All of us have done things in our lives we'd rather not have done, things that flood us with remorse or pain or embarrassment whenever we call them to mind. If we could erase them from our memories, would we? Should we? Questions like these go to the nature of remembrance and have inspired films like ''Memento'' and, most recently, ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,'' in which two ex-lovers pay to erase their memories of each other. We are a long way from the day when scientists might be able to zap specific memories right out of our heads, like a neurological neutron bomb, but even the current research in this area ought to make us stop and think. Aren't our memories, both the good and the bad, the things that make us who we are? If we eliminate our troubling memories, or stop them from forming in the first place, are we disabling the mechanism through which people learn and grow and transform? Is a pain-free set of memories an impoverished one?
Pain avoidance taken to an entirely new level.
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