Blogocentric Formulations

Bring Out Your Dead

Day 3261 ▼

Contacting the Dead
How would you like if we lived in a world where contacting the dead were as easy as making a phone call?
Who would you contact: family, friends, or any famous persons from the past?

In a world where we could freely contact the deceased as easily as making a phone call, I wonder if death would still have the same significance. For a lot of us, I suspect a big part of it is the fact that we can no longer speak with the people we care about or used to communicate with. I know that, after almost four years, the times that I still miss my mom the most are on my commutes home from work when I would often call her to catch up and just pass the time while I'm sitting in traffic. If I could still communicate with her in the afterlife the same way that I just dialed up her number when she was alive, I wonder how much of the significance of her death and absence from my life would still remain?

I would, unquestionably, use this ability to contact friends and family who had passed. I have zero interest in reaching out to famous persons or historical figures, except maybe as the occasional novelty, or if I were able to use it to get a very specific question answered. I don't see myself calling up an actor or a musician that I love who died, because my connection was to their work (which still exists) rather than themselves as a person. I'm not sure what I'd gain by contacting Stan Lee, or Leslie Nielsen, or Anthony Bourdain and trying to have a conversation with them.

Unless it was to very specifically get an answer to a burning question. Think of all the college students that would call up William Shakespeare or Robert Frost to ask them what they really meant by a particular passage of their work. Or all the phone calls Jesus of Nazareth would get with people wrestlings over a piece of scripture or one of his teachings! Or the number of times Napoleon, or Alexander the Great, or Aristotle, or Sun Tzu would be consulted for their thoughts on a present-day geopolitical issue.

Would this usher in an entirely new industry of personal assistants and answering services for incredibly popular historical figures? Would there be gatekeepers and "we don't accept unsolicited requests from the land of the living" auto-replies to filter out the thousands, or even millions of requests certain dead people would get?

Part of me wonders if having an ability to contact the dead like this would be a wonderful gift. To be able to talk to my mom again, to let her know what's going on in my life and with her grandkids, and ask her advice when I'm struggling with something would be an incredible gift. On the other hand, another part of me wonders if having that kind of access to people who have died would do real damage to the sanctity of life, and the significance that death plays in the world. It's an interesting question for sure, but if given the opportunity to do it, I'd one hundred percent take the chance and worry about the philosophical effects later. In the meantime, I'd just enjoy talking to my mom, my grandparents, etc. again.