Socratease: Good day, fellow Playto. How goes your thinking?
Playto: My thinking is good, sir Socratease, as it always is when seeing you.
Socratease: You flatter me, ancient friend. Just as you did in all your.... Well, most of the dialogues you wrote about me.
Playto: Have I offended you in any of my writings?
Socratease: Oh, good heavens no, I must have really been that intrusive in person. It's true, there are things one can't fault about oneself until one has seen himself through the eyes of another.
Playto: Quite right, sir. It's like hearing your own voice for the first time on an answering machine. I've often wondered what a dialogue involving me would have entailed, had you ever written one down.
Socratease: An interesting conjecture, no doubt. But seeing as I never gave a hoot for recording rhetoric, there's no point in debating it. However, something has come to my attention which I would be interested in hearing your views on. Have you heard, my friend, that scientists have created a drug that has the power to destroy painful memories?
Playto: No sir, I did not. That is quite miraculous news. Painful memories are important though. If they were all destroyed, everything we've learned about functioning in the world would go away with them. We'd forget that sharp objects cause us to bleed, and that rushing into a lustful relationship normally ends messy. We'd have no way of remembering which are the things that give us pain, and which give us pleasure, because pleasure itself would have to dissolve with pain since one cannot exist without the other. We'd be reduced to emotionless insects, would we not?
Socratease: 'Tis true, nothing in the literature suggests that insects feel any pain, and therefore pleasure. But let me take a moment to digest what you said about painful memories. Surely the drug would only act against memories that are currently causing one's suffering, like the way morphine acts against temporary pain. We wouldn't be forgetting all our painful memories, just the ones we are currently facing, correct?
Playto: That may be true, Socratease. But it goes under the assumption that they only act on the short-term ones. What if you wanted to forget about a traumatic experience that was deeply rooted in childhood? You did indeed say the drug had the power to destroy any memory, making no distinction as to whether it was short or long term, or physical or emotional. If the root cause of your pain were a long-term emotional memory, it would defeat the purpose of marketing such a drug.
Socratease: That is a moot point, my friend. In this context we are only supposing that the drug acts against whatever memory is causing current pain. Short or long term, emotional or physical, it doesn't matter. Suppose you got a tiny papercut on your finger ten minutes ago. Would you need the drug in that case?
Playto: I would think not.
Socratease: Wouldn't the pain have gone away after about ten minutes?
Playto: Yes.
Socratease: And if a wound from childhood that was so great- such as the death of a parent- that it stayed with you your whole life, wouldn't you still feel the pain of that loss today?
Playto: Certainly.
Socratease: And wouldn't you want to be rid of it, once and for all?
Playto: Certainly not. It would be like denying the very thing that makes us human. An allowance for suffering helps us remember what we lost. If we forget what we lost, we will have also forgotten the things that made us treasure what we had. In the case of parents, such things would be the unconditional love, joy, and guidance they brought to our lives.
Socratease: Nothing about the drug indicates that one would forget every other memory associated with the thing that caused the pain, only that one specific sensation would be forgotten. All pain disappears eventually, but the memory of it remains. For example, you might remember that you slipped and broke your ankle playing your favorite sport twenty years ago. You would remember how painful that experience was, but would you still feel it today?
Playto: No, Socratease, I would not. The thing you aren't considering is the critical distinction between emotional and physical memories. Emotional ones stay with us much longer than physical ones. Sometimes they stay with us through the course of our lives. They are meant to teach us important life lessons, and if we erase them, we also erase all pleasures-
Socratease: Playto, excuse me for interrupting, but when morphine gets rid of physical pain, does it not allow for the remembrance of any pleasures that the same thing that caused the pain might have provided? In such an injury as I've described, you would still remember all the pleasures that sport brought you, despite it ending on a sour note.
Playto: Not always, Socratease. I can think of a great many instances in which something I used to find pleasurable became tarnished once a painful memory took over. It hasn't always happened, of course. An injury seldom causes an athlete to quit the thing he lives passionately for. But once again, we are only considering physical memories. Your analogies don't work with emotional ones. When a woman leaves you, it is much more difficult to remember the good times you had with her than the pain she left you with. You become so blind by the pain that you cannot remember the good things until well after the pain has subsided, and sometimes you still can't remember them. But it's there, nonetheless. That pain is there to remind you never to go back to it, for if you do, then you’ve constructed your own prison of emotional constraint. A drug such as the one being marketed would act as a cell that holds a man inside the prison associated with the object of his desire. People wouldn't learn to quit the things they should avoid, such as your position on this argument!
Socratease: Ah, but the matter hasn't brought me any pain. Not yet, anyway! Then you are saying that a painful memory caused by emotion, regardless of what it stems from, cannot be cured without violating all the pleasures associated with it? What if someone embarrassed me during a speech by throwing a tomato at my face? I'll be damned if I'm going to let some fool who embarrassed me defeat the pleasure that providing oratories gives me. Should I avoid all speeches just because a painful memory prevents me from doing it? Or what if one continuously gets embarrassed the first time they try any activity; should they let those painful memories keep them from trying them again?
Playto: It depends on the activity. There are some activities one isn't meant for, such as a blind man driving a car. In the case of failing an activity that one would otherwise do well with enough practice, one should not try to forget any pain associated with the embarrassment of failure, as the memories that caused them serve to help them learn from mistakes they've made, which ultimately helps to improve their form. In such a case as unlawful embarrassment, no- it would be beneficial to forget such pain. That is, unless the perpetrators keep doing the same thing to you (and maybe even others), and nothing is done to reprimand the criminals because everyone's taking a drug that alleviates the pain they've caused. Under such a circumstance, justice would crumble at society's feet, like the Statue of Zeus.
Socratease: Well said, my friend. I can see you've thought this through. However, I still can't imagine why anyone wouldn't use such a drug if a pain were so great that it rendered them socially catatonic, or self-destructive by any allegiances of addiction meant to soothe it. Such a drug would do well to replace those nasty addictions that help us forget about the misery such pains have caused. In any case, I agree that the purpose of pain is to teach us what to avoid, and as such serves a great purpose in our development. But I cannot agree that all emotional pain shouldn't be fought by using these weapons of forgetfulness. You describe the absence of pain as a numbness to danger, imprisoning us in cycles of abuse we aren't aware of being in. I describe being overwhelmed by pain as the same thing- an imprisonment of self-abuse we can't escape from. I suppose the proper course is only to administer the drug in such cases where the victim is in a life-threatening situation- as a danger to himself or others. Wouldn't you at least agree in that respect?
Playto: In such extreme cases yes, I'd agree. In those cases, it would be no different from a prescription drug or antidepressant, administered only by professional psychiatrists.
Socratease: Ah yes, well, this is a depressing turn in the course of our conversation, I'm afraid.
Playto: No doubt, good friend. Once again you have discovered the most ideal solution by the power of your reasoning.
Socratease: I wouldn't have discovered it without your assistance. Knowing you, this will probably be the next of your many dialogues!
Playto: A painful proposition indeed!
