For quite a bit of the body of the story, where the two women are communicating by mail, I just wasn't that interested. I zoned out for intervals and when I came back it didn't seem that I'd missed anything. (Or am I thinking of a different story? No one else seemed to mention that part, it has been a while since I listened admittedly)
But the overall technology and the way the story uses it are great food for thought. I liked how the author made cases for both sides of the debate, and made it seem real instead of a story which says "here is a lesson which I shall teach you" it just makes you think and then it stops, with no moral.
The advancement of the tech I can see as very realistic--I can see how research would be funded to help with PTSD patients, expand bit by bit until the whole populace considers it the new norm. If this tech were available, I believe it really would go like that, given enough time. It would bother me to no end, but as the populace aged and the people who remember life before that technology die of old age, it would become more and more acceptable.
To me the conclusion I've come to from contemplating this story is that people who go through this procedure are no less human than I am. But they are differently human. The world would not stop from this, the world would not become Hell on Earth, but it would be irrevocably different. I don't believe it would be a world that I would want to live in, but that is a personal preference, not a moral judgment, and might very well have as much to do with the natural fear of change. If I were born into a society where this was already normal, I would obviously think differently just as a result of seeing the things I see around me, and in that case I would probably accept it as a matter of course.
To me the main reasons why I wouldn't want to go through the procedure are:
1. To some extent what other people said about needing lows to experience highs, and etc. I do think this will be counterproductive in the long-run where stimulant abuse become a problem because neutrality is the new low and so people have to get high to feel anything.
2. If I don't mourn my loved ones, who will? If my wife died, God forbid, and no one ever felt the need to mourn her, I feel that would be a gross injustice to her for not reflecting on the effect she has had on my life, on the life of our son, on the life of her parents, on the life of all the people she's helped as a medical professional. Of course she would be dead, so she's not around to care whether or not anyone remembers her, and if I had gone through the procedure it wouldn't bother me either, so in that period of time no one would care about what I'm thinking now. But that's the problem!
Sure, everyone has to die sometime, and all the billions of us who are alive, and all of the many more who have ever been alive will go through this, so one could say that in the scheme of things a single death doesn't matter that much. Or one could say that all of those deaths matter because they matter to others. If no one can mourn the deaths then we might as well all die now and be done with it. Which, is probably exactly the kind of statement that the procedure is meant to sidetrack.
3. Going through the procedure, to my mind, is an act of suicide. Curing urges for suicide by going through with suicide, if you will. Everybody changes as time goes on. No one is ever the same person they were a year before. But the change is usually so gradual that you can't notice it, and for the most part is not a conscious choice. I mean, our choices have an effect on it--if I say "I'm going to backpack across Europe for a year" you will become a different person than if you say "I will take that entry-level job in my hometime and see where that takes me", but it is generally a choice between branching paths where each path will take you gradually away from who you are now. You can't stay the same person, so even if you like who you are you can only choose paths which will take you toward being another person that you can live with being.
--A procedure like this, on the other hand, is an intentional discarding of the person who you are right now and replacing it with another person who has some similarities but different motivations and different focuses of their mind, etc... If suicidal person decides to go through the procedure, in my mind they have only chosen a different form of suicide. In this case, it's a suicide that spawns another person that has your memories. Whether you call that a good thing or a bad thing is up to you, but I don't think that same person is there. When the post-op person looks back at their memories, won't it seem like the actions of a stranger?
--If a non-suicidal person goes through it, then I'd say the existence of that technology has driven them to this form of suicide, where a functional and more-or-less happy person chooses to discard their self to create another person who they objectively feel is "better". To me I'd say that this is tragic, as the person has been driven to kill themselves when they otherwise would not have.
I thought that her friend's suicide was incredibly selfish. She wanted to be mourned, and she made sure she was, if only for a brief time.
The ending line of the story was incredibly powerful. I find it very interesting that a line that taken out of context seems like it ought to be hopeful and happy, instead just strikes me as tragic and wasteful because of its context.
