Is it scary that scientists have discovered how to delete bad memories?

David Campbell finds total recall a curse, not a blessing (Metaphortography)

To be honest, most of the detail of this story bypassed my memory and went straight to my brain’s spam folder, where it joined my physics and chemistry O Grades.

But what I did pick up was that they think this new knowledge might help traumatised soldiers by allowing doctors to delete their ugly memories.

I confess that scared me a bit – if they can delete bad memories what else can they delete? And what can they put in its place? All very Manchurian Candidate.

Then again, I suppose even the less military of us might benefit from a bit of induced forgetfulness.

Think about when you wake up in the morning. There’s a brief moment – no more than one to five seconds – when you feel happy, or at least content. That moment when the light is creeping round the edges of the curtains and you’re emerging into a world that is new again.

Then you start to remember that thing you said in the pub last night. The fact that your MoT is overdue. The looming threat of unemployment. The even loomier threat of having to go to work.

Donald Trump. Brexit. World War 3. And your day begins.

By the end of the day you’ve accumulated even more stuff you remember. and it’s all leaping about inside your head with the stuff that was already there. so that even the new Jeffrey Archer can’t get you off to sleep.

It seems to me that if boffins can isolate the place where the unpleasant memories live, surely they can just as easily isolate the place where there are no memories at all, the place that switches on first when we awaken.

If they could develop a pill that would switch the memories off and leave the happy place on, imagine the potential, for the wellbeing of humanity and huge profits.

Take one before bed and you’ll drift blissfully and immediately off to sleep. Every other sleeping tablet will become obsolete. Millions will become rested and happier. Billions will go into the inventor’s bank account.

Which reminds me, I must phone Edinburgh and remind them I thought of this first. Before I forget.

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