Last Friday, I attended Rose’s screening of Black Mirror‘s season 1 finale, an episode entitled “The Entire History of You.” In a dystopian future, characters have had their necks implanted with tiny grains that record everything the user does, says, sees, and hears. Therefore, the consumer can replay  moments from their lives anytime. As our society unceasingly proceeds with technological advancements, the Black Mirror poses the question: Should we be able to relive our memories at the click of a button?

Based on this episode and my own logic, I say no. Although watching old memories may seem fun, similar to viewing nostalgic home movies, there are too many costs that would burden our society were we to adopt memory grains. Under this technology, trust would disintegrate, the bliss of ignorance would be destroyed, and living in the present would no longer be an desirable option. Rather than trust loved ones, we would be able to investigate the truth through our and their memories. Sometimes the truth comes at a price, as humans discover things that ruin their happiness, uproot their relationships, and break the comfort and stability of the present. Honestly, although the truth is what we humans constantly seek out, ignorance can be desirable.  With memory grains, humans would constantly nitpick at past interactions and relive good moments in their history, possibly wishing to return. By living in the past, we stop ourselves from making progress in the present and creating fun, new moments, memories, and relationships.

The primary character, Liam, manifests all these pitfalls of the memory grain. After a dinner party with his wife (Ffion), friends, and a man named Jonas, Liam drives himself mad replaying memories from the occasion, repeatedly, from dusk until dawn, analyzing his wife’s facial expressions, dialogue, actions, and reactions in the presence of Jonas. Eventually, after much intense interrogation, Ffion admits to a previous relationship with Jonas, before her marriage to Liam. So, Liam, angry, beats Jonas and demands that he remove, on a TV screen, every memory he has shared with Ffion. Afterwards, while replaying this disturbing memory with Jonas, Liam discovers that one of the memories removed by Jonas implicates his wife in an affair with Jonas, around the time when Liam and Ffion’s baby was conceived. His wife insists that the affair is over and that Jonas wore a condom, but Liam, mistrustful, forces her to replay the memory of her sexual encounter with Jonas and discovers that Jonas did not wear a condom. Therefore, Liam’s baby may not even be his own. With this memory grain, a marriage has been destroyed and a fatherhood thrown into question.

Liam has thus showcased the memory grain’s power to promote mistrustfulness, ruin relationships, stability, and comfort, and encourage an inability to live in present. So, although the memory grain would undeniably give us a greater ability to access ultimate truths – at what cost? Is the truth worth it if it destroys our happiness, our trust, our love? In my opinion, it isn’t. Sometimes, as hard as it is to say, ignorance is blissful, and people couldn’t function or live in the present without it.