True. But would you (if you magically could, somehow) erase something really awful that happened to you from your memory. If John McCain could take a magic pill that would make him forget his years of torture as a POW do you think he would go for it? Even if that memory had the potential to cloud his judgment in the future (as some of his own party have suggested)? I don't think he would. I don't think I would either, although I can't honestly answer that for sure because I didn't go through that experience.

I don't know. It would be an interesting question to ask him. Thank God I've never been through what I would consider a serious traumatic experience, but I have seen many people come out broken from such things as came out stronger. I can't think of one person, for example, whose life and attitude was in any way improved by having been molested as a child. I suspect a lot of them would be eager to wipe those memories out. Same for a lot of other things.

The therapists' offices are full of people who did not process difficult experiences well. I'm not sure the jury's in yet on McCain, come to that, and while he might not want to erase the memory, you can bet your ass he would have been happy if it had never happened. He didn't have a choice in the matter. With some things, we do.

For every chronic druggie who gained insight from their experience, I suspect there's at least one wandering the streets talking to lampposts. Everybody has their own road to travel, and I'm certainly not going to keep them from it if it harms nobody but themselves (I don't like the current drug laws.)

But I still think (and it's just my opinion) there's more negative to "mind expansion" than positive. Life throws us enough to handle as it is, without deliberately adding to the chaos.