Monday Meme: Death

It's Berry's Birthday, and with her birth her thoughts turned to death - one of the other big transitions in our lives. One if the fascinating things about Second Life is the obsession with the first - have you seen the baby bumps on the grid? - and the near absence of the other - when people leave they don't die, as such, and memorials are existent but rare and anything but permanent. Death and the internet is interesting as well because just because someone dies doesn't mean they vanish - we can automate a lot, including continued activities after death. At the same time, the internet and Second Life itself are both littered with the remnants of the past - at once both ineffable and perfectly what they were at the moment of creation.

1. Do you ever think about dying? How do you expect you’ll die? – I think about dying now and then, though not to the extent I did when I was a teenager, and now I'd rather not. I was suicidal for much of my teens, from about fifth grade to tenth, and I had a serious case of survivor's guilt in my early twenties after a friend died in a car accident. I never attempted - not even a serious gesture - but I thought a lot about how nice it would be if I'd just stop taking up extra oxygen other people could use. It's been several years since I've felt that way, but it gave me an insider's view of depression that has proven invaluable in my work. I'm also much more comfortable with death, having gone through the grieving process in depth.


2. Do you believe in an afterlife? If so, how do you visualize it? - I believe in the nine worlds of the universe, that there are places of bliss and places of torment, and that people can cycle through multiple times. When I try to access the other worlds, I usually start in the roots of Yggdrasil - the world tree - and climb from there. So far my skills are middling.


3. What is your preferred form of apocalypse and why? – I would love a time when people learn to value kindness over cruelty so that we can all come together, understand, and love each other - and that people can all be supported in being the best versions of themselves possible.


4. How many times have you cheated death so far? – I was in a car accident that killed one of the four people in the car.


5. Which fictional villain would you be okay being killed by? – I've always thought it would be interesting if I became a vampire, since I don't think it suits me at all - that makes it my shadow, in a way.


6. If you’re murdered, do you stay and haunt the culprits forever or do you give up that opportunity to leave and go to heaven/hell/Cancun? –I'd want justice, whatever that would mean, and then I'd like to come back again. I love the world, with all it's pains and pleasures.


7. Will you have done everything you have wanted by the time you die? – I don't think that's physically possible. I hope I've lived a good life, though, and will leave the world better than I found it.

( More pictures here. )