«My name is Joel Barish and I came to delete Clementine Kruczynski“Jim Carrey told Tom Wilkinson before entrusting himself to Mark Ruffal in the incredible screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry when it comes to directing.” The film “Forget Me” in Spain and “Eternal Glow of Mind without Memories” in Latin America introduced us to an alternative present or a very near future. in which neuroscience allows us to selectively erase memories.

Selective erasure of memories sounds like something extremely positive at first could be used to deal with the consequences of traumatic experiences that have caused psychological consequences. I don’t think it is necessary to give examples, because I certainly think of certain types of experiences that contribute little or no to personal growth, but which can become an incredible ballast that can last a lifetime.

There will be a much smaller match, yes, if we talk about negative memories, but from which we learnand which shape our personality. «He who does not learn from the mistakes of the past is doomed to repeat them“Said George Santayana, a philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist, and selective erasure could certainly affect this ability. And although selective erasing is not yet an option, we already have the tools to do so in part.

This reasoning is born of the result of a promotional text I saw in Mashable, in which the expert offers its services for deleting image elements using Photoshop. For some cases a very practical option, but it is illustrated by a photo of two people and its version in Photoshop, in which one of the two people completely disappeared. Selective erasing applied to digital media.

Photoshop content filler.

I’m not against retouching photos, I think tools like Photoshop are very, very useful because they allow you to make all kinds of corrections, which has contributed to the development of digital raw. allows you to get absolutely impressive pictures. Any adjustment aimed at improvement is, in principle, positive, although its misuse to make a substantial adjustment to reality may also be in doubt, but what really raises a lot of doubt in me is erasure.

I also want to clarify something here, and that is not the same thing to delete, for example, a person who “slipped” on a photo that he should not be, like a spontaneous classic that slips in without realizing the bill or someone who wants to joke, which can impair memory. In these cases, I think using Photoshop to delete is more than justified. It’s something very different from removing something or someone whose presence in the image was justified at the time, but which became uncomfortable over time.

It seems to me to resort to Photohop to perform a selective memory erase a clear example of trying to adjust the past simply to please us more, but steals much of the experience gained along the way. The past is as it is, and trying to rewrite it to suit our wishes is nothing more than a conscious manipulation that we will deceive ourselves in any case.

What do you think? Did you use Photoshop or other retouching tools to remove something you didn’t want in the photo anymore? Or do you think using Photoshop to change the past and memories is a mistake? Would you justify it anyway?