Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Matt Brooks, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Florida State University

Immigration has dominated recent public discourse about Florida, whether it be the opening of Alligator Alcatraz, a migrant detention facility in the middle of the Everglades, or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declaring an “immigration emergency” for the state that has lasted more than two years.

As demographers – that is, people who count people – we’ve noticed that this conversation has proceeded largely without the benefit of a clear description of Florida’s immigrant population.

Here’s a snapshot.

How many immigrants are in Florida?

We used data from the Office of Homeland Security Statistics and the American Community Survey, conducted annually by the U.S. Census Bureau. Homeland Security provides estimates of the state’s undocumented population and annual counts of authorized arrivals. Census data allow us to describe the social and economic characteristics of Florida’s immigrant population.

In 2023, the most recent year for which the Department of Homeland Security provides publicly available data, an estimated 590,000 immigrants without legal status were living in Florida. This is the third-largest population of immigrants without legal status in the U.S., behind California and Texas. But in contrast to those two states, the number of immigrants entering Florida illegally has been shrinking since 2018.

On the other hand, DHS data points to recent growth in Florida’s population of immigrants with legal status. This represents a rebound from declines between 2016 and 2020.

In 2023, Florida welcomed 72,850 residents from outside the country. This is just 0.3% of Florida’s population that year. About 95% of these new Florida residents were admitted as lawful permanent residents, or green card holders. The remainder entered as refugees (3%) and people granted asylum (2%).

For comparison, U.S. Census Bureau estimates suggest roughly 640,000 people moved to Florida in 2023 from other states.

Who makes up Florida’s immigrant population?

The American Community Survey data tells us even more about Florida’s immigrant population. The survey estimates that 4,996,874 foreign-born individuals lived in Florida in 2023, up from 3,798,062 in 2013. These numbers include those who are in the U.S. legally and illegally and encompass both recent arrivals and long-term residents.

In 2023, about 22% of Florida residents – and nearly 7% of Florida children – were immigrants. An additional 29% of Florida children have at least one immigrant parent.

According to the American Community Survey, nearly half of Florida’s immigrants were born in Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia or Mexico. Despite being born elsewhere, Florida’s immigrants in many ways resemble other Floridians: About 20% hold a bachelor’s degree, compared to 22% of nonimmigrant Floridians, and 13% of both groups have a graduate degree. Nearly all Florida immigrants, 89%, speak English, and the majority, 57%, are naturalized citizens.

Immigrants make up a disproportionate share of Florida’s workforce, particularly in essential sectors of the state’s economy. They account for more than 47% of Florida’s agricultural workers, 41% of hotel workers and 35% of construction workers.

Florida immigrants also work in sectors that many might not consider to be “immigrant jobs.” They constitute 33% of child care workers, 21% of school and university employees and 27% of the health care workers.

Across all sectors, immigrants have lower unemployment rates than nonimmigrants. Although available data cannot tell us the extent to which these numbers are bolstered by undocumented immigrants, the importance of Florida’s immigrants for the state’s economy is undeniable.

Florida’s population is growing at a faster rate than any other state in the country, boosted by people moving in from abroad and from other states. This growth both reflects and feeds the state’s economic vitality. Between 2019 and 2024, Florida’s GDP grew twice as fast as the nation’s as a whole.

Is Florida experiencing an “immigration emergency”? That’s for politicians to decide. Our research suggests that policies that discourage new arrivals or encourage – or force – migrants to leave could jeopardize Florida’s robust economy and the well-being of its population.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Unpacking Florida’s immigration trends − demographers take a closer look at the legal and undocumented population – https://theconversation.com/unpacking-floridas-immigration-trends-demographers-take-a-closer-look-at-the-legal-and-undocumented-population-261425

Source: The Conversation – USA – By James N. Gregory, Professor of History, University of Washington

It has happened before: an upset victory by a Democratic Socialist in an important primary election after an extraordinary grassroots campaign.

In the summer of 1934, Upton Sinclair earned the kind of headlines that greeted Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory on June 24, 2025, in the New York City mayoral election.

Mamdani’s win surprised nearly everyone. Not just because he beat the heavily favored former governor Andrew Cuomo, but because he did so by a large margin. Because he did so with a unique coalition, and because his Muslim identity and membership in the Democratic Socialists of America should have, in conventional political thinking, made victory impossible.

This sounds familiar, at least to historians like me. Upton Sinclair, the famous author and a socialist for most of his life, ran for governor in California in 1934 and won the Democratic primary election with a radical plan that he called End Poverty in California, or EPIC.

The news traveled the globe and set off intense speculation about the future of California, where Sinclair was then expected to win the general election. His primary victory also generated theories about the future of the Democratic Party, where this turn toward radicalism might complicate the policies of the Democratic administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

What happened next may concern Mamdani supporters. Business and media elites mounted a campaign of fear that put Sinclair on the defensive. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats defected, and a third candidate split progressive votes.

In the November election, Sinclair lost decisively to incumbent Gov. Frank Merriam, who would have stood less chance against a conventional Democrat.

As a historian of American radicalism, I have written extensively about Sinclair’s EPIC movement, and I direct an online project that includes detailed accounts of the campaign and copies of campaign materials.

Upton’s 1934 campaign initiated the on-again, off-again influence of radicals in the Democratic Party and illustrates some of the potential dynamics of that relationship, which, almost 100 years later, may be relevant to Mamdani in the coming months.

California, 1934

Sinclair launched his gubernatorial campaign in late 1933, hoping to make a difference but not expecting to win. California remained mired in the Great Depression. The unemployment rate had been estimated at 29% when Roosevelt took office in March and had improved only slightly since then.

Sinclair’s Socialist Party had failed badly in the 1932 presidential election as Democrat Roosevelt swept to victory. Those poor results included California, where the Democratic Party had been an afterthought for more than three decades.

Sinclair decided that it was time to see what could be accomplished by radicals working within that party.

Reregistering as a Democrat, he dashed off a 64-page pamphlet with the futuristic title I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty. It detailed his plan to solve California’s massive unemployment crisis by having the state take over idle farms and factories and turn them into cooperatives dedicated to “production for use” instead of “production for profit.”

Sinclair soon found himself presiding over an explosively popular campaign, as thousands of volunteers across the state set up EPIC clubs – numbering more than 800 by election time – and sold the weekly EPIC News to raise campaign funds.

Mainstream Democrats waited too long to worry about Sinclair and then failed to unite behind an alternative candidate. But it would not have mattered. Sinclair celebrated a massive primary victory, gaining more votes than all of his opponents combined.

Newspapers around the world told the story.

“What is the matter with California?” The Boston Globe asked, according to author Greg Mitchell. “That is the farthest shift to the left ever made by voters of a major party in this country.”

Building fear

Primaries are one thing. But in 1934, the November general election turned in a different direction.

Terrified by Sinclair’s plan, business leaders mobilized to defeat EPIC, forming the kind of cross-party coalition that is rare in America except when radicals pose an electoral threat. Sinclair described the effort in a book he wrote shortly after the November election: “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.”

Nearly every major newspaper in the state, including the five Democratic-leaning Hearst papers, joined the effort to stop Sinclair. Meanwhile, a high-priced advertising agency set up bipartisan groups with names like California League Against Sinclairism and Democrats for Merriam, trumpeting the names of prominent Democrats who refused to support Sinclair.

Few people of any party were enthusiastic about Merriam, who had recently angered many Californians by sending the National Guard to break a Longshore strike in San Francisco, only to trigger a general strike that shut down the city.

The campaign against Sinclair attacked him with billboards, radio and newsreel programming, and relentless newspaper stories about his radical past and supposedly dangerous plans for California.

EPIC faced another challenge, candidate Raymond Haight, running on the Progressive Party label. Haight threatened to divide left-leaning voters.

Sinclair tried to defend himself, energetically denouncing what he called the “Lie Factory” and offering revised, more moderate versions of some elements of the EPIC plan. But the Red Scare campaign worked. Merriam easily outdistanced Sinclair, winning by a plurality in the three-way race.

New York, 2025

Will a Democratic Socialist running for mayor in New York face anything similar in the months ahead?

A movement to stop Mamdani is coming together, and some of what they are saying resonates with the 1934 campaign to stop Sinclair.

The Guardian newspaper has quoted “loquacious billionaire hedge funder Bill Ackman, who said he and others in the finance industry are ready to commit ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ into an opposing campaign.”

In 1934, newspapers publicized threats by major companies, most famously Hollywood studios, to leave California in the event of a Sinclair victory. The Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine and other media outlets have recently warned of similar threats.

And there may be something similar about the political dynamics.

Sinclair’s opponents could offer only a weak alternative candidate. Merriam had few friends and many critics.

In 2025, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who abandoned the primary when he was running as a Democrat and is now running as an independent, is arguably weaker still, having been rescued by President Donald Trump from a corruption indictment that might have sent him to prison. If he is the best hope to stop Mamdani, the campaign strategy will likely parallel 1934. All attack ads – little effort to promote Adams.

But there is an important difference in the way the New York contest is setting up. Andrew Cuomo remains on the ballot as an independent, and his name could draw votes that might otherwise go to Adams.

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, will also be on the ballot. Whereas in 1934 two candidates divided progressive votes, in 2025 three candidates are going to divide the stop-Mamdani votes.

Religion also looms large in the campaign ahead. The New York City metro area’s U.S. Muslim population is said to be at least 600,000, compared to an estimated 1.6 million Jewish residents. Adams has announced that the threat of antisemitism will be the major theme of his campaign.

The stop-Sinclair campaign also relied on religion, focusing on his professed atheism and pulling quotations from books he had written denouncing organized religion. However, a statistical analysis of voting demographics suggests that this effort proved unimportant.

James N. Gregory does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. When socialists win Democratic primaries: Will Zohran Mamdani be haunted by the Upton Sinclair effect? – https://theconversation.com/when-socialists-win-democratic-primaries-will-zohran-mamdani-be-haunted-by-the-upton-sinclair-effect-260168

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Cora Sutherland, Interim Assistant Director, Center for Water Policy, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Offshore wind power could provide far more electricity than the U.S. uses for residential, commercial and industrial purposes. But the federal government has recently stopped approving offshore projects in the ocean.

Another option is available, though: the Great Lakes, where we are based as water policy researchers, and where state agencies rather than federal officials are the trustees of the lakes. A January 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump attempts to stop all federal permits for offshore and onshore wind power pending a review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.

But the states, not the federal government, handle leases and permits for wind power on the Great Lakes, though federal agencies are involved in the overall process. It is unclear how this executive order might impede federal action, but at the very least states could lay the groundwork now to be prepared to act when the next shift in federal priorities arrives.

A 2023 analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the Great Lakes states have enough offshore wind power potential to provide three times as much electricity as all eight Great Lakes states use currently, which would mean plenty left over to meet increasing demand or send power elsewhere in the country.

States are looking for opportunities

States have been forging their own paths separate from federal clean energy policy for decades. All eight Great Lakes states have state clean energy goals, and five of them – Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin – have a goal to achieve 100% clean or renewable energy by 2040 or 2050.

The challenge is not just to transform the current energy supply. As transportation and other sectors electrify, that increases electricity demand. As artificial intelligence proliferates, tech companies need more and more electricity and water for their data centers. By 2028, data centers are projected to consume nearly 12% of the country’s total usage, which requires massive increases in production in the Great Lakes and other key locations.

Companies and states are looking high and low to find enough electricity to meet the rising demand. They are extending the lives of coal-fired power plants and building new gas-fired power plants. Elon Musk’s xAI company has even been powering an artificial intelligence data center in Tennessee with massive generators that add air pollution without permits.

Government and industry are also looking to other sources, such as investing in nuclear fusion advancement and building geothermal plants.

A brief history

In the 2000s and 2010s, the Great Lakes Commission Wind Collaborative, Wisconsin Public Service Commission and the Michigan Great Lakes Wind Council began to sketch out regulations for offshore wind in the Great Lakes and to identify locations that might be suitable for the turbines.

In 2012, the Obama administration agreed to collaborate with five Great Lakes states – Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania – to streamline a permitting process for offshore wind development. Multiple projects were proposed off the shores of Michigan, Ohio and Ontario, Canada, though Ontario banned offshore wind projects in 2011.

Since then, momentum has stalled. One effort, the Icebreaker project off Cleveland, was approved and survived various legal challenges, but the project backers paused it indefinitely in 2023 due to the economic impacts of the legal delays.

Community activists are split, with some embracing offshore wind in the Great Lakes as part of a clean energy future and others vocally opposing it, citing environmental, health and economic concerns.

As of mid-2025, the Great Lakes were home to no offshore wind turbines.

Big potential, big unknowns

States continue to explore the possibility of offshore wind power in the Great Lakes. In early 2025, Illinois legislators again introduced a bill to create a pilot wind project off Chicago in Lake Michigan.

Also in 2025, Pennsylvania legislators introduced a bill to facilitate offshore wind power in Lake Erie. If adopted, the law would map which areas are fit to be leased for development by avoiding nearshore areas, shipping lanes and migration pathways. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance is pushing the province to lift its moratorium and reconsider offshore wind in Canadian waters.

A lot of details remain unknown. New York state supports offshore wind in the ocean but says “Great Lakes Wind does not provide the same electric and reliability benefits” by comparison. Ocean wind tends to be closer to areas where electricity demand is high, which can make those projects more cost-effective.

New York also concluded in 2022 that despite the combined 144.5 terawatt-hours of annual technical potential in state waters in Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, “numerous practical considerations … would need to be addressed before such projects can be successfully commercialized.”

To further explore the concerns New York’s report and others have raised, in 2024, with National Science Foundation funding, we collaborated with a team of researchers looking at a wide range of issues, including engineering, environmental effects and law. That effort resulted in articulating research questions whose answers would clarify how realistic different aspects of offshore wind could be in the Great Lakes, such as:

• How does ice that forms in freshwater affect the structural integrity of turbines?
• Are floating turbines a better fit than traditional fixed-bottom turbines to reach the higher wind speeds in the deeper parts of the lakes and out of view from shore?
• If turbine components and installation vessels can’t fit through the St. Lawrence Seaway, could they be built in the region and drive economic development?
• Can turbines be located in places that improve fisheries and avoid migratory paths of birds and bats?
• How can states establish leasing and permitting programs that maximize environmental, social and economic benefits?

State jurisdiction is an opportunity

In the oceans, U.S. states have jurisdiction from shore out three miles, with the federal government’s jurisdiction continuing out for hundreds of miles beyond that. So offshore project sites in the oceans are leased by the federal government.

The Great Lakes are different. The state governments hold the lakes’ waters and submerged lands in trust for the public. And state jurisdiction extends from shore all the way out to the boundary of a neighboring state’s jurisdiction or the international boundary with Canada.

Regulation of planning, site selection, leasing and other elements of offshore wind projects in the Great Lakes are the responsibility of one or another U.S. state. The federal government’s role is secondary, conducting environmental reviews and protecting navigation, but could still result in slowing state-led projects.

In research we published in 2024 and 2025, we explain that states could evaluate and select offshore wind projects based on a range of social and environmental benefits, in addition to financial considerations. For instance, they could look for designs that provide fish habitat or seek corporate partners that agree to train local workers, manufacture turbines and ships near the lakes, and provide cheaper electricity to local consumers.

Despite all the unknowns, we encourage greater support for research to harness the potential of offshore wind energy in the Great Lakes to be a renewable resource for states, the region and the nation as a whole.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Great Lakes offshore wind could power the region and beyond – https://theconversation.com/great-lakes-offshore-wind-could-power-the-region-and-beyond-261311

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Elizabeth Sharda, Associate Professor of Social Work, Hope College

I wrap up my workday and head for home, making a quick stop to grab the supplies my sixth grader needs for a project due this week and some ingredients for a quick dinner.

Once home, I check the sixth grader’s school website and discover a missing assignment. Bringing this up sparks a minor meltdown. I summon the emotional energy to help her calm down and problem-solve. My husband arrives home with our high schooler, who’s discouraged by something that happened at soccer practice. We’ll have to process that later.

Around the dinner table, we realize that both kids have sports practices Thursday, on opposite ends of town, at the same time as a mandatory parent meeting at school. And now I’m ready for my own meltdown.

On this particular evening, my family wasn’t navigating anything unique or especially catastrophic. Scenes like this play out nightly in homes across the United States. In fact, my family’s circumstances offer the protections of multiple forms of privilege. Certainly others have more difficult circumstances.

Why is it still so hard?

For a long time, I felt ashamed for being overwhelmed by parenthood. How do others seem to have it all together? Of course, the highlight reel of social media only fueled this comparison game. I often felt that I was falling short, missing some hack that others had found for not feeling constantly exhausted.

The reality is I’m far from alone in experiencing what social scientists term parenting stress. Defined as the negative psychological reaction to a mismatch between the demands of parenting and the resources available, parenting stress has become increasingly prevalent over the past five decades. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly half of all parents in the U.S. said their stress was completely overwhelming on most days.

Stress like this has an impact: Parents who experience high levels of parenting stress have decreased mental health and feel less close with their children.

I began researching parental stress and well-being when, several years after becoming a parent, I left my job as a social worker and entered a Ph.D. program. Through this process, I learned something that changed my perspective entirely: Parents today experience such high levels of stress because people have never traditionally raised children in isolation. And yet, we are more isolated than ever.

It clicked: Parents don’t need to do more or try harder. We need connection. We don’t need more social media posts on the “top three ways to keep your family organized.” We need a paradigm shift.

The myth of family self-reliance

Throughout human history, people primarily lived in multigenerational, multifamily arrangements. Out of necessity, our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied upon their clan-mates to help meet the needs of their families, including child-rearing. Research over time and across cultures suggests that parents are psychologically primed to raise children in community – not in isolated nuclear family units.

Anthropologists use the term alloparents – derived from the Greek “allo,” meaning “other” – to describe nonparent adults who provide care alongside that provided by parents.

Research suggests that alloparenting contributes to child well-being and even child survival in populations with high rates of child mortality. A 2021 study of a present-day foraging population in the Philippines found that alloparents provided an astounding three-quarters of the care for infants and an even greater proportion of the care for children ages 2 to 6.

In contrast, the ideal of the nuclear family is incredibly recent. It developed with industrialization, peaking in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the significant changes in family structure – such as an increase in single-parent households – since that period, the paragon of the self-reliant nuclear family persists.

And yet, support from others is a key factor in family resilience. The familiar adage “It takes a village to raise a child” is, in fact, bolstered by social support research among parents in general, as well as those of children with special needs.

Parenting with collective care

Social support, while often viewed as a singular phenomenon, is actually a constellation of actions, each with its own unique function. Social scientists specify at least three types of support:

• Tangible: Material or financial resources or assistance
• Emotional: Expressions of care, empathy and love
• Informational: Provision of information, advice or guidance

Different parenting challenges call for different types of support. When my husband and I realized we had three commitments in a single evening, we didn’t need advice on managing our family’s calendar; we needed someone to take our kid to practice – that’s tangible support. When my tween was blowing up over homework, I didn’t need someone to bring us dinner; I needed to remember what I learned from a book on parenting adolescent girls – that’s informational support.

To move away from the myth of family self-reliance and back toward an ideal of collective care would take a paradigm shift, requiring intervention at every level, from federal to state to family. A 2024 Surgeon General’s Advisory on parenting stress called it an urgent public health issue and provided recommendations for government leaders, service systems and communities. Systemic strategies like providing access to high-quality mental health care, expanding programs like Head Start that support parents and caregivers, and investing in social infrastructure like public libraries and parks could all help reduce parenting stress in the U.S.

Personal steps toward a paradigm shift

Parenting stress is not a problem that can be solved solely by the individuals experiencing it. But here are five ways you can start making the shift toward collective care in your own life:

1. Take stock of your network. Assess not only in terms of the number of supporters, but what types of support they offer. Do you have plenty of people to talk to, but no one who would bring you a meal or give your kid a ride? Identify gaps and consider ways to round out your “village.”
2. Start small. Introduce yourself to your retired neighbor. Sit next to another parent at your kid’s sporting event. Talk to the babysitter you regularly see at the playground. Supportive relationships don’t just happen; they are grown.
3. Offer help to others. While it seems counterintuitive, people who give support to others experience greater well-being and even longevity compared with those who don’t. Helping others also creates the opportunity for reciprocity. Those you support may be more likely to return the favor in the future.
4. Normalize asking for help and taking it when offered. For many people, asking for support is hard. It requires dropping the facade and letting people in on your struggles. However, people are often more willing to help than you might assume. Further, allowing others to help you gives them permission to voice their own needs in the future.
5. Consider your caregiving expectations. The way others care for your children may not mirror your way entirely. Consider what are nonnegotiable practices for your family – such as limits on screen time – and what is worth loosening up on – like veggies at every meal – if it means you have more alloparents helping you out.

None of these suggestions are easy. They take time, vulnerability and courage. In our society of rugged individualism and nuclear family self-reliance, parenting through a lens of collective care is downright countercultural. But perhaps it’s closer to how we, as humans, have raised children throughout the millennia.

Elizabeth Sharda has received research funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Faculty Development Fund. She serves on the board of directors for Michigan Fosters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing support to families involved in the child welfare system.

– ref. Parents don’t need to try harder – to ease parenting stress, forget self-reliance and look for ways to share the care – https://theconversation.com/parents-dont-need-to-try-harder-to-ease-parenting-stress-forget-self-reliance-and-look-for-ways-to-share-the-care-253076

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Elaine Lai, Lecturer in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education, Stanford University

In a story in the Buddhist canon, a grief-stricken mother named Kisa Gautami loses her only child and carries the body around town, searching for some way to resurrect the child.

When she encounters the Buddha, he asks her to collect several mustard seeds from a family that has never experienced death. Not surprisingly, Kisa Gautami is unable to find a single such family. She buries her child and decides to cultivate a spiritual life.

I thought of Kisa Gautami’s story when I first encountered the 2020 Korean documentary “Meeting You,” in which virtual reality technology is used to reunite a grieving mother, Jang Ji-sung, with her deceased 7-year-old daughter, Nayeon. While the virtual reunion was moving to witness, I wondered whether it was truly helping the mother to heal, or whether it was deepening an avoidance of grief and of the truth.

Since the documentary first aired, the business of digitally resurrecting the deceased has grown significantly. People are now using AI to create “grief bots,” which are simulations of deceased loved ones that the living can converse with. There has even been a case where an AI-rendered video of a deceased victim has appeared to deliver a court statement asking for the maximum sentence for the person who took their life.

As a Buddhist studies scholar who has experienced several bereavements this year, I have turned to Buddhist teachings to reflect on how creating a digital afterlife for loved ones may inadvertently enhance our suffering, and what alternative ways of grieving Buddhism might offer.

Buddhism’s view on suffering

According to Buddhist thought, the root of all suffering is clinging to illusions. This clinging creates karma that perpetuates negative cycles – for oneself and others – which endure lifetimes. In Mahayana Buddhism, the path to liberate oneself from this suffering begins by becoming a bodhisattva, someone who devotes their life to the liberation of self and others. Mahayana Buddhism, which introduced the idea of celestial bodhisattvas, is the most widely practiced form of Buddhism, particularly in East Asia and the Tibetan Himalayan regions.

In the “37 Practices of All the Bodhisattvas,” the 14th-century author Gyelse Tokme Zangpo wrote:

The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to let go of grasping
When encountering things one finds pleasant or attractive,
Consider them to be like rainbows in the summer skies –
Beautiful in appearance, yet in truth, devoid of any substance.

A digital avatar of the deceased may provide temporary comfort, but it may distort reality in an unhealthy way and intensify our attachment to an illusion. Interactions with a griefbot that responds to our every request may also diminish our memories of the deceased by creating an inauthentic version of who they were.

Grief as a catalyst for compassion

In the tradition of Buddhism that I specialize in, called the Great Perfection – a tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism, which is a branch of Mahayana – uncomfortable feelings such as grief are considered precious opportunities to cultivate spiritual insight.

In a text called Self-liberating Meditation, a 19th century mendicant teacher of the Great Perfection known as Patrul Rinpoche wrote: “No matter what kind of thoughts arise – be they good or bad, positive or negative, happy or sad – don’t indulge them or reject them, but settle, without altering, in the very mind that thinks.”

The Great Perfection contends that all of our emotions are like temporary clouds, and that our true nature is awareness, like the blue sky behind the clouds. Grief and other challenging emotions should not be altered or suppressed but allowed to transform in their own time.

In a culture where we are taught that negative emotions should be eliminated or pushed aside, not pushing away grief becomes a practice of great kindness toward oneself. By cultivating this awareness of our emotions, grief becomes a catalyst for compassion toward others. In Buddhism, compassion is the seed of awakening to the truth of interdependence – the fact that none of us exist as discreet beings but are deeply interconnected with all other beings and life forms.

Communal rituals

Compassion manifests outwardly in community rituals that process grief, such as the 49-day Buddhist service, common to the Great Perfection and other Buddhist traditions.

Many Buddhists believe that it takes 49 days for the consciousness of the deceased to transition into their next life. During this time, the family sets up a special altar and recites prayers for the deceased, often with the support of ordained monks and nuns. Practicing generosity toward others is also recommended to accumulate merit for the deceased.

These communal rituals provide much-needed outlets, time and support for processing grief and having it witnessed by others. The time and attention given to the grief process sharply contrasts to the situation in the United States, where bereavement leave is often limited to three to five days.

Deepening relationship with impermanence

In opting for digital avatars, we may undermine what Buddhism would consider to be critical moments for genuine transformation and connection.

When I think of the family and friends who have passed away this year, I empathize with the desire to hear their voices again, or to have conversations that provide closure where there was none. Rather than turning to a technological fix that promises a reunion with the deceased, I choose to deepen my relationship with impermanence and to savor the fleeting moments that I have with those I love now.

As Kisa Gautami’s story shows, the desire to bring back the dead is not new, but there is great benefit in allowing grief to run its course, including a felt sense of compassion for oneself and all others who have ever experienced similar forms of grief.

Elaine Lai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. It is becoming easier to create AI avatars of the deceased − here is why Buddhism would caution against it – https://theconversation.com/it-is-becoming-easier-to-create-ai-avatars-of-the-deceased-here-is-why-buddhism-would-caution-against-it-261445