Don't forget, with Lacuna, you can forget.
I watched an interesting episode of 60 minutes the other day that detailed some exciting new developments in brain studies and pharmaceuticals.
From what I understand, our memories are malleable. Though they are based on reality, they are still an interpretation. As we form the memory of something we experienced, factual details can fall in and out of focus, they can be completely absent or they can even be replaced by disinformation. Furthermore, it takes a long time for a memory to form, maybe days or years afterwards. In other words, our memories aren't perfect.
This is not the only way we form memories however. Imagine this:
Its a nice day. You are a walking through the jungle. A lion spots you and decides that its lunch time. You run to the nearest tree and begin to climb it. The lion claws your leg. You get a huge shot of adrenaline, your mind and body immediately focus. You manage to escape inspite of your injury to live another day.
The memory you form from that experience is not the least bit muddy, its actually rather solid and vivid. This memory doesn't take long to form, its made there on the spot. Your mind labels it as extremely important information that must not be forgotten. From an evolutionary stand point, this makes good sense seeing how the next time you encounter lion you will be wise enough to avoid another potentially lethal attack.
(Ok, this is where the Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind reference comes into play. )
Apparently, there is a new drug in development that allows you to weaken, alter, or possibly erase memories that were produced when you were under excessive amounts of stress. To put it another way, you can delete painful memories from your brain.
You might ask yourself, "Why would I want to remove a "lion memory" from my brain? If I did, I might not know enough to survive in the jungle." The answer is because painful memories can possibly cripple you, for example Vietnam war veterans or a victims of violent attacks who suffer with post traumatic syndrome..
The 60 minutes episode featured a woman who was raped as a young child, and was haunted by a vivid memory of being raped every single day of her life for the last 35 years. Once she began taking samples of the experimental drug, all of a sudden the memory of her rape stopped haunting her, and she even had difficulty recalling it. The creepy thing is that the rape was so deeply ingrained into her identity that once it was gone, she no longer felt like herself.
...
...
Edit:
So I was telling all of this new exciting brain information to my friend Miho and we got on the topic of Buddhism. We discussed how Buddhists strive to have no sense of self, have no judgement, and have a freely open mind / body / soul. Each experience ought to be approached calm peacefulness. And Its important to not lose control over your body (i.e. Stress, Excitement, etc).
The funny thing is that if I connect what I learned about Buddhism with what I learned on 60 minutes, then I can infer that by controlling their stress levels, Buddhist try to not form any solid memories. They also diminish the odds of having "defining" / "haunting" memories of their personal struggles in life. The very things that define them as indifviduals would cease to exist, resulting in a greatly reduced sense of "self".
I'm not an expert in brain studies nor Buddhism, so take everything I said with a grain of salt, but I thought it was amazing how modern science can connect with an ancient religion in such an interesting way, so I thought I'd share the good news.
From what I understand, our memories are malleable. Though they are based on reality, they are still an interpretation. As we form the memory of something we experienced, factual details can fall in and out of focus, they can be completely absent or they can even be replaced by disinformation. Furthermore, it takes a long time for a memory to form, maybe days or years afterwards. In other words, our memories aren't perfect.
This is not the only way we form memories however. Imagine this:
Its a nice day. You are a walking through the jungle. A lion spots you and decides that its lunch time. You run to the nearest tree and begin to climb it. The lion claws your leg. You get a huge shot of adrenaline, your mind and body immediately focus. You manage to escape inspite of your injury to live another day.
The memory you form from that experience is not the least bit muddy, its actually rather solid and vivid. This memory doesn't take long to form, its made there on the spot. Your mind labels it as extremely important information that must not be forgotten. From an evolutionary stand point, this makes good sense seeing how the next time you encounter lion you will be wise enough to avoid another potentially lethal attack.
(Ok, this is where the Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind reference comes into play. )
Apparently, there is a new drug in development that allows you to weaken, alter, or possibly erase memories that were produced when you were under excessive amounts of stress. To put it another way, you can delete painful memories from your brain.
You might ask yourself, "Why would I want to remove a "lion memory" from my brain? If I did, I might not know enough to survive in the jungle." The answer is because painful memories can possibly cripple you, for example Vietnam war veterans or a victims of violent attacks who suffer with post traumatic syndrome..
The 60 minutes episode featured a woman who was raped as a young child, and was haunted by a vivid memory of being raped every single day of her life for the last 35 years. Once she began taking samples of the experimental drug, all of a sudden the memory of her rape stopped haunting her, and she even had difficulty recalling it. The creepy thing is that the rape was so deeply ingrained into her identity that once it was gone, she no longer felt like herself.
...
...
Edit:
So I was telling all of this new exciting brain information to my friend Miho and we got on the topic of Buddhism. We discussed how Buddhists strive to have no sense of self, have no judgement, and have a freely open mind / body / soul. Each experience ought to be approached calm peacefulness. And Its important to not lose control over your body (i.e. Stress, Excitement, etc).
The funny thing is that if I connect what I learned about Buddhism with what I learned on 60 minutes, then I can infer that by controlling their stress levels, Buddhist try to not form any solid memories. They also diminish the odds of having "defining" / "haunting" memories of their personal struggles in life. The very things that define them as indifviduals would cease to exist, resulting in a greatly reduced sense of "self".
I'm not an expert in brain studies nor Buddhism, so take everything I said with a grain of salt, but I thought it was amazing how modern science can connect with an ancient religion in such an interesting way, so I thought I'd share the good news.
posted by Derrick Gomez at 11:09 AM
3 Comments:
This is a great topic Derrick. It's something I frequently think about as I am both a Buddhist, and someone who uses drugs as an aid. Incidentally, this "drug that makes us lose our memories" already exists, in fact it's been in use since the dawn of man, it's called marijuana!
It is unclear to me, how the Buddhists view use of marijuana in meditation practices. I have seen several instances of Buddhism advising followers of the path to abstain from alcohol. Having experience with alcohol, I can see why this is. But marijuana is different. And if you listen to someone describe it's effects, then listen to someone describing the state of mind of zen meditation, you'd think they're talking about the same thing.
One reason for this, is that the chemicals found in marijuana, also occur naturally in our bodies. So it's possible, that through meditation, we consciously increase these chemicals, or similar ones, or something. I'm almost positive that studies have been done to confirm this.
But I think the gist of what your writting about, and what I too find most interesting, is; does this state of mind lead to a higher state of consciousness? (where we all embrace loving kindness, and find the cessation of suffering, and all that good stuff.) AND, is this also possible, not through religious practice, but through a drug, or pill, or plant.
The conflict in this scenario seems to be, (and I think this is what you where getting at.), is "is it worth it?", it - (besides being a cleverly annoying advertising campaign.) being a life devoid of attachment, and deep experiences, and perhaps even devoid of memory completely. Well, my Buddhist handbook gives a straightforward answer. Life is suffering; only when one is free from the karmic rules of cause and effect will one be free from the reincarnation cycle of life and death; which is suffering.
I'll also add one more thing, because I think it's of minor relevance. I saw this movie with Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks. The plots not important, just that there children where getting married, and there was a wedding. The couple wanted both a rabbi and a buddhist monk to preside over the ceremony. Incedentaly, the rabbi was played by a fairly young jewish woman. Anyway, whenever she tries to interact with the monk, he just smiles with a blank look on his face till finally she throws up her arms and yells, "I can't talk to this man, he's a moron!" (or something like that.) I just thought this was an interesting (and funny) interaction which I haven't seen before.
-mike
Wow. I had never really thought about it before, so I'm glad I came across this. I have PTSD and have gone through a boatload of meds and therapy to get to a place where I'm kind of on the other side of it. Well, as much as anyone can be. I'm not 100% sure I'd want to have my memories wiped away, even the really horrible ones. I know it's quite Neitzeian, but I do subscribe to the "that which does not kill us, makes us stronger" philosophy. I feel like I've done a lot of work to get here and I'm rather proud of that.
But, I suppose if there are those who have some really debilitating memories that they just can't get past, it would be a benefit to them.
Thanks for giving me something to think about. :D
this is a pretty cool find, some links to follow up on or read more about would be awesome.
I personally wouldnt choose to rearrange parts of my past, but some cases really do need the help
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