The European Union’s “Right to be Forgotten” is quite an odd concept, especially in today’s information-drive age, where an individual’s past can be easily searched online. The right is based around the idea that humans should have the ability to live their life without constant reminder of events that happened in his or her past— that is, to say, that they should have the right to have parts of their personal history ‘deleted’ from record, should they fear constant harassment about particular occurrences later in life.
There is a certain suspicion that surrounds an individual’s desire to use this right, as one might suspect that only those who have something to hide would seek to bury their past. Of course, in today’s society even a single false accusation can be enough to haunt a person for a long time, be it during their search for employment or even with unwanted attention for the public. But having historical information ‘deleted’ is not quite the solution to such issues.
While simple logic would follow that the deletion of information from public data and records would result in the ‘forgetting’ that this right describes, reality is not so simple. Very few people warm up to the idea of censorship, especially when personal matters are concerned. If an individual attempted to have a past event ‘forgotten’, many people could respond to the censorship of the information with opposition, attempting to spread the sensitive information in spite of the erasure. While it is not difficult to sensor small amounts of existing information online, it would become quite an undertaking to deal with hundreds of articles appearing at once in an upset response to the censorship. In addition, it is practically impossible to prevent the spreading of rumours through word-of-mouth. If anything, publicly attempting to have your history ‘forgotten’ could cause more scandal than the history itself.
It is also much harder to combat rumours when all official documentation pertaining to the events are erased from memory. Having the event lawfully ‘forgotten’ would remove the ability to fight rumours with facts, leaving the matter only to one person’s word against another.
A better alternative to the existing right to be forgotten would the be a right to be free of historic judgement. In the same way that all professional judgements (i.e court rulings and job appointments) are to be free of bias based on sex, race, appearance, or sexual orientation, they must also be free of bias based upon an individual’s past. Only recent history (perhaps limited to the previous three to five years) should be considered relevant information for such decisions. Thus, instead of erasing the past, we merely prescribe a relevancy to facts that decreases with time. After all, it does not make sense to judge a person today based on their actions ten years ago.
There’s a certain matter of maturity that would need to be expected with this, of course. But as a society, we should be expecting more from ourselves and from others. While all of us may wish to forget or erase some versions of our past selves — I know I certainly do — we must remember that hindsight is 20-20. Every painful memory that we’d rather forget serves as a lesson for our mistakes, and the unpleasantness of the memories is a crucial part of the learning. Without the threat of facing the same embarrassment or torment again, it’s far too easy to repeat the same mistakes again— just as the saying goes, those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it.
But this also must extend into our perception of others. It is far too easy for us to judge others based on what we hear from others, and what we can see on the surface, but never do these provide enough information for a truly accurate conclusion. It might seem easy to listen to rumours of the past — hell, they might even be right. But we should learn to make our own judgements based on our own experiences, not from the criticism of others. If you are going to condemn a person, ensure that it’s for your own reasons, and not because everyone else is doing it. People are capable of changing, for better or worse, and so should be measured based on the person they are now, not who they once were.
While the right to be forgotten has some understandable principles behind its conception, there are most certainly better alternatives to the erasing of history and censorship of public documents and individual speech. Rather than burying our past, it is better to accept it as what is was, and have the general consensus that its contents may not be relevant in the present day.
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