Editing Memory: Can We Simply Choose to Forget?

After seeing the Jim Carrey movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind a few years ago, I did a radio piece extending the main idea of the movie’s plot: What if science came up with a way we could selectively excise memories we no longer want?

In the movie, Carrey is shocked to find that an ex-lover had their affair zapped from her mind after the breakup.  That got me to thinking:

My first impulse was to erase memories of overwhelming sadness, tragedies that lie beyond anyone’s power to control or comprehend: the Holocaust, September 11th, the terrible tsunamis that struck in December.

But deliberately forgetting such events, I finally decided, would be an act of cowardice, and would dishonor the victims of those disasters. Sometimes it’s our duty to remember, as we should on Memorial Day. If we all bear a little bit of history’s burden, perhaps the load will be lighter for everyone.

So I decided I would leave the big things intact,  and use the mind-wiping power on those irritations, hypocrisies, and absurdities that, while apparently trivial, take up valuable space on the mental hard drive for no good reason.

I decided  the first thing to go should  be memories of prices–what stuff used to cost ten and twenty years ago.

 What good is it to know that a good cup of coffee cost 40 cents in, say, 1988, or that a World Series ticket in 1977  cost less than a movie ticket today? Those days and those prices  are gone, baby, and they ain’t coming back. Remembering  them makes you wince, but does nothing positive for you now.

But of course the memory-snip procedures could go further. Remember the  pained, disgusted look on your  coach’s face after you struck out swinging on a ball over your head with the bases loaded and trailing 3-2 in the South Garland Pony League playoffs in 1968? Who needs it? You haven’t swung a bat in years. It’s not like you’re going to suit up again this spring.  Snip. Adios, Coach…uh….was it Smith?

Anyway, it’s a fascinating topic, and guess what? Scientists say “editing memory”  may be a reality sooner than we think. Check the story here . Here is my fulll radio piece on selective memory. And we close out with these lines from Barbara Streisand’s “The Way We Were”:

What’s too painful to remember,

We simply choose to forget. . .

But it’s the laughter we will remember,

Whenever we remember,

The way we were.

Planting Time is Here

The results of the small, experimental winter garden will soon be in: Planted on Valentine’s Day, the lettuce, cabbage and collard greens have tripled in size and are approaching their due date. Unable to wait, I plucked off a few lettuce leaves the other day and found them already delicious. Only the brocolli looks bound for an early grave, subject to the always-puzzling ways of Nature.  If everything else works like the lettuce, I’ll double next year’s cool-weather planting.

But the winter crop was just an opening act. Now it’s time to get the spring garden in. The ground has been tilled a foot deep and enriched with two types of compost and cow manure. According to my tickler file last year, I had the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and the rest planted by April 1, but this year we were out of town some in March and we’ve had a number of unusually cold nights, so I’ve been holding off. In fact, a note from last year tells me that we had near-freezing temps on April 7 and 8. I’ll go ahead and buy everything, but hold off a day or so getting it into the ground.

French to Obama: Sorry, Mon Ami

As our wonderful friends in Europe turn their backs on the Afghan effort, I went back and looked at the script, from last fall, which clearly stated:

1. The rifts between the U. S. and Euope were Bush’s fault.

2. Therefore, getting rid of Bush will usher in  A New Era of Smart Power Diplomatic Listening.

I know that was the script. I heard it quoted a thousand times before the Election. I just can’t  figure out what’s gone wrong now. Why, why won’t those French folks help now that Le Bush is gone?

 Oh, well, looks like I won’t be eating that beret after all. Can’t recall who said it, but it’s true: Nations don’t have friends; they have interests.

One and Two Years Ago on Muse Machine

April 2, 2008…9:27 am

Battle of the Buttons: Obama

Some of these are pretty cool, but the latest, hottest Must-Have campaign toy was seen at last week’s Dallas County Democratic Convention. Making fun of the Obama-Is-A-Muslim-Manchurian Candidate smear, numerous ’Bama Backers sported buttons like “John Hussein Smith” and “Susan Hussein Jenkins.”

 

April 2, 2007…4:34 pm

The Immigration Charade

Right now, at least, I can’t seem to work up great fervor about the so-called immigration debate, except to note, with sadness, that some partisans resort to defamation and demonization instead of argument.

But when I see a report like this one in today’s Dallas Morning News detailing the pro-immigration march at City Hall yesterday, I feel generally unmoved because in reality, the debate is actually over, though many believe it’s just starting.

 Here’s what I mean: with millions of illegal immigrants already in the country and thousands more who will be here before Congress can act, we’ve already had the debate. The immigrants voted with their feet, and the U. S. voted with its porous borders and slap-with-a-wet-noodle enforcement. The Republicans voted for cheap labor,  the Democrats voted for their universal brotherhood/Lifeboat America vision, and both parties voted for, they hope, new voters.  The future is what we see around us now. Schools and hospitals will just have to deal with the reality: more and more poor, needy, undereducated Mexicans. Many of these people are fine human beings, and many are not, but good or bad, they’re going to keep on reshaping the country, because that’s what winners do.

Sometime this year, or before Christmas ‘08, Congress will vote to start millions  on that Path to Amnesty Citizenship after they pay a small fine and do some kind of revolving-door visit back to the homeland. There will be tough talk included about learning English, tightening border security and giving employer sanctions some teeth, but that will be neither very tough nor consistent. Congress will never appropriate anywhere near enough money to really get a handle on who’s coming into the country and who’s hiring them, much less enough to hire the number of workplace inspectors that would be needed to have an impact.

You just can’t fight the geographical reality. When you have a desperately poor country right beside a very wealthy country, people will leave the failed state where they cannot make a living and come to the successful country where they can get ahead. Everything else flows from that fact.

The Joys of Walking

Serendipity lives: I took a  long walk this brisk, windy morning, and when I got back to my desk I opened a book I’ve been reviewing, Willard Spiegelman’s Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness. In a moment  I came to this happy quote from the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, in a letter to his niece:

“When I have a problem I walk, and walking makes it better.  Do not lose your desire to walk; every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”

Some days, I know exactly what he means.

Europe Gives Obama Love, But What Else?

I wouldn’t advance this as a general philosophy of life, but it’s true that in many things, and in politics especially, the fewer illusions you have, the less disappointed you will be.

Case in point, the Obama trip to Europe and the G-20 Summit.

 During the presidential campaign, you must recall, we were told endlessly that Obama would be a fresh new face of American democracy who would begin to restore our tattered credibility among the dismayed and alienated Europeans who yearned  for the good old America of the past. (Which, presumably, did not include the past in which Charles de Gaulle haughtily demanded that those good old American forces leave the Continent, with the exception of those buried at Normandy. )

While I supported Obama, I never believed that he would  bring a tabula rasa to the relationship between the U. S. and Europe, and I never believed that his Not-Bushness would cause the Europeans to do much more to help in trouble spots like Afghanistan. And since I never believed that Obama’s charm and personal diplomacy and intellect and  firm-armed wife would cut much Dijon when it came down to actually committing flesh and treasure, I won’t be disappointed when it doesn’t.

Imagine the French and Germans saying: “You know, we believe Mr. Obama’s ideas about confronting radical Islam and rebuilding Afghanistan and   massive economic stimulus would be ruinous for our countries, but sacre bleu!  We love his smile, his youth, and his killer 3-point shot so much we’re going along with him anyway!”

If the French send even 500 more soldiers or gendarmes to Afghanistan (not Iraq, the Wrong War, but Afghanistan, the Right War)  as a result of Obama’s grand tour, I will saute a beret and eat it.