You know what I want as a ritual, if I die? It’s pretty straightforward and simple.
People get together and love each other and remember me. And at some point, someone gets up, and holds up something that once belonged to me, that symbolizes something I cared about. And then they say, “I knew Brent. Brent cared about {X}. Who is willing to carry this?”
And then if you have the balls to care about {X} as much as I did, in the way I did, you take the object. And you take the charge. And you fucking run with it, as hard as I would have, if I had all your skills and advantages and powers.
And that happens, over and over, until you’re out of objects and tasks.
And if I’m lucky enough to found this as a religion, but we’re collectively unlucky enough to have not conquered Death, then when those people die, someone holds up those objects at their funeral, and says “I knew {person}. He cared about {X}. He accepted this from a man named Brent Dill, who also cared about {X}. Who will carry this?”
And if we don’t conquer Death, then maybe someday someone will hold up an old, weathered Lego brick, long since modified with a hole to be made into a necklace-pendant, and say “I knew Yareth. Zie cared about children, and showing them that they had the power to change their world. Yareth accepted this from a being named Marle, who accepted this from a woman named Faie, who accepted this from a person named Zerh, who accepted this from a man named Malcolm, who accepted this from a man named Duncan, who accepted this from a man named Brent. Who will carry this?”
And somewhere from within the network-that-lives-on, something like a remnant of me will smile.
I was chatting with a friend about Brent’s post here, about the funeral ritual he’d prefer.
I noted: “I like the idea. My main worry here is that there *would* actually be scope creep, as more and more people accumulate obligations from Past Folk, and/or felt pressured into accepting responsibilities in such a way that they *either* became overwhelmed, *or* didn’t take the responsibilities fully seriously.”
The friend commented “I think… I think in that case it’s actually important to be able to make it such that… yeah, one of the things that can happen is that no one is able or willing to take up a thing, and that it… just disappears forever.”
And this… suddenly fucking drove home the enormity of death to me, in a way that I don’t think I was engaging with even with my post on Kubo a few months back when it occurred to me that most of my great-great-grandparent’s agency is already gone forever, AFAICT, or will be soon. (By contrast, it’s still at least *conceivable* that I could learn enough about my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents that I could choose to carry their desires and dreams and stories into the future with me)
In the original post’s comments, Daniel Powell noted that one of the scariest things that could happen is for someone to say “who shall carry forth this aspect?” and have only silence. And at the time I just parsed the silence as… awkward. Or something. Like maybe the default thing is that people get all their dreams taken on by their friends into the future, but sometimes nobody cared enough about a person and _that_′s when the thing is lost forever.
But, no.
The default is that almost everything is lost.
Imagine if, every time a person died, at the funeral, you gathered together with all the surviving pieces of that person. All the stories you know from their past. All your knowledge about who they were. All the desires they had to enact upon the world, that you could choose continue to enact with all of their passion and drive.
And you look together at those things.
And, every single time, you know that’s… just not*actually***possible** to carry each of those things forward.
And you have the opportunity, at the funeral, to save as much of that person as you can. They are still there. The fragments of them are right fucking there, and you could save them – incorporate their agency into yourself, or, hell, build yourself a tulpa to keep their personality itself.
But you have to be honest with yourself – it doesn’t do any good to claim you could keep that fragment alive if you can’t. And you probably won’t, because it’s too much work.
And piece by piece, together, you decide how much of your gone friend you have it in you to preserve.
You could perhaps take on *only* a shadow of fragment – you can’t care about The Thing as much as your friend did, but you can care a bit, enough to keep it half alive for one or two more generations.
One way or another, together, you decide how much of your lost friend you are able and willing to save.
And then, the pieces that are left, uncarried forward, gone forever...
Well, you mourn.
It’s all you can do.
...
...
I don’t think this should actually become an institution (largely because it’d be hard to solve the “not pressure people into either taking enormous commitments that will harm them, or deceive themselves into thinking they have taken on a commitment when in fact they haven’t.”)
But, I… sort of feel like maybe everyone should have visualized this at least once, to comprehend the enormity of what is lost.
Brent had linked this post and commented on FB:
I was chatting with a friend about Brent’s post here, about the funeral ritual he’d prefer.
I noted: “I like the idea. My main worry here is that there *would* actually be scope creep, as more and more people accumulate obligations from Past Folk, and/or felt pressured into accepting responsibilities in such a way that they *either* became overwhelmed, *or* didn’t take the responsibilities fully seriously.”
The friend commented “I think… I think in that case it’s actually important to be able to make it such that… yeah, one of the things that can happen is that no one is able or willing to take up a thing, and that it… just disappears forever.”
And this… suddenly fucking drove home the enormity of death to me, in a way that I don’t think I was engaging with even with my post on Kubo a few months back when it occurred to me that most of my great-great-grandparent’s agency is already gone forever, AFAICT, or will be soon. (By contrast, it’s still at least *conceivable* that I could learn enough about my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents that I could choose to carry their desires and dreams and stories into the future with me)
In the original post’s comments, Daniel Powell noted that one of the scariest things that could happen is for someone to say “who shall carry forth this aspect?” and have only silence. And at the time I just parsed the silence as… awkward. Or something. Like maybe the default thing is that people get all their dreams taken on by their friends into the future, but sometimes nobody cared enough about a person and _that_′s when the thing is lost forever.
But, no.
The default is that almost everything is lost.
Imagine if, every time a person died, at the funeral, you gathered together with all the surviving pieces of that person. All the stories you know from their past. All your knowledge about who they were. All the desires they had to enact upon the world, that you could choose continue to enact with all of their passion and drive.
And you look together at those things.
And, every single time, you know that’s… just not *actually* **possible** to carry each of those things forward.
And you have the opportunity, at the funeral, to save as much of that person as you can. They are still there. The fragments of them are right fucking there, and you could save them – incorporate their agency into yourself, or, hell, build yourself a tulpa to keep their personality itself.
But you have to be honest with yourself – it doesn’t do any good to claim you could keep that fragment alive if you can’t. And you probably won’t, because it’s too much work.
And piece by piece, together, you decide how much of your gone friend you have it in you to preserve.
You could perhaps take on *only* a shadow of fragment – you can’t care about The Thing as much as your friend did, but you can care a bit, enough to keep it half alive for one or two more generations.
One way or another, together, you decide how much of your lost friend you are able and willing to save.
And then, the pieces that are left, uncarried forward, gone forever...
Well, you mourn.
It’s all you can do.
...
...
I don’t think this should actually become an institution (largely because it’d be hard to solve the “not pressure people into either taking enormous commitments that will harm them, or deceive themselves into thinking they have taken on a commitment when in fact they haven’t.”)
But, I… sort of feel like maybe everyone should have visualized this at least once, to comprehend the enormity of what is lost.