Something struck me recently, as I watched Kubo, and Coco—two animated movies that both deal with death, and highlight music and storytelling as mechanisms by which we can preserve people after they die.
Kubo begins “Don’t blink—if you blink for even an instant, if you a miss a single thing, our hero will perish.” This is not because there is something “important” that happens quickly that you might miss. Maybe there is, but it’s not the point. The point is that Kubo is telling a story about people. Those people are now dead. And insofar as those people are able to be kept alive, it is by preserving as much of their personhood as possible—by remembering as much as possible from their life.
This is generally how I think about death.
Cryonics is an attempt at the ultimate form of preserving someone’s pattern forever, but in a world pre-cryonics, the best you can reasonably hope for is for people to preserve you so thoroughly in story that a young person from the next generation can hear the story, and palpably feel the underlying character, rich with inner life. Can see the person so clearly that he or she comes to live inside them.
Realistically, this means a person degrades with each generation. Their pattern is gradually distorted. Eventually it is forgotten.
Maybe this horrendously unsatisfying—it should be. Stories are not very high fidelity storage device. Most of what made the person an agent is gone.
But not necessarily—if you choose to not just remember humorous anecdotes about a person, but to remember what they cared about, you can be a channel by which that person continues to act upon the world. Someone recently pointed this out as a concrete reason to respect the wishes of the dead—as long as there are people enacting that person’s will, there is some small way in which they meaningfully still exist.
This is part of how I chose to handle the Solstices that I lead myself: Little Echo, Origin of Stories, and Endless Lights are stories/songs touching on this theme. They don’t work for everyone but they work for me. It’s an unsatisfying concept but it’s what we have.
This is what struck me:
I know no stories of my great great grandparents.
I do know stories of ancient generals and philosophers and artists and other famous people—people who lived such a captivating life that people wrote biographies about them.
I know stories about my grandmothers. I know stories about my great grandmothers. But one step beyond that… nothing. I never knew my great great grandparents, never had reason to ask about them. And I think it is probably too late—I think I could perhaps collect some stories of great-great-grandparents on my father’s side. On my mothers… it’s possible I could track them down but I doubt it.
And as things go, this isn’t hugely upsetting to me. These are people I never met, and in all honesty it seems less pressing to preserve them than to cultivate the relationships I have in the near and now, and to save what lives I can who have yet to die in the first, physical fashion.
But, these are people who are dead forever. When fades at last the last lit sun, there will not be anyone to remember them.
One of the things that makes Realistically Probably Not Having Kids sad is that I’m pretty much the last of the line on my Dad’s side. And I DO know stories (not much, but some) of my great-great-grandparents. Sure, I can write them down, so they exist SOMEWHERE. But in reality, when I die, that line and those stories die with me.
In particular, I think if we make the front-page comments section filtered by “curated/frontpage/community” (i.e. you only see community-blog comments on the frontpage if your frontpage is set to community), then I’d feel more comfortable posting comments like “<3″, which feels correct to me.
Something struck me recently, as I watched Kubo, and Coco—two animated movies that both deal with death, and highlight music and storytelling as mechanisms by which we can preserve people after they die.
Kubo begins “Don’t blink—if you blink for even an instant, if you a miss a single thing, our hero will perish.” This is not because there is something “important” that happens quickly that you might miss. Maybe there is, but it’s not the point. The point is that Kubo is telling a story about people. Those people are now dead. And insofar as those people are able to be kept alive, it is by preserving as much of their personhood as possible—by remembering as much as possible from their life.
This is generally how I think about death.
Cryonics is an attempt at the ultimate form of preserving someone’s pattern forever, but in a world pre-cryonics, the best you can reasonably hope for is for people to preserve you so thoroughly in story that a young person from the next generation can hear the story, and palpably feel the underlying character, rich with inner life. Can see the person so clearly that he or she comes to live inside them.
Realistically, this means a person degrades with each generation. Their pattern is gradually distorted. Eventually it is forgotten.
Maybe this horrendously unsatisfying—it should be. Stories are not very high fidelity storage device. Most of what made the person an agent is gone.
But not necessarily—if you choose to not just remember humorous anecdotes about a person, but to remember what they cared about, you can be a channel by which that person continues to act upon the world. Someone recently pointed this out as a concrete reason to respect the wishes of the dead—as long as there are people enacting that person’s will, there is some small way in which they meaningfully still exist.
This is part of how I chose to handle the Solstices that I lead myself: Little Echo, Origin of Stories, and Endless Lights are stories/songs touching on this theme. They don’t work for everyone but they work for me. It’s an unsatisfying concept but it’s what we have.
This is what struck me:
I know no stories of my great great grandparents.
I do know stories of ancient generals and philosophers and artists and other famous people—people who lived such a captivating life that people wrote biographies about them.
I know stories about my grandmothers. I know stories about my great grandmothers. But one step beyond that… nothing. I never knew my great great grandparents, never had reason to ask about them. And I think it is probably too late—I think I could perhaps collect some stories of great-great-grandparents on my father’s side. On my mothers… it’s possible I could track them down but I doubt it.
And as things go, this isn’t hugely upsetting to me. These are people I never met, and in all honesty it seems less pressing to preserve them than to cultivate the relationships I have in the near and now, and to save what lives I can who have yet to die in the first, physical fashion.
But, these are people who are dead forever. When fades at last the last lit sun, there will not be anyone to remember them.
And that’s sad.
One of the things that makes Realistically Probably Not Having Kids sad is that I’m pretty much the last of the line on my Dad’s side. And I DO know stories (not much, but some) of my great-great-grandparents. Sure, I can write them down, so they exist SOMEWHERE. But in reality, when I die, that line and those stories die with me.
I wanted to just reply something like “<3” and then became self-conscious of whether that was appropriate for LW.
Seems good to me.
In particular, I think if we make the front-page comments section filtered by “curated/frontpage/community” (i.e. you only see community-blog comments on the frontpage if your frontpage is set to community), then I’d feel more comfortable posting comments like “<3″, which feels correct to me.