But Don't Hate Her When She Gets Up To Leave

The first of two articles inspired by "Eternal Sunshine..." in Sunday's Times, Zapping Old Flames Into Digital Ash, is about how technology makes it possible to erase digital memories of relationships. I gave some quotes for this story but I didn't make the cut! Judging from the article, I think it's because I completely disagreed with the premise. I would never in a zillion years destroy any artifacts from a relationship, and that's what I said. Some excerpts that shocked me:

"In the old days it was burn the letters," said Dr. Kathryn Faughey, a psychologist in Manhattan, who counsels the lovelorn to destroy all trappings of failed relationships. "Today, clear the hard drive." AND

In her column, Ms. Lynn suggested tactics for digital deletion:

• "Block every I.M. handle."
• "Check `My Pictures,' `My Documents' and your attachments folder for images."
• "Don't forget to check your P.D.A., your text-messaging device and your cellphone."

I'm definitely of the school of thought that doesn't view relationships that end as "failed relationships". That a psychologist would "counsel the lovelorn to delete all trappings of failed relationships" really shocks me. Maybe she deals exclusively with stalkers or something.

Much less unsettling was "Charlie Kaufman's Critique of Pure Comedy". Excerpt:
"To paraphrase (and, heaven knows, to simplify), moral perfectionism is the idea not that we can become flawlessly good, but rather that we can, by a combination of self-knowledge, luck and grace, get ourselves right and be true to those we love."

I was Googling around on the subject of love, and found a new project for the Esteemed Mr. Kaufman. From Oxytocin.org:
"...our genetically-enriched descendants may view us as little better than sociopaths. For with enlightened gene-therapy the role of, say, key receptor sub-types of the 'civilising neurotransmitter' serotonin, the 'hormone of love' oxytocin, and the 'chocolate amphetamine' phenylethylamine, can be radically enhanced.

When naturally loved-up and blissful on a richer cocktail of biochemicals than anything accessible today, our post-human successors will be able, not just to love everyone, but to be perpetually in love with everyone as well. Whether we'll choose to exercise this option just because it's technically feasible is another question"

(So this Kaufman movie would be Ayn Rand-ish, Orwellian, One Man Refuses To Conform...but he would fall in love in the end anyway.)

A recent article in The Economist (of all places), hypothesizes similarly, but more realistically:
"So love, in all its glory, is just, it seems, a chemical state with genetic roots and environmental influences. But all this work leads to other questions. If scientists can make a more sociable mouse, might it be possible to create a more sociable human? And what about a more loving one? A few people even think that “paradise-engineering”, dedicated to abolishing the “biological substrates of human suffering”, is rather a good idea."

All this reminds me of a book I read in college, The Modern Temper, by Joseph Wood Krutch (1929). It's mostly about the disillusionment of those Fitzgerald described as "a new generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken." My favorite passage from The Modern Temper:
"For the more skeptical of the Victorians, love performed some of the functions of the God whom they had lost. Faced with it, many of even the most hardheaded turned, for the moment, mystical. We have grown used-more than they-to a 'Godless universe', but we are not yet accustomed to one which is loveless as well, and only when we have so become shall we realize what atheism really means."

"Love is a cult. It's practically our National religion." -Philip K. Dick