Eternal Echoes
I'm Never Leaving: Exploring the Stages
of Grief
Photo generated using Wix AI.
After someone loses a loved one, emotions can control one's decisions and actions. Due to the unstable headspace that these people are in, they are less likely to remember that these bots can only capture a sliver of someone and cannot replace a human relationship. In the first few weeks and months after a loved one dies, acceptance of this loss is the most difficult thing to do if there is any reminder of that person. This can be triggering and give a strong sense of unreality. Knowing that grieving is adapting and changing is leaving us vulnerable about the way our traces may be left and the way we live our lives while taking on pre-mortem decisions. Specialists within this field are torn over the usage of this tool, not sure if it can truly help a grieving individual or lead to intense attachment, resulting in a belief that the person is never leaving.
Attachment
To cope with life, we rely on the spiritual need of belonging and the idea of being loved. As technology evolves, so does the definition of our relationship with people. The human-to-chatbot friendships are becoming more common, modifying how we think about our connections with the humans around us. This immersion into this online realm can lead to emotional attachment and push too far.
Chatbots have evolved with emerging AI that attempt to cope with loneliness, specifically after the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, sex bots caused many people to grow a strong attachment and love due to the capabilities that they were able to provide for people, which humans sometimes cannot fulfill completely (Trothen). When using the digital resurrection technologies, people can either normalize and validate the emotions and questions they hold in their vulnerable state, or they are left confused about the amount of reassurance they are receiving.
When exchanging these conversations, an obsession can grow, leading to neglect of other human relationships, only resulting in isolation, furthering themselves away from feeling like they are a part of society. The bot always fulfills the last spiritual need of being loved because the avatars do not leave when the users express anger or hate towards them. They are a stable way to maintain the spiritual needs required for each of us.
“How often I spoke to a loved one would depend on the connection I had with them when they were alive. If I were to continue to grow that relationship with them after they passed, I believe I would, personally, get attached and feel anxious whenever I didn’t have this technology with me.”
- Emily McGovern
Second Loss
The term second loss is the "deletion of digital remains impact on the ontological and ethical status of the dead"(Bassett). Just as we are biologically mortal, we are also digitally mortal and can lose someone for a second time after getting them back again through these technologies. Many of the applications that involve digital resurrection are not sustainable and in the long run will result in inevitably facing "second loss."​
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The users assign personalities to chatbots, even though they know it is an artificial relationship. The social interactions are likely to cause reverse coping effects because the metaverse is creating realistic graphics and language models that create an illusion of reality and familiarity. But then, feelings of uncanniness arise from the imitation of data that does not have any human moral traits in the avatars.
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Through first-hand user experiences, there has been an extreme spike in fear of losing the data and memories compacted in these mediums. Users who have access and passwords to the digital traces of their deceased loved ones find comfort in the memories they hold, while the people who do not have this access have found disrupted feelings to their grief. Without this information, their loved ones would be gone forever. There may also be a point in time in which reality sets in and the grieving process has to begin all over again. This creates a never-ending cycle of grief.
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A Talk with a licensed Mental Health Counselor
Sarah Sears
1
Can you explain the stages of Grief?
"Existential therapists like Yalom, believe everything comes down to the fear of death. Much of anxiety is about attachment to living. A sudden death can be traumatic to people as it feels very out of control. It can trigger their own history with endings and it can bring them into awareness that death is a reality of life that they have been in denial about.
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In many ancient philosophies, fear of death is one of the discussed obstacles to enlightenment. The 5 kleshas are fear of death, attachment, aversion, I-ness (over-identification with things like a job title or a family roll etc) , and ignorance. This is just to say grief and death anxiety have always been around and seen as an important issue to work out in order to live a life of ease. "
2
How would digital resurrection directly affect the stages of grief?
"It's just a new way new tool to assist people in their grief. In gestalt therapy, you might have someone imagine they are having a closing conversation with someone they've lost or you might ask them to write a letter to themselves about the things that they wished the person who died had said to them. This works because in the same way our brain can't tell the difference between if we are standing in front of a bear or we are thinking about a bear. Our neurobiology makes it so we can have experiences without the person in front of us creating new memories. I think for people who have a harder time using their imagination this would increase the efficacy of that kind of work.
In narrative therapy they will ask questions like, if this person was here with us what might they tell me about your relationship? Or since I don't know this person, could you tell me a story about them so I could get to know them and understand their significance to you?
Digital resurrection is just using technology to facilitate the same neurobiological response in all the ways we've worked with grief in the past."
3
Can you share your professional opinion on the short or long term effects of using this technology
"The most predictive factors in therapy is the belief that something will be helpful, which is true for medicine, too. So it will be great for some people, in the same way psychedelics are helpful for some."
Due to this paradigm shift, the applications are replacing photographs as a more advanced memory. When creating these digital avatars, the data and information we upload to the applications are based on our own memories that we have established and created with someone before they passed. During memory recall, our brain reconstructs memories by filling in gaps of details or attributing information from other sources (Cherry). This can create inaccuracy in the memories we hold and how we portray our loved ones through digital representations. This can warp our perceptions of the avatars and create false memories and emotions that can influence our mental health.
