I know I’m a little late to the game, as this article is over a week old, but I keep forgetting it existed, ironically enough. But unless you didn’t know, scientists have found a way to take away traumatic memories from lab animals. In other words, we’re getting closer to blissful ignorance, as this may lead to the removal of all the painful memories that lead to heartache, sadness, hurt, and trauma. That breakup would have never existed, the hurtful words of some malicious bully, gone. It sounds great, doesn’t it? You will not remember, you will not comprehend, and you will not know that bad things happened and we can live in a fairytale.
The good part about this is pretty obvious, we don’t remember the horrible things that bring us depression, that cause us to commit suicide, that leads to alcoholism or drug abuse. Why would we go down that route if we don’t remember those painful things? Well, okay, maybe there’s other reasons, like addictive personality or something, but maybe it would cut down on all that? Of course, that’s just an easy out, a way to cope with problems by simply erasing them and not dealing with it. If we erase those memories, we probably wouldn’t learn from our mistakes, our experiences. We won’t try to correct the behavior that led us to think, wow…I screwed that up and she left me. Instead, we might keep doing the same stuff, over and over and over again because we didn’t learn or grow.
Of course, maybe its like trial and error. We forget the bad stuff, until we find ourselves in a situation where, how we got those bad memories, doesn’t even matter. For instance, if you were just a jerk to someone and that girl left you and that broke your heart, well, if you stay a jerk because you didn’t learn from the heartache and you were still being an ass, you may just go girlfriend to girlfriend and find someone who doesn’t mind you being an ass. Does that make sense? I think that was a really long sentence. I almost think I’m confusing myself. But, I guess to put it simply, maybe it isn’t so bad to forget the bad because you may just eventually find yourself in a situation where only good stuff happens. Yeah, that’s just a pipe dream, but you never know.
Of course, this doesn’t just have to deal with the traumatic memories, this research can lead to more complex mind modifications. Maybe we can implant good memories, or tweak proteins to make us smarter, have better memories, or even cure debilitating neurological diseases. Okay, maybe that’s stepping out way on a limb, but I never thought that it would even be possible to remove memories. We can have custom memories, thoughts and ideas manipulated by science. Its pretty insane, it sounds like something straight out of a movie or a book. The future is looking pretty…freaky.
via: Kotaku: Scientists Discover a Way to Erase Bad Memories
