(no subject)

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An ethical question has popped up recently, with the discovery of drugs that can prevent memories from forming. They have to be taken shortly after the incident to be effective; they prevent the passage of a memory from short-term to long-term. Is it okay, poses this dilemma, for emergency paramedics to administer these drugs to an unconscious trauma victim, without their consent because by the time they're conscious it'll be too late, so as to prevent memories of the trauma from haunting the victim?

I don't see how this is a question. No, of course it isn't. Our memories are what make us who we are. Our memories are the source of all our knowledge, all our functional awareness of how life works, and how to best live. This is what wisdom is. This is how children become adults. Taking a memory away, is taking away a tool. A confused and stressed-out person may, it's true, be unable to avoid hurting themselves with that tool. But again, the only way to learn how is through more experience. If the tool, the memory, is simply taken away, the person becomes less adult, less complete, less of a person than they would otherwise be. Loss is loss, period.

These drugs are far from FDA approval. More powerful technological means of editing a mind's contents, such as through cybernetic interfacing, are of course farther still, though visible on the horizon. But I didn't expect to have to run into this dilemma in real life so soon, so early. I forgot that there's another way for memories to vanish from one mind through the conscious action of another, which has been around for as long as the human mind. And more to the point, I didn't think anyone I knew would ever use it.

I've had several close friends with multiple personality syndrome. Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, is the chic tag. I have a knack for identifying them, getting along with them, drawing them out; I understand the mechanics of the phenomenon, often better than they do, and this often earns me the trust of the more guarded, deeper personae. They are, for obvious reasons, some of the most complex people I know; some of the most gratifying to converse and interact with. I tend to become close friends with multiples, because they stimulate my fascination with the workings of the mind, and I provide a person who they can talk to honestly and openly about their situation, without getting weird stares, being called a freak, or fearing the psych ward showing up at their door to collect.

On a couple of occasions, I've fallen in love with multiples. Not with individual personalities, that would be a disaster; I only let it happen if I can love the whole system, all its parts. Because even as they are many, they are also one, inseparable. I am in love with one right now, and have been for the better part of two years now. It's a good, strong love; the kind that's perfectly comfortable being friends from a few hundred miles if logistics dictates. But then she was killed. Not a normal death. Not a death anyone else would notice. Reversable, even. But to me, it's the same as if she stopped breathing in my arms.

One of her peers, one of the deep ones who rarely comes out, who sits in the background trying to nudge here and there and help her be happier, decided that she'd be happier if she stopped thinking about a certain person. A person who she idolized, and held herself up against, and constantly found herself failing to match (of course; this person is significantly older than her, much more practiced at all the things she does). Impatience and frustration have often made her sink into depression over this perceived failure. So this deeper peer erased that person from her mind. He thought this would help. And after the first try didn't stick, he went through a little more thoroughly, and erased all the associated things that would trigger the memories he'd identified as malignant.

The idol was an ex-girlfriend of mine. So most memories of me were excised. Years of history. Things as recent as a couple of weeks ago. She still knows who I am in general terms, and that I am a friend, but nothing more. It's been purged from the "primary" self's awareness, and in fact from a couple of others as well.

When I spoke with her, it didn't take long to figure out what had been done. And then, the one who did it came out to tell me why. And I understand. I know what he was thinking, why he thought it would help. And he pointed to the fact that she was clearly happier now.

I tried to explain what was wrong with it. That what she had wasn't happiness, it was innocence; that without the memories, the lessons learned, without actually overcoming this problem on her own, she remained a child. That his caring hand wiping away the pain was also wiping away the wisdom gained from all those memories, and that which could be further gained by her overcoming this problem on her own.

Am I wrong? Does anyone have a good argument to the contrary? This is an existing ethical dilemma because it really is a hard question. Made harder, of course, by the fact that on a certain level all of these actions are occuring within a single mind. Can I argue against someone's right to do this to themselves?

Maybe not, but the same arguments stand against it being the right thing to do.

He still has her memories. He can put them back. But last I checked, he doesn't think he should. I asked him if he'd work with me on this... we're going to talk again when we have more time available.

I don't know what will come of this. But right now, someone I love is gone.