Memory Loss and Limb Loss

Had an interesting conversation the other night – along the same lines as this post from David’s Journal. David, talking about an episode of ER in which a character lost a limb, asks that set of questions….Would you rather lose an arm than a leg, and so forth. Here’s a sample of some of David’s more male-centric questions:

Would you rather lose both arms or your penis?
That would be a really tough choice, and I’m sure I’d have big problems with depression no matter which I picked. But in the end I’d have to say a fond goodbye to my penis. […]

If you are heterosexual, would you rather have sex with a dog of the opposite sex or a human of your same sex?
Every guy I’ve ever asked this picks the dog. Every woman always picks the person. I’m no exception.

And here’s one I just thought of, that’s actually got me a little stumped:
If you are male, would you rather lose a finger or one of your testicles?
I keep going back and forth.

Reading stuff like this – especially David’s comment that "every guy I’ve ever asked" says the same – makes me feel very alienated from, well, guyhood. I’m sorry, but both arms vs penis is not a tough choice, and neither is finger vs testicle; I’d miss my penis and all (not so much the testicle), but they are outta here! And who on earth would pick the dog? Ewwww….

But anyhow, Bean – who had watched the same episode of ER – brought up an interesting question. How many years of memory would it take, for their loss to feel as great as the loss of a limb? That is, is losing a year of memory as bad as losing a limb? How about ten years of memory? If you had a choice between permanently losing all memory of the first twelve years of your life (although not losing skills gained, like walking or tying shoes), or losing your choice of limb, which would you take?

Halley took an extreme positions – she’d rather lose a limb than a single year of early memories. Her memories, after all, are part of who she is now; losing those memories irrevocably loses who she is. Losing a limb would change her future, but she’d still be herself, just herself with an injury. In her view, those memories are who she is; when asked about what if she lost all her memories in some Gilligan’s-Island-esque accident with a falling coconut, Halley said that the person who’d proceed from that point forward would be someone other than herself.

I took the opposite view – my memories helped mold who I’ve become, but now that I’ve been molded, I can lose memory without changing the essence of who I am. (My decision was made easier by the fact that I have almost no memories from before I was twelve). I’d definitely lose the memories up through my mid-twenties (I’m almost 34 now) before giving up a limb. Blueheron felt the same way.

We also discussed giving up memories of recent years versus memories of early years. The idea of losing recent memories – including more recent friendships and relationships – frightens me (we knew someone this happened to; she had a accident involving head trauma, and when she woke up she had lost a year’s worth of memories, and didn’t know her current friends, why she no longer hung out with her previous friend group, or that she and her boyfriend had broken up months ago). Although I think I’d still be myself without my recent memories, I think I’d be a sad and confused version of myself who would have trouble adjusting. Not unlike what I’d be like if I lost a limb, I suspect.

Halley, surprisingly to me, was blasé about losing recent memories; she felt that her life hasn’t changed much recently, so losing the last five years of memory wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

The conversation then lost focus and wandered in other directions. Blueheron told us about a science-fiction story he had read, in which literature had come to a standstill because people had gained the ability to wipe out their memories, and as a result people simply reread one book – their favorite – over and over again, wiping out the memory of it between each reading. (I can’t decide which book I’d choose – possibly Doomsday Book by Connie Willis – one of many Willis works that refutes Charles Murtaugh, by the way). A few chronic rereaders in the room, me included, objected that you’d lose much of the pleasure of rereading if you didn’t have memories of past readings.

Although I didn’t bring it up, I was reminded of my favorite Kim Stanley Robinson story, the novella Green Mars (not to be confused with his novel of the same name). In the novella, humans have life-extending technology enabling people to live for 800 years or more – but the human brain, it turns out, is only capable holding approximately two hundred years of memory. So although someone may be 500 years old, they can only recall back to around their 300th year – all memory before that point is missing. But there are some people, like Green Mars’ protagonist, who due to a genetic chance have normal memories of their entire lives. In the novella, the protagonist spends time with an ex-lover of his who has, of course, totally forgotten him and their relationship. I’ve reread Green Mars a dozen times, and I always find its depiction of memory fascinating and sad.

UPDATE: I just noticed Blueheron has posted about the same conversation in his journal.

UPDATE II: David has responded to this post.

UPDATE III: Just got this in email, from my friend Tishie.

The comments by bean about that choice were spurred, I believe, by an IM conversation between us. My prof and I made a measure of that for a specific purpose. In our pilot study, we asked people to imagine that they were missing one of their legs. Then we asked them to imagine that they were missing the memories from birth until a certain age, and asked them to indicate the age at which the two things would seem equal in severity. The mean age was 14. So, in college students at BSU, losing a leg is equivalent to losing the memories from birth to age 14. Just thought you might find that interesting.

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