Title says it all.

Would you want to be able to remember anything? School would be a breeze, you'd take one look at the textbook and remember it forever. You'd probably be better at playing cards, too. There's lots of reasons a perfect memory would serve you well.

But, what about forgetting anything? Any old memory that you know only serves to inhibit you, erasable at will. You have a grudge on someone you know isn't founded, but still irks you to this very day? Remove the memory and all the bad emotions surrounding it. You could also forget the endings of TV shows and watch them over and over again. You would be able to forgive quite easily, you'd probably be a much kinder person for it.

Personally, my memory is one of the top 3 things I would want to improve dramatically, so I would go with that. I also have a personal fear towards forgetting things in general, so I would definitely go for the photographic memory. It would make things a lot simpler.

cant dispose of problems by forgetting them, and remembering your mistakes is the best way to avoid them again, so ill go with photographic memory, it can be useful in many fields :3

oh also, even if you forget, the others wont...

i dont know if i missed something but for me its a one sided choice. now someone say something to oppose me :3

>>2 Magnolia had a good argument for that. Memories can serve to destroy you slowly with self doubt and the like. It's mostly about your emotions being heavily affected by constantly remembering stuff. I can't explain it very well, it is in the old thread somewhere.

There's already plenty of memories I'd honestly rather forget.

While the obvious perks to having a perfect memory can be used in daily life, being unable to forget seems more like a curse depending on what kind of a life you lead.
For instance, if you live a fairly civil life in a first world country with a decent upbringing, there's likely little to no memories that are too painful for you to deal with, simply because of the environment you live in.

However, what if these conditions were different?
What if you lived in a country of constant war where invaders would come to rile conflicts up again, where you were forced as a child to watch your parents killed by a militia group?
What if you were a starving orphan on the streets that had to eat garbage and steal to survive, only to receive looks of pity as no one came to help you?
Or perhaps you've grown up in such a civil environment, lead to believe things were better than others told you. In that foolishness, perhaps you decided to follow in your friends' footsteps and join the Marines or some such, only to have to watch and remember your very same friends be tortured to death in front of you, again, unable to forget.

Of course, most of these ideas being tossed around sound quite foreign to many of us, as it's unlikely that it's happened to such severity in our own lives. However, remember that there are people who actually fit these stories out there.

I'll give a real example, just to stop with the fiction.
Back in High School some years ago a friend and I decided to drink some vanilla coke (it's the shit) on the roof of the parking garage, as I was helping him get over his recent girlfriend breaking up with him. While I knew it was going to take a while, what I didn't expect was that a security officer would spot us (it was around 8 at night I believe), and come talk to us.

While he originally thought we had come to the roof to do drugs, he soon laughed it off as his honest mistake. For the sake of the story, let's call this man John. Now, as the night went on, John decided that while my other friend was crying his heart out, he'd come clean on some of his experiences in the Marines as well. In hindsight it wasn't really a proper thing to tell high school boys, but it didn't really matter at the time.

John was deployed to Iraq during the war as a foot soldier. He had already lost track of the amount of time he had been there by then, along with several of his dear comrades. While he wasn't sure what to tell their families when he got back, what ended up sending him home was much worse.

Up in a small Iraqi town in the mountains was John's squad, taking a usual route past the town to head back to HQ after a mission. Since it was only about a mile and a half, they decided to walk it. As the squadron approached the town however, they noticed a landmine had been placed on the road into the town, albeit somewhat poorly.

Luckily, in John's squadron there was a bomb defuser. Simple enough, these things popped up out of nowhere. It had become more commonplace to see a mine then there was to not see a mine, after all. While John's squad mate defused the bomb, laying down in the sand, a boy came up to them from the village, as they were nearly at the entrance.

This boy was holding an AK 47, pointed at the bomb defuser.

John and the rest of the squad imminently pulled their rifles out on the child, repeatedly yelling for him to put the gun down.
The boy kept glaring at the defuser.
And then pointed the gun, and his hateful glare, at John.

More screaming ensued for the child to put down the gun. Marines from the squad we steadily keeping their distance while making hand motions to the boy to get him to drop the gun.

Rounds were fired.
John had shot the boy.

According to John, he saw that the boy was not going to put down the gun unless he had died, although he never knew for sure if he would actually shoot.
The boy was estimated 7 years old, and had part of his face blown apart and ripped by the round, dying shortly after. Families came out of the town after hearing the rounds, a mother coming out in particular to grab the body of the dead boy, only to cry in anguish at the sight of him.

It was this that caused John to develop dramatic PTSD, and be forced to be sent back home, where the only job he found himself able to hold was for police and security.
Even years after, John couldn't forget the look in that boy's eye, or how he had, as he put it, "told himself he had to kill the child."
From my point of view, it still looked like he couldn't forget about it, much less forgive himself. Last I saw him he was still alone drinking alcohol between shifts, but I haven't heard from him since.

In cases like this, I would most certainly not go with photographic memory. I'm quite sure John wouldn't either, but that's merely my assumption.

Memory can become a curse or a blessing, depending on what kind of memories one has, really. Honestly it depends on your background, but there's people out there who would much rather forget than remember (and vice versa).

>>4 Thank you for sharing.

I have an eidetic memory, and I love it. Makes tests a breeze, and always has. That, or professors have always been horrible at making tests.

Photographic memory. I want to remember everything, especially the bad stuff. no matter what comes in the future, you allways have the past~

<<.7 ditto the past makes you who you are if you forget the parts you didn't like you wouldn't be you anymore

>>3 im not familiar with that so i cant say much, but it still leaves the fact that others will remember, i think that could be a problem

>>4 i think its better if he just gets over the memory naturally. If he forgets he might repeat his mistake.or make an even worse one

>>9 Doesn't really matter if others remember. What I was talking about in the last post was how depression makes use of your guilt and really cuts you open with it by having you relive years of mistakes. It's not even mistakes that anyone would remember or bring up. Depression & guilt is such a weird cocktail, that if you were to speak up about what all you feel guilt over, about 90% people would wonder why the hell it's still bothering you.

So if I could forget these memories, it wouldn't matter if others remember. It's a purely selfish desire; even if others were to mention said memories, you usually can't feel guilty over what you can't remember. And certainly not for long-term.