I think Mr. Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence exercise and how he presented it is clever, cold, and somewhat cruel. s quite arrogant to demand that one’s willingness to prove having lived a valuable life can only be established by one’s choice of whether or not to relive it for eternity. Nietzsche seems to assume an equal playing field and his proposed eternal recurrence insinuates that our free will gives us control of what happens around us and to us. To dispute this, all one has to do is compare a female in Afghanistan, or how about a transgender person in Pakistan, to a white male in the United States born into a family of middle or upper class. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that the male will come to the conclusion that his life has been valuable, while the female in Pakistan will most likely be at a loss to consider anything other than how they made it from one day to the next. According to Nietzsche’s ER, the woman hasn’t led a life of value, and I can bet she wouldn’t want to live it for eternity! His ER exercise just points out the insane inequalities in the world and how much of our lives is determined by things outside of ourselves. It also indicates to me that he must somehow embrace the belief that all people deserve what is handed to them in life and that if they don’t like it, then it is within their power to change it. He said, “the strength of a human comes from their ability to face and accept the truth.” Really? I would ask him to live for one day as a transgender person in Pakistan or Afghanistan, begging for food, living among garbage, and being violently attacked on a daily basis. Let him apply his theory about the value of appreciating the present when any given present moment is nothing more than agony, torture, and fear! If he can do this and still believe this person should want to relive his or her life for eternity, then I might see some validity in his proposal.
I wouldn’t choose to be a participant in Eternal Recurrence for several reasons: First of all, although I have a good life now, my past held a great deal of emotional and physical pain. Sure, I made it through it and even feel somewhat proud of how I dealt with it, but there’s no way in hell that I’d choose to relive it! I also don’t believe that my decision has anything al all to do with whether or not my life was valuable! Being an atheist and having never lived in hopes of a second in ‘heaven’ or eternal life that the Catholic church tries to sell, I am doing my best to make this one life on Earth an experience that’s lived in harmony with others while giving fair attention to my needs and desires. I pay attention to how I live my life and fully accept my shortcomings, but that’s been a long and often painful process. So I don’t take the easy way out by placing my sins in a religious fairy tale and expecting to be absolved of them each Sunday. I’ve always been quite content with life being a one time shot with an end. Just cremate me and use my remains to fertilize your garden, fine with me! Second, I’d never take on a challenge such as eternal occurrence life. What a waste of my time! I’m better off putting my energies into living my life today and taking each experience as it comes. When my time is up I need to evacuate this earth to make room for others. Like the fall leaves, I’m happy help fertilize the ground and help nourish those who come after me.
It’s awfully tempting to want to erase the memory someone who’s caused me great suffering and I’m glad I’ll never be given that opportunity. I can say that there have been many times in my past when I would have said, “Yes,” to the eliminating of my memories of a certain person. As much as I still despise this person and know he still inflicts pain on others, after reading Christopher Grau’s article, I wouldn’t do it today. It isn’t out of respect for that person, but out of respect for myself and my right to have memories of all my experiences, whether they be good or bad. If I could ask Nietzsche what to do, he’d probably give me different answers on different days. One one of his good days, maybe after a few vodkas, he’ probably say. “Sure, erase your memory of that person, there’s no universal morality that says you shouldn’t. Go ahead and do what makes you happy.” He would remind me that, “Forgetting is vital to humans, memory, and thereby the memories it accumulates, weighs about man and paralyzes his action.” But the day after, maybe when he’s got a nasty hangover, he might consider me weak and tell me to, “Face it like a man, or woman, saying, ‘Why bother to change your course in life? Even if you erase his memory you’ll still be the same person and do the exact thing again.” And he’d be right! In certain cases of traumatic injuries I think the option of memory removal, even if left up to qualified doctors, should not be acceptable. We’ve already become too dependent on unnecessary procedures, and my view is that we need to learn how to live, rather than try to control our minds and mess around with what makes us human.
It’s awfully tempting to want to erase the memory of someone, (my older brother) who caused me great suffering throughout my life. I’m glad I’ll never be given that opportunity. But I can say that there have been many times in my past when I would have said, “Yes,” to the elimination of his memory or even of him! As much as I still despise him, I’ve learned to let go of the anger that for too long took up spa e in my head. After reading Christopher Grau’s article, I found additional reasons why I wouldn’t have his memory erased. My memories of this person, as shitty as they are, are mine, and I have a choice of how to deal with them. I must assume that they have had a positive effect on how I’ve developed my sense of empathy and formed my ethical behavior. It certainly has shown me how NOT to be, and that’s definitely one way of learning. The greatest gift of occasionally revisiting the memory of this horrible person, my brother, which I keep locked away in a hidden compartment, has been the unbridled joy I get when I observe my son being a loving and protective big brother to his sister. He compliments her, he supports her, he’s proud of her accomplishments. Their relationship is the antithesis of what I experienced with my brother.
In The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the main characters, Joel and Clem, each know about the other’s edited memory yet opt to give love another try. They believe truth will be the key to their chance for happiness. But they only have the truth that the memory deletions have occurred. They will never have the truth of what happened in their previous relationship. They will relive it with the same outcome and the result will be the same unhappiness because they won’t have had the benefit of the original experience. I would think they would feel confusion and a perhaps a sense of failure. The memories were erased but the events were not deleted. They are still the same two people, but now they’re repeating the same path without being armed with memories that could help guide them. I don ‘t thing happiness can endure if truth is taken out of the equation. Sooner or later happiness is eroded and replaced with mistrust when it becomes evident that a truth has been hidden. In the case of a deleted memory, lack of the whole truth detracts from ones complete understanding of how that person responds to different stimuli. Consequently, the memory of how you felt or responded in an erased event has been take. We learn from our mistakes. We grow from our mistakes. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we have a duty to remember, but I would say it is to our benefit to remember and to the benefit of others to remember us, the good and the bad.
Nietzsche, who made his Eternal Recurrence theory, “a test of greatness or action and nobility to the man who can answer yes,” had no intentions illuminating us. He simply promoted himself while suggesting that others assess their lives under faulty presumptions. There is absolutely no connection between living a valuable life and desiring to repeat it for eternity. Although Joel and Clem made the decision to affirm their lives by accepting the fate of repetition, it was unnecessary. Because in reality we already do this. Our character traits don’t change simply by eliminating a memory. We can all attest to making the same mistakes over and over again, so living eternal occurrence or erasing a memory isn’t necessary. We are just creatures of habit who spend a lifetime trying to change our actions or reactions in hopes of finding happiness or meaning.
In ESSM, the affected characters, Mary, Clem, and Joel, at first don’t seem outwardly harmed. Their personalities are the same, with the same flaws as well as positive traits. Their days go on as usual. As they move forward, we see Joel struggle to hang on to his memories of Clem, even though he wasn’t aware of what was going on. We also must remember Mary, reliving her crush on the doctor and finding her advances being rejected. They will likely live through the same pain again, and there is no way the doctor and his procedure can be held accountable for this. As you watch Joel and Clem restarting their relationship, still attracted to each other, it’s hard not to feel sorry for what will surely come, more pain, confusion, and another break up. They have lost the experiences with each other that may have led them on better paths with more opportunities to learn from their past. They have been changed, a part of them is gone, deleted from their brain, which causes them to be cut off from part of their world. Imagine having an arm removed and having no memory of ever having it. You are still missing that arm and it will affect your life even if you don’t remember having it. In a sense, you are in deprivation of something you should by nature have, and as so, you will miss out on experiences you would have otherwise had. Christopher Grau refers to a’ “voluntary lie by omission, the narrative of your life has been, in part, fictionalized.” He refers to the point of view of utilitarians such as Bentham, Mill, or Sidgwek, who would claim that as long as the decision is, “the right action, one that brings about the most happiness overall, where happiness is understood in terms of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.” But in the case of memory removal, it is unknown if this would be the case in the long run. Look at Mary, who was destroyed when she found out about her procedure. She was deprived (even though it was with her consent) of a correct reflection of the world, slandered and misrepresented not only to herself, but to others.
Deciding between truth or happiness depends on who you are, what you believe, and what philosophy you ascribe to. The problem with the memory issue is that although the procedure happens to you, if affects other people. I hate to assign a moral value to holding on to all of our memories and I can’t agree that it’s our duty to remember. But I do think we should have every opportunity to remember the events, feelings, and consequences of our experiences, all of them.
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Christopher Grau
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