Introducing Dial-a-soul
Humans have been on earth in some shape or form for about 100,000 years. This means that heaven must have been around for just as long and that means that there are about 45 billion souls meandering about in paradise (assuming a 50% acceptance rate). It seems like those souls would be really interesting to chat with.
The Dial-a-soul app allows you to contact people in heaven and talk to them. Our 45 billion users make Whatsapp’s 2 billion user base look like Truth Social! The app would support the following scenarios:
Dial-an-ancestor. This features a graphical interface that allows users to navigate their family tree and select an ancestor to talk with. One of the many clever aspects of the feature is its ability to translate across language barriers including a transition from an ancient form of a language to its modern form.
Call-a-dead-celeb. Call anyone from history and have a talk with them. Because they are celestial beings, they have incredible parallel processing powers so they can conduct millions of discussions in parallel. One interesting side effect of this technology is that you will be able to figure out who didn’t make it to heaven.
Dead-guest-speaker. Imagine a history class that features lectures from historical figures. They could right a lot of misconceptions. For example, we could ask “what exactly does the second amendment mean?”
Implications
Dialing your ancestors may teach you many uncomfortable things about your past. For example, your heavenly ancestor may tell you about your great uncle Hardip who was a serial killer.
People who we have been led to believe were good because history is written by the victors turn out not to be so good. For example, while I assume Winston Churchill is burning in the extra hot bit of hell, I suspect others would be surprised to be find that to be the case.
We may come to find out that the bar for getting into heaven is very high and requires us to lead extremely pious lives. We could either live those pious lives or becoming fatalistic and descend into lives of hedonism.
We may no longer deify historical figures when they clarify their positioning on certain issues. For example, they may clarify that the second amendment was meant to enable states to have their own militias not for us to drive around in our personal tanks. Once that clarification occurs, those of us who are pro-gun would then insist that our forefathers were wrong and that we need to ignore them. We could also clearly ask them for their opinion on matters such as abortion.
A few questions for you to ponder:
Who would you call?
Does heaven have a DEI problem?
What do you think it would be like to talk to pre-historic man?
Are Ronald Reagan, JFK and Michael Jackson all in heaven?
Who do you think Donald Trump would call?
Kiran and I will be delving into this matter of national importance in this week’s One Weird Thought podcast. Be sure to tune in!