What does it mean to be human?

Years ago, I watched an episode of Black Mirror (a science fiction show) that made me sit with this question in a new way.

The episode is called San Junipero. Here’s the premise:

🌊 San Junipero is a town on the beach, where people play, dance, meet with friends & lovers, and live their best lives.

The only catch? San Junipero doesn’t actually exist in the physical world. It’s a simulated, digital reality.

The people who hang out in San Junipero are:

• living people, who visit the simulated reality for hours at a time, by plugging their consciousness into a chip & inhabiting a digital version of their bodies at an age of their choice
• people who died, but chose to upload their consciousness to San Junipero after physical death, so they can continue to live (or “live”) forever in this idyllic, digital afterlife

What I appreciate about science fiction is that it confronts us with uncomfortable & unusual questions that don’t come up at your typical coffee chat. Questions like:

🌀 If you could visit a simulated reality - where you could enjoy pleasures like watching the sunset on the beach, dancing into the night, and falling in love - would you choose to visit? If so, how would your part-time digital life in San Junipero impact the way you live your life in the physical world?

🌀 If you could upload your consciousness to a digital paradise, after your death on earth - would you opt in, or out?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. But there is important information that your answers reveal about what you value, how you want to live, and what life & death mean to you.

Here’s some more food for thought.

(1)

In the episode, it’s implied that folks who are still alive, who choose to visit San Junipero, do so because life in this simulated reality is more enjoyable than their life on earth.

San Junipero is presented as a vibrant & charming paradise. One might call it an escape. Which brings up the question: If someone would rather spend hours in a simulated reality than in the physical world, what does that say about the conditions of life on earth? What on earth might they be escaping from?​
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(2)

One character mentions that they don’t plan to upload their consciousness to San Junipero after they die, because their child had died before the technology for San Junipero was invented – meaning, this person would not get to see their child in the digital afterlife.

An eternity without their child was reason enough for them to decline a one-way ticket to utopia – for it would be no utopia if the person who mattered most to them was not there.

If what we seek in a utopia are the experiences & people that make life worth living… in what ways can we experience a taste of San Junipero, exactly where we are, right now?

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Reflecting on these existential questions helps me understand myself better. I hope they bring up something meaningful for you, too. And I invite you to share your reflections with someone in your life, so you can get to know each other on this deeper level. ❤️

As technology evolves, and the line between reality and a Black Mirror episode becomes ever blurrier, what keeps us tethered to our humanity will be the relationships that we choose to build – with technology, and more importantly, with each other.

To our humanity,

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