1 Kirsti Clapsadle Writing 122 Enthymeme 3.

1 As our technology continues to develop, we wonder about the possibilities that may arise. There are many technological advances now that affect our bodies in several different ways. We have processes to alter physical appearance, like breast implants, lip injections, etc., or subtraction, i.e. liposuction, tummy tuck, and the like. We also have medical procedures to assist in our health like laser eye surgery, orthopedic surgery, and open heart surgery. We even can perform brain surgery on a person while they are awake. But what if we could add an extra process to this brain surgery? What if we had the option of erasing memories? I believe that alterations of memories should not be allowed, because a persons memories are what make him/her who he/she is. A persons memories help to create a personality for that person. They help that person make decisions based on past experiences. Without both good and bad memories, we would not learn how to behave correctly because we would not have familiarity with the consequences and rewards of acting a certain, acceptable way. Imagine you had negative feelings toward you father and wanted to erase memories with him. If your dad maybe had treated you badly, as if you were a failure, you would have acted much differently than if you were treated well by him. Maybe you always tried a lot harder to please your father than anyone else, and thats why you became a successful worker at a big company. If you deleted the memory of your dad, your motivation to prove him wrong would be lost. In extreme cases where a person has been raped or abused, it is understandable to want to delete those memories. However, these memories do contribute to the way a person sees the world. Many people who have been raped become more involved in sexual-abuse prevention

2 and support services that they would not have otherwise. And abused children often have to go through anger-management or counseling, helping the way they see and cope with the world. While the memories these people have are possibly the worst one could imagine, they are still a part of who they are. Without these memories, there would be fewer understanding survivors to help people who have gone through similar things and maybe could not afford to erase their memory of the experience, or possibly just didnt want to, based on personal values. Is it even necessary to be able to delete selective memories? Patricia Hampl demonstrates that it is not, in Memory and Imagination. She shares that, more often than not, the memories that you do have are not actually what happened. Memories develop with time based on other things you remember about the time and with what is going on during the time of recalling the memory. What would be the sense in deleting an unclear memory, if it continues to grow and change into something much different? We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time... but thats the implacable judgment of feeling: This, we say somewhere within us, is something Im hanging on to (Hampl 787). Hampl also mentions that often we cleave to things because they possess heavy negative charges (Hampl 787). Bad memories stick also, but, assuming Hampl is relatively correct, we shouldnt want to delete any memories, because the ones that stick obviously mean (or meant, at some point) a great deal to us. Not all people cope well with bad experiences, though. Some people go crazy from fear of having the negative occurrence happen again. Some may simply have dangerous, erratic behaviors that may not have been present before the memory. If one was able to delete his/her memory of the occurrence, this wouldnt be an issue. It may also prevent people from growing

3 up to become dangerous people. Even still, the idea of deleting specific memories is unnatural and very science-fiction-like. While, of course, practice makes perfect, there are always extreme dangers to every major operation. In The Brain and the Self, by Shannon Moffett, we learn about a patient, HM, who has an operation performed on him to remove the part of his brain that induces seizures (Moffett 743). The doctor performing the operation was unsure of the exact location of the seizure-bringing-cells, so he pretty much took a wild guess and removed part of the hippocampus and surrounding cells (Moffett 743-44). In doing so, HM lost his ability to make any new conscious memories (Moffett 744). While a lot was learned about the brain from this surgery, a great deal about the risks of surgery was also (re-)learned. While the seizures ended, HM was greatly affected by the loss of his memory. It isnt greatly debatable whether seizures or the loss of memory is worse. We can assume that, without the surgery, HM would have been a much different person. It is possible that HM was actually happy the way he wasafter all, he did think he was in his twenties his entire lifebut it is also possible that without the surgery, HM could have taken medication to lessen his seizures, thus giving him opportunity to have a family and live a normal life. In the same way that HM was unable to learn new behaviors due to the removing of part of his brain, it is possible that, with deletion of particular memories, one could lose the memory of old behaviors or learned skills. If you cannot remember when you learned the fundamentals of a skill, it will be hard to perform the skill when necessarya base is always necessary! Take mathematics, for example. If you deleted the first year of school because something happened then that you dont want to remember, you would lose the memory of learning addition of

4 subtraction. While this skill is reinforced throughout schooling, it is possible that it could affect your math ability greatly. There is no way of knowing exactly the consequences that would come with deleting specific memories, but it is an idea that is unnatural to the body and the mind. Our personalities come from somewhere, and it is assumed that that somewhere is the memories we account for in our lives (and our chemical/hormonal make-up). If we cannot remember all that we have been through, we cannot be who we are. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it (Santayana).

TH

6-10 SUB

Works Cited

Hampl, Patricia. "Memory and Imagination." 2000. Fields of Reading. Ed. Karen S. Henry. Ninth ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. 782-91. Print. Moffett, Shannon. "Watching the Brain." 2006. Fields of Reading. Ed. Karen S. Henry. Ninth ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010. 736-50. Print. Santayana, George. The Life of Reason. Vol. 1. Amherst: Prometheus, 1998. Print.