A Tweet about the Pixar movie “Coco,” which I have not seen, got me thinking (and I think re-iterating an idea I blathered about on this blog years ago but can’t be bothered to look up again).
https://x.com/cirsova/status/1945885686768230903
An interesting theology: you continue to exist in some form so long as someone remembers you, then once nobody alive remembers you, *poof* you’re gone.This is apparently the plot of “Coco,” where some kid visits Mexican Afterlife, which is a party for those whose living relatives still venerate them. While this does not seem to jibe with my understanding of Christianity, set that aside for the moment and just ponder the basic idea, that your existence in the afterlife is contingent upon people remembering you. (A lot of theologies around the world include some ancestor-veneration, seemingly implying that Great Granny’s afterlife is depending on you dropping off a banana on her shrine now and then.)
For most people throughout history, that meant that within probably 40 years of your death, you’re off to oblivion. Some people last in some form of memory for centuries, of course… Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great will last a good long while. But some people are remembered, then utterly forgotten… then remembered again. Consider Gilgamesh or any number of Pharaohs or minor functionaries mentioned on clay tablets or tomb walls or hidden texts. They were forgotten and lost for millennia, with not a single soul living on Earth knowing their name. But then their name is found and read again by archeologists. Some become world famous, known to millions: King Tut, for example. Others, like Ea-nāṣir, are known ta relative few. Are these dead souls left in some sort of limbo or stasis during the years they’re forgotten, then come back, or do they just pop back into existence?
And of course, how much does the condition of the afterlife depend on the condition of your memory? Is the afterlife a party only if people who actually knew you still remember you? Does it fade into hollowness and boredom as your memory fades? Are you left sitting motionless in an empty space if your memory consists solely of your name written on some unread wall? Imagine the grim fate awaiting us all as we wait for proton decay to erase the last memory crystals that contain our tax records, a googol years or more from now.