Ignorance is bliss

This is a promo photo Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey on the beach.

The Oxford dictionary defines transhumansim as “the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technologythe belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.” This idea is explored in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A company called Lacuna, Inc. has invented a technology that can erase the memory of a person or event from someone’s mind. This technology could be considered helpful in many situations: the death of a loved one is can be extremely painful; a relationship that ended badly, or that was tumultuous throughout; an extremely traumatic event such as getting raped. All these things are better left in the past and forgotten. However, these are also things that a person can learn from. When someone dies, at the time it is horrible and painful, but eventually it just becomes a reminder that life is fragile. A bad relationship becomes a lesson on what kinds of people not to date. (A rape is always bad. I suppose the only reason a person would want to remember that is so they can testify in court.) This technology could also be disastrous in the wrong hands. There are many important people in the world that cannot forget certain things without disastrous results (for example, if Obama’s memories of being president were erased, there would be some issues).

The transhumanism movement, for me, is kind of scary. While many amazing things have come out of it, such as a paraplegic’s ability to move robot arms with their mind, I have always been afraid that our technology will become even smarter than the people that in event it and take over the world. I especially do not like the idea of erasing people’s memories, because, as I mentioned before, I feel like all of the events that happen in our life that are awful enough that we would even consider erasing them, have some sort of lesson or silver lining.