You say, the interesting thing about marijuana’s ability to erase the memory, is that “You only remember the important things.” The argument is that you forget all the trivial things, and only remember what youre “supposed” to remember; things that actually matter. Such a philosophy serves as a remote temperance to the soul, but is dicey in relation to the importance of living out (and remembering) life’s natural intensities; which are equally enjoyable. It is one thing to be high enough to forget some of the events pertaining to what happened while you were pleasantly intoxicated, but it is another to accept that for what it is. Could you? To be truly content to remember only the events that seem to significantly matter, and forget all else (just as short-term habituation has developed in the brain to save us all from remembering the unimportant details of life…) is such a casual way of living. The question is, are you okay with that? It does in essence boil down to who you are as a person; some people are so matter-of-fact about life and knowledge, they respect information sorely with one approach, and that is the absolute, the bottom line: the “it is what it is, and I dont need to know anything else about it” approach. If thats the way you live, then I suppose one would be content to live so casually in absence of their full memory. But if youre someone like me, who loves to know the details, the finer points of everything, and store all of that knowledge away; then perhaps this concept would upset me, as it is not my nature. No, it really isnt. It is not my nature to live so casually–to say, this is what my brain chose to remember, and everything else I do not know of is, is now gone, and so I cannot care about it; I do not know what I am missing therefore I have no regret. I am not necessarily okay with the idea I am giving up so many possible memories, so much potential knowledge, so many finite details–and letting my brain choose for me what I remember and what I forget. Most likely, by random. Sure we are more likely to remember more important things than trivial things, but still there are moments in time that I remember that I couldve done without when sober, yet I carry them on in my brain like mundane pieces of luggage, with little of no importance to me at all. In essence, this philosophy provides that you give up youre conscious control over your memory entirely. You only retain what you happen to retain, and all else is lost. Can you be okay with that? Memories are important. Significant memories can also be just as important as the insignificant memories. A philosophy of the self quickly reiterates and reminds us of how we even know who we are. If we did not have memories, if we did not have some kind of relational past to reference ourselves and our “self-image” to, then how would we know who we are at all? It is memories that we look back on to decide our character in consciousness and to know and learn from our past behaviours to figure out who we really are. Big events matter, but little events make up the details of our soul. Little things that do no matter in life at all, like a funny comment, a smile, a moment, a second in passing, a happy feeling… all mundane, regular activities that pass through our skies on a second or moment to moment basis. Happy memories you might WANT to retain some day… they all make up integral points of who we are. If we did not remember these small moments, we would have no reference of our true selves. And thus, we cannot live so casually, we cannot accept that this philosophy to let intoxicants choose our fate, and our reference of character, and our memories chosen by random–we cannot accept this. We must reject it …
Notes left by: Georgina Kayt Gel
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