San Junipero is the name of the Netflix series Black Mirror episode s3e4. So, if you haven’t seen it yet, do so before continuing to read.
Black Mirror as a show is a commentary on technology’s impact on society now, and potential implications of future technologies. San Junipero is centred around the technology of simulation and in particular the copying and transfer of consciousness into a simulation. The technological and medical advances required to get us to a point where this is possible is quite a ways off. This is probably a good thing. Not because I believe it’s a harmful technology but because we need some answers to the moral questions that arise from the advent of such a technology.
Kelly, one of the episode’s protagonists says San Junipero “sounds a lot like heaven to [her]”. Whether San Junipero is an extension of life or a fake, fabricated version of reality is a question central to all characters’ exploration of the world, including our own. The truth is, you do not even know if you’re experiencing reading wholly right now. Perhaps they (the simulation above us) has not yet been able to fully translate the experience of reading into a simulation. Real or not, Kelly still has big decision to make.
Kelly’s internal conflict stems from her love for Yorkie and her love for her husband and child. Her child died before San Junipero existed and so Kelly’s husband decided it would be unjust for him to continue his life in San Junipero where his child could not. Kelly justifies this injustice (her child not having the same opportunity) in the same way her husband did, but with the unique addition of her husband also having missed out, albeit because of his choice. Is it an injustice that her daughter missed out though? Perhaps it is unlucky, but it is not unjust. We do not feel that because our ancestors missed out on a chance to use iPads that we must not use iPads in order to honour our sense of justice.
Eventually, Kelly does opt to become a resident of San Junipero, though it’s unclear whether the conflict was resolved. It’s most likely that her love for Yorkie simply outweighed the potential loss of that love and that keeping this love outweighs the guilt associated with the perceived injustice of her family missing out. This “love vs loss of love” mirrors a “life vs loss of life” theme also present in the episode. As the old saying goes “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved before”…Isn’t it? If you substitute “loved” for “lived” and question that cliche you will find yourself providing a statement about the value of life and death.
You are nothing before becoming something, but you do not care that you were not nothing earlier i.e. that you were born earlier. Therefore, there is no reason for you to care that you die earlier, where “earlier” can be the limit where age approaches 0, that is, that you never live. If a man dies at 40 we say “he died so young” and not “he was born so late”. It’s in this asymmetry that most debate on the goodness or badness of death lies.
Philosopher Thomas Nagel posits that death is bad because of the loss. It’s not bad because of the nothingness, since, by definition, nothingness is indifferent. If we take this position and apply it to San Junipero it’s an obvious decision to stay in San Junipero. Or is it? We return to the question of the validity of a San Juniperan reality. Are you even alive in San Junipero? “It’s real!” says Yorkie. However, 1’s and 0’s are all the people of San Junipero are reduced to. Reduced from what? Were we ever anything more than 1’s and 0’s? This is a question that remains to be answered, and it likely never will be. Since this is the case, and there is evidently no difference in conscious experience (which does not include rules of physics being broken e.g. getting changed into a wedding dress instantly or smashing a mirror and it being repaired instantly; just the experience of consciousness itself) it remains that the obvious choice is to remain in the “party town”.
What of the position that death is indifferent? If death is indifferent it would mean that the decision to become a full-timer or to die (in every sense) are both equally reasonable courses of action. However, if death is indifferent, it doesn’t mean that life and death are equally good/bad. If life is presupposed to be better than being dead (not the process of dying i.e. the delta, but the state of being which is the value) then one should reside in San Junipero. Is this consistent with the process of death being indifferent though? If there’s a level of goodness that life is, and a level of goodness that being dead is then the delta should be the goodness of death itself. So, ultimately the answer to whether death is good or bad can be reframed as: What is the delta between being alive and being dead? That is for you to decide.
Kelly’s answer to this question is popular, she derives meaning from life through the suffering. Arguments go along the lines of: “Without the pain there would be no way of knowing we’re alive.” “There can be no good without the bad.” The second argument for suffering being the meaning of life, can be dissected via the word “good”. The argument holds up when talking of “good” as fulfilment by overcoming challenges, however, if good is hedonistic or even virtue based, it falls apart. The hedonistic counter is fairly obvious, so I’ll just outline the virtue-ethics counter. A person subscribed to a system of virtue ethics does what a good person would do. In life as we know it, this includes overcoming challenges to get what we want/need and doing it gracefully. In San Junipero these challenges more or less don’t exist. However, if there are no challenges to overcome than there is no necessity to overcome challenges and therefore the virtue ethicist ought to be just as fulfilled since their duty to virtue (in this example, limited to the single dimension of overcoming challenges) is satisfied by default. For the virtue ethicist, it’s an easier life but not necessarily one less fulfilling. Analogously, if we take Apple Music as a virtue ethicist whose duty it is to send music to people, Apple Music knows it completes its duty when it gets the money from a subscription. If a person listens to music in the month period (i.e. there are challenges) or a person listens to no music in the month period (i.e. there are no challenges) its duty is still completed and therefore Apple Music gets the money, since it would send music in the event of a request, it’s just that no request to send music has come through.
Despite the moral questions that remain unanswered I, for one, am waiting for the day heaven is a place on Earth.
