I agree. It reminds me of a conversation I was just having with a friend who floated the idea that Alzheimer's, in stripping away many of our mental functions, could be considered at least partly a good thing. My response was that for all the Alzheimer's patients I've had the opportunity to know (a handful personally, maybe 10 peripherally), it's been horrible to every one of them. Subsequent conversations with Renee' revealed that her colleagues bin them into 2 groups, the happy ones and the angry ones. So, perhaps the former are just fine with losing all those functions, maybe freeing them up to exist in a happy, simpler state.
The same would be true of any (treatable) condition, including PTSD. Ultimately, the decision to interfere/manipulate one's trajectory through the world depends on one's conservatism and openness to new experiences. But a fundamental flaw in individualist thought is that the decision lies solely with that one person. Because people are at least partly socially constructed (I am who I am because of the roles I play in society.), such decisions are made by the whole system. And if a PTSD sufferer has become dysfunctional in his social fabric, then that fabric makes the decision whether to treat/manipulate his trajectory. More complicated conditions might be narcissism, bipolar disorder, or Asperger's where the person is quixotic but not (really) dysfunctional and has grown into that person *with* that condition over a long haul (as opposed to a more acute event). In those situations, I'd lean more toward your latter dilemma between continuing to hone the one personality or explore some alternatives. On 1/1/19 6:46 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > The premise of the series is that a drug + counseling is used to mitigate > PTSD symptoms, but in fact it ends-up deleting recent memories and was > intended to make soldiers able to continue service. > > One might argue that accumulation of emotional trauma is part of one's > personality, and relieving it destroys part of a person. One might also > argue that to have just one personality, developing on a contiguous timeline, > is a sort of arbitrary confinement -- like living in a freezer that just > keeps getting colder. > > I don't know what the actual risks are of MDMA. Alcohol's side effects, in > terms of impairment of judgement, are already pretty dangerous. -- ∄ uǝʃƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
