This past weekend I was watching the TV show “The Good Place” which is about four people who die and are told they have been sent to the Good Place (a non-denominational version of heaven). In reality, they have actually been sent to a version of the Bad Place that has been disguised to look like the Good Place with certain features designed to subtlety torture them. The first season follows them as they slowly figure out that each of them do not deserve to be there, and that it is in fact the Bad Place. Now that I am watching the show and taking this class at the same time it has made me wonder if death is a virtual reality. When you die, you cease to live and are no longer conscious, suggesting that whatever comes next is a virtual reality, because it is no longer “real life.”
“The Good Place” really plays with this idea of death being an illusion when the demon in charge of creating this false Good Place completely fabricates everything the four characters believe to be true. This reminds me a lot of Plate’s Allegory of The Cave, and the puppeteer’s power over the cave dwellers to create what they believe to be true (until they escape from the cave). It gets even more interesting in the second season after they figure out the truth because the demon, Michael, just resets everything to the beginning, and continues to do this every time the four humans figure out the puzzle- a total of 800+ times. Each version was different and showed all the different combinations that could happen in this fake heaven. With all of these “fake” versions of the Good Place, are there any of them real? Or are all of them real Bad Places because the demons know it is real even though humans don’t though at times they believe it is real. Then to really throw a wrench into things, is it not all fake because either way the humans are dead? I’m not sure what the answer is but I will say in addition to this weeks readings I’m not sure where death falls in the discussion of virtual reality.
I’m a huge fan of The Good Place as well, and how death factors into our perception of reality is really interesting. In Borges’ piece, death is an entity that looms over the entire plot and ultimately stalled by God. Life seems to be extended a whole year for the doomed narrator by this religious entity. Like Michael in The Good Place or the puppeteers of Plato’s cave, a controlling figure seems to recur in stories where reality is alternated or subverted. Do we have control over our delusions? If so, do we raise them up only to detract from the inevitable pain of death? If not, why do mysterious forces give us these delusions? To realize something about life? To sadistically inflict torment? To work us into a larger design?
I have never seen The Good Place, but it reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone called “A Nice Place to Visit”. In this episode, a man is killed while robbing a bank and appears in a reality where his every wish is granted. He too wonders how a bad guy like him got into heaven. Growing bored of living a perfect life, he complains about his situation to an angel, who reveals that he is really in hell. The episode is meant to show the moral that the perfect life is not nearly as perfect as it looks, but it also portrays a fascinating version of hell.
The truth is that no one knows what lies after death; there could be a world of misery or joy based on how we live our lives, there could be yet another life similar to ours, or there could simply be nothing. All of these fictional versions of the afterlife that people create certainly are fake realities, usually based on little more than what they think makes a good story or what makes them most comfortable.
And of course, it is hard to question which of these versions of the afterlife are real when we cannot say with certainty whether life is real. We could be living in a very realistic dream such as in Julio Cortazar’s “The Night Face-Up” which is no more real than any of these versions of heaven and hell. So I say you should just believe in whatever makes it easiest to live your life. Who knows, maybe by believing in one version of the afterlife, you can experience it when you die.
I find this concept so interesting, and now I understand why everyone keeps telling me to watch The Good Place. I agree with the callback to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” but in the sense that perhaps the audience is the man who leaves the cave and has to return with the knowledge that what goes on in the care is a simulation. The audience knows that this is The Bad Place, but the characters don’t (or did I totally misunderstand this part of the show?).
I have never seen The Good Place either, but this shows sounds amazing (I will be watching it). You bring up an interesting point about what it means to experience death, and if death can be considered a virtual reality. I do not think death is a virtual reality, for if one has passed away, would the afterlife not become their immediate reality in the way that the present world is ours? Also, because everyone has different ideas of what death instills, I think death being a virtual reality could only be applicable for individuals who feel that they will be entering some other world after death (like heaven, hell, or having their souls return back to earth, etc.).
To address the idea of “real life”, I could not help but to think about Borges’ The Secret Miracle in which upon Hladik’s death he is granted another year by God to finish his play. Because time is standing still, and he is the only one with consciousness, can it be said that his reality was “real”, if it is a reality that only he can experience?