I was just reading azdak’s review of Origin and she makes an interesting point that’s expressed by Illyria during the episode. Paraphrasing slightly:
If identity is nothing but an assembly of recollections (we are what we remember), then people are constantly changing, as a result of experiences that lay down new memories, so whether those new memories are acquired now or retroactively is unimportant. There’s no fixed Platonic Ideal Self that can violated anyway. You just are who you are at any one time.
In any case it is striking that in all three cases that ME’s brought up the idea of memories being tampered with it’s never been dealt with as an unforgivable crime. With Dawn everyone just accepted the changes. As you’d hope people would with a metaphor for finding out that someone was adopted. With Willow, Tara does get to express her outrage but that’s about all. On the whole the Lethe spell gets treated as if it were analogous to Willow covering for things by lying about them rather than committing mind rape. I suppose you could think of lying as violating trust and some lies can feel almost like rape to the ‘victim.’ I’m not sure where this is going. It’s interesting.
If identity is nothing but an assembly of recollections (we are what we remember), then people are constantly changing, as a result of experiences that lay down new memories, so whether those new memories are acquired now or retroactively is unimportant. There’s no fixed Platonic Ideal Self that can violated anyway. You just are who you are at any one time.
In any case it is striking that in all three cases that ME’s brought up the idea of memories being tampered with it’s never been dealt with as an unforgivable crime. With Dawn everyone just accepted the changes. As you’d hope people would with a metaphor for finding out that someone was adopted. With Willow, Tara does get to express her outrage but that’s about all. On the whole the Lethe spell gets treated as if it were analogous to Willow covering for things by lying about them rather than committing mind rape. I suppose you could think of lying as violating trust and some lies can feel almost like rape to the ‘victim.’ I’m not sure where this is going. It’s interesting.
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