A SPOTLESS MIND

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is a 2004 American romantic dramedy science fiction film which tells a story about a couple that undergoes a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour.

Now, would you like some of your memories erased? Which past events would you choose to zap? These were the questions BBC's journalist Dan Damon was asking this past week in the wake of a groundbreaking research in which Israeli scientists have succeeded in deleting selected memories in rats, in what could be a useful tool in treating alcohol addiction.

In a paper published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers say they have managed to selectively delete memories related to and triggering alcohol consumption, while not harming other, unrelated memories.

This is not yet safe for humans at the moment. But suppose it was, would it be a great idea to erase bad experiences?

I'm not sure about you but inasmuch as no one really likes bad memories, I still believe they are sometimes necessary tools in growing up.

My view could be uninformed but if we take away the things that make us human what would we be left with? Bad memories serve as reminders and as a source of inspiration.

Traumatic  events and bad memories make us stronger and give us a push to strive for better things and aim for perfection. Simply erasing such traumatic experiences would result in stagnating the progress of  mankind.

I'm aware there are people who have been in worse and traumatic situations like rape, incest and other forms of severe abuse. But suppose they decided to erase such memories, won't it mean their abuser would screw them over again since they can't remember their past experience with that individual?

The film mentioned "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" is a case in point of how wrong this is.  All 3 characters who had the procedure done ended up far more bitter and scarred than they would have been with just the pain of the memories that ended up being erased.

This is an incredible innovation. However, I must say that with such discovery, we might end up emptying our brains in the name of clearing " viruses" form our memory.

We need bad memories after all what can't kill us can only make us stronger.