The Virtual Soul

As much of my work indicates, I’ve long been intrigued by the concept of the soul. The majority of people discuss the soul as that lasting part of each of us that continues to exist after we die. In the beliefs most commonly presented, these entities depart our dying bodies to subsequently spend eternity doing things such as inhabiting palaces in the sky, lounging with virgins, or standing in a fieryinferno. In other words, in the view of most, after death our souls apparently have human-like lives somewhere else, and those lives are either much better or much worse than the ones we currently possess. Though I don’t consider this likely, I’m at a loss to suggest an alternative theory for where a soul might go or what it might do once it leaves its corporeal prison. In any event, I’m much more interested in what the soul is than in its destination. If it is the “essence” of who we are, do we not emit this at every moment of our waking lives? If it is that kernel of us that is true, would it not show itself when we are at our least pretentious, off our guard, and lowering the barriers that surround us?

I have called the words I add to my website and this blog my “virtual soul” for a couple of reasons, but largely because I want this space to become a location where I reveal my thoughts and share those ideas that are closest to the center of my being. As a writer, this should always be my aspiration. However, I do not expect this to be easy. Millions of people have set out to be spiritual, but the only thing most become is religious.

There is an additional soul-like element to this site that I feel obliged to point out, and that is in its potential existence beyond my own. I am always fascinated, in a creepy, voyeuristic kind of way, by those online newspaper articles that quote a suspect or a victim’s website or MySpace page, or those people who post on a dead friend’s Facebook wall. There is something potentially eternal about our website personas that previous generations never experienced. Certainly, holding the journal of a deceased ancestor in one’s hands and feeling the same pages he or she touched a century ago or longer has the potential to make one feel connected to the dead. Yet, the immediacy and completeness of a website with photos and videos and audio tracks can make the departed seem barely gone.

In fact, with artificial intelligence, the possibility exists for us to program our personalities into our websites, offering up video and audio responses to anticipated questions like Jor-El in the Superman movies. (In the last movie incarnation of this character, SUPERMAN RETURNS, Marlon Brando’s image and voice, provided in the earlier movies as that of Superman’s dead father, are used, though Brando had been dead for several years, as an ironic display of this phenomenon.) We are quickly becoming capable of electronically living forever, at least to those who would view and talk with us. But, does that not return us to the issue of the soul? Isn’t the soul everything that can’t be programmed, every response that can’t be predicted or scripted? Or, is it all that we pour out into this world while we are here, hoping that the flailing about we call our lives has done more than pass through this world's stagnant air? I suppose we’ll all find out.