John Nathaniel M.

Sy Piecco | TVL-12

Is it ethical to erase memories?

Does the desire to erase painful memories outweigh the potential
loss of personal growth and learning?

As much as I want to erase my painful memories and such, I know it in fact isn’t ethical
to erase your memories. I genuinely want to as of this moment so I can focus on school
properly, but it just isn’t a good idea, morally or whatever.

As such, the desire to erase painful memories does outweigh the potential for personal
growth and learning. Why do I say this? It’s because it would mean that we’ve never
experienced such an event or occurrence. This would prevent us from growing as a
person and learning from such events or occurrences.

I know it’ll be nice and relieving to erase and forget a painful memory or experience,
trust me, I know I would feel so much better. But that’s the problem. If we never
experienced such an event or occurrence, we’d be oblivious to potentially the same
events or occurrence. Unlike if we never erased our memories, we’d spot the little
details that would lead to the memory we wanted erased.

To me, erasing your painful memories does bring about freedom in one’s mind. But if
you do, you’d most likely have that same memory happen again, and then it’ll just be a
cycle of you erasing your memory, being free and happy again, then experiencing the
same event or occurrence.

Simply having a memory of such event or occurrence would lead you to like I said,
spotting those tiny details and prevent yourself from making another of those painful
memories. There are a lot of ways to be happy when you’re in a bad mental state.

I completely understand why people would think of such a thing. We think we’re not
strong enough to move past such painful experiences, but in reality, we are. We just
have to believe in ourselves, then we’ll be happy and free again. But the difference is
that you are now able to prevent that same experience from happening.

Thank you for Reading/Listening to my paper.