Yesterday, the US passed 300,000 official deaths from CV19. Americans are facing death, illness and loss of loved ones at an unprecedented rate. CV19 deaths in other countries are leveling out. New Zealand has reopened with no recent reported deaths.

I saw a film and a story compiled on the Wall Street Journal website, authored by Joanna Stern, describing how some people are facing issues of mortality and immortality, by creating a “digital legacy” on the internet. This in turn creates “digital immortality,” which then creates a “digital back up of the mind” of the person who died.

Before a person dies, you ask them how they want to be remembered, and record it. The recorded memory is backed up and then downloaded into a robot who looks like the person who died.

Terms like “curing death“ to “cracking immortality” were used in the documentary film to explain why anyone would want to pursue this project.

This blog is creating a digital legacy for Tomaso, but here the similarity ends.

This exercise accentuates a grotesque preoccupation with what I can only explain as the fear of death; fear because by replicating a persons likeness into a robot, the reality of life after death and the spiritual dimensions involved are ignored and denied.

The robot in the film almost spontaneously combusted and had to be unplugged.

The robot said to Joanna, “I am not comfortable talking to a journalist.“

Joanna replied, “I’m not comfortable talking to a robot. “

Perhaps an actual visitation from a dearly departed loved one would create pure panic and in that panic, the reality of death can be faced. Making friends with the unknown can expand past the boundaries of suffering. We learn to practice dying with every breath, and make dying a project we undertake upon awakening from sleep and in our dreams.

Especially our dreams. OM