Some time ago, I watched the cartoon "coco" produced by Pixar, and I really liked the afterlife world shown in the film. Compared to the sacred segregation of heaven and hell in Christianity, the world of death imagined by Mexican culture is almost a reflection of the world of the world . There are rich and poor, there are policemen and criminals, and there are countless brainless fans; the dead are almost indistinguishable from the living people in the secular world except for their strange appearance and the company of mythical beasts. But why does a world of reflections arouse our interest and emotion? I think the key is this kink between the reflection and the real world.
That is, how does the afterlife interact with the world of the living?
Our imagination of death must be a kaleidoscope, and people of different cultures, religions and brain circuits will create different images. Will these images relate to our real life? How do they relate to and interact with our real life?
Coco builds a world that is closely related to our living. Our lost relatives live on the other side and rely on our thoughts to exist. When the guitarist that the little boy met ushered in the ultimate death, we would all feel sad for him, as if witnessing something precious from existence to nothing, loss is common; and when the little boy returned to the world, he was awakened by emotional singing. For coco's memory, we will all be happy for him, because we know that this small change is closely related to the existence of a soul in the afterlife world. In coco, the world after death connects the living world through the thoughts of relatives. The thoughts endow the deceased with an existence beyond time, and those who miss them gain eternal life .
Assuming that everything constructed in coco is true, how should we live to ensure happiness in this life and the next? family. It is clearly mentioned in coco that only the thoughts of relatives can give the deceased "life". So if you strictly accept the setting of coco, after the little boy MiG returns to the earth, the most important task is to maintain the relationship with his family, not to chase his music dream. In other words, in any situation where personal dreams and kinship collide, kinship wins (to avoid ultimate death in the afterlife).
Such a life-and-death relationship seems too impoverished. Different from the instinctive reproduction of animals, human beings seek purer kindness in limited life. Some die for justice, some die for beauty, many die for excellence, and more die for perfect love... These goals go beyond basic animal laws and focus on spiritual pursuits. The relationship of life and death in coco, while emphasizing the missing of relatives, seems to dissolve these goals: no matter how extreme you have achieved your spiritual pursuit in your lifetime - even if you discover that the law of gravity determines the trajectory of the planet, or writes the most beautiful The most moving story of the poems - as long as you have no loved ones to miss (assuming all your loved ones died in accidents or you were never married), you will usher in the ultimate death after death, and you will be wiped out.
I don't agree with this life-and-death relationship. It's not that family ties aren't important -- on the contrary, they're very important -- but they're not the only ones that matter. The life-and-death relationship conceived by coco is too poor . I am more in favor of thinking beyond the blood relationship as the link . As long as someone misses, regardless of his relationship with the deceased, his thoughts protect the deceased from being forgotten. I would rather believe that my thoughts not only protect my loved ones who have passed away, but also all the sages I love and have never met.
The marigolds that lead us forward should not only be lit by relatives; all the sages who have made me more personal, the people in the story, all the sparks of thinking that light up the dark night of the soul, can light it up. All this light connects you and my past life, this life and the next life, life and death.
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