I will never forget this.

This article from Rough Type concerns me. One of my motifs in life and art is the consideration of whether technology is actually going to improve the society or not. I still think the singularity is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever heard of. I’m not sure that prolonging our lives with biotechnology is a good idea, because people who don’t necessarily like their lives make their lives longer, are they really doing themselves, or anyone, a service?

But what Rough Type is referencing strikes much closer to home than any of these. The ability to make good decisions is only built off the backs of bad decisions; strength of will and depth of compassion are only developed through remembering hard things. To be able to eliminate bad memories would do all of mankind an enormous disservice. We wouldn’t make educated decisions any more. We would repeat mistakes far more often than we do now. We would not learn.

In addition to the problems of human pride that arise from this Babel-like exercise in playing God, there may never be emotional growth ever again. If we simply delete every bad thing that ever happened to us, we’ll never learn how to do right, because we will continually remove any evidence of poor decisions and consequences.

Think of the problems. Someone is accused of a crime, evidence is gathered, and a person is caught. Unfortunately, this person can not remember doing the crime, because it has been wiped from their mind. Do you still send them to jail? Our legal system says yes. You are, in essence, punishing a man who doesn’t know what crime he committed.

Now imagine that you are put on trial for a crime; you protest that you never did it, but people come against you with evidence that you did. They say that you did it, then had your mind wiped; you don’t remember it because you chose not to remember it. You cannot refute this. You can’t say “I know I didn’t go into a memory wipe station” because if you did, it’s out of your memory; if you didn’t, they can say it’s out of your memory, which is why you’re against it.

In addition to stunting emotional growth in human beings, unfair trials can be had and people will suffer. This is horrifying.