a way to go in and mend the problems, the brokenness.
It is so hard to know, though, what bit to mend, what thread to tuck here or pull there, that will make the piece whole and functional and beautiful again, for the one wearing it…or the soul or skin/body wearing those.
If I had not been through some of the things I have, mistakes or accidents or events, good or bad — I don’t know how different (or how similar) I would be. Did I, perhaps, learn something vitally important, crucial, from some event? Did that shape my principles, my actions and thoughts and feelings? Quite possibly, in ways I don’t readily see as connected to that.
But if I could have those one or two things changed, I would want to, for my sake and for those two others, whose lives were also affected, major or minor ways.
—-
My eyesight, by the way, is not connected to those. It’s simply a fact of my prenatal development and birth, affected by genetics or fetal environment or both. I have no way to change that and wouldn’t know how. — If there were some way to gain “normal” sight, would I jump at the chance? If it wasn’t too big a risk or giving up too much…I would likely want that. It is, so far, beyond our medical or bio-mechanical prosthetic reach, and by its nature, the answer probably would mean a lot of neurological and thinking/memory processes would be within reach too, because sight is largely neurological, even the basic sight/image processing in the eye (sensor) itself. But if I could get normal sight, yes, I’d want it.
It’s these sorts of things that go into the abilities around correction of memories, past experiences, physical issues.
Please note, I don’t say we shouldn’t “meddle in things not meant for human ken.” I think it’s a good, positive thing to want to mend what’s causing trouble, pain, other negative effects in a person’s life, physical or mental/emotional.
If being able to correct things like paralysis or blindness or deafness…so many physical things…means also learning how to read, write, process, edit other neural functions? — Then OK, so be it. It’s a question of having the moral responsibility to do what’s right and just with those tools, not to avoid them when they might have the (tremendous) benefit of sight, hearing, speech, the ability to walk or use muscles, so many other things most of us take for granted and wouldn’t want someone to have to give up.
If we’re going to make such discoveries, then we have to be responsible with their effects in other ways.
That’s the really hard question, besides knowing how to mend what’s been injured.
But it’s an attainable set of abilities, if we’re so determined to acquire the other benefits, then the responsibilities to handle the tools rightly must go with them.
(And it takes bravery to ask the questions and try to answer. I don’t think it’s something we’re “not meant to know, or expore.”)
Oh, bring me Essence of Yesterday!
But the woman/girl I was then could have done no differently. I doubt that she would have wanted to, or could even have been forced to it.
Having known some folks who had to deal with PTSD, a memory “softening” would likely make their own lives, and the lives of those around them, a lot more tolerable and safer.
On the other hand, some types of anesthetics give me amnesia. It’s very strange to have portions of one’s life simply *absent*, when others can remember the events quite clearly. No amount of priming the memory pump can re-create what no longer exists. In contrast, a minor concussion generated partial amnesia, but most of those memories were restored (priming sometimes led to a flood of connections).
Did you get a visceral reaction, like you do when scent triggers a memory cascade? I lose some of my balance and have to hold on to something or sit down when that happens.