newnumber6 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
newnumber6) wrote2004-10-30 12:40 pm
newnumber6) wrote2004-10-30 12:40 pm
Entry tags:
What I'd Do With #8: An Afterlife Worth Living (long)
Been a while since I've done one of these, but, recently on one of the discussion forums I'm on, someone raised the question of what sort of afterlife you'd design. So, I've been thinking about it for a while.
Now, I'm an atheist, so I don't actually believe in any afterlife. Moreover, I don't generally _want_ an afterlife. Most good afterlives I've heard of, while they may sound good to live in for a couple years, I don't want to spend eternity in. Really, what I want after death is oblivion. But let's say that's out.
Since we're assuming an afterlife, we might as well assume souls. Souls are therefore that which gives you free will and consciousness - a person without a soul, although they can perfectly mimic being a human of any form (good or bad), aren't really - they're like hollow dummies, or characters being roleplayed by a godlike intelligence with massive multitasking abilities, but who really doesn't much care what happens to any individual one. Again, I don't believe in souls and in reality, I don't care if an intelligence is simulated by a massive steam-driven computer, if it has sufficient intelligence it's a moral entity IMHO, but souls are a useful conceit when talking about afterlives and it comes up later.
In my afterlife, you can control how you appear, but you're always recognizeable to others, assuming they knew you. There's no physical pain or hunger unless you desire it. You don't _need_ to sleep, but you can if you wish. (I may also allow for people to use sleep as oblivion, waking up only every million years, or billion, or only when someone wants to talk to them, or possibly even 'never wake again', but I'm not sure)
You also have the ability, if you want, to share your true emotions with anyone you meet in the afterlife, and it can't be faked. If you're really sorry about something, and want to make amends, you can share it, and they'll know whether you're sorry because you thought it was wrong, or if you were just sorry that it hurt you or had other negative consequences, and every other shade of meaning. Same with love, etc. Deliberately causing people emotional pain causes _you_ to feel either the pain they feel, or the pain you _wanted_ them to feel, whichever is worse. (Accidentally causing such doesn't have this problem)
You can also block off memories you want to, for any reason. You'll know there are memories blocked off, and how to access them again if you want. There are a number of reasons for this. One, if there's anything really painful you can put it behind you. Two, it can help keep you from getting bored. You can read a book 'for the first time' as many times as you want.
Each person can have their own home, designed to their specifications. It doesn't get dirty (unless for some reason they want it to), and they can change it at will. This includes scenery.. if you want, you can have a home that overlooks Saturn's rings. You can share a place if all parties are agreeable to it, each has the ability to make changes.
Really, there are no physical restrictions: If you want a home surrounded by 10000 miles of forest, and you want to be able to walk through each and every mile, you're welcome to. (You can also just teleport around it at will though). You can have any pets you want, from your life or otherwise. If you really want, you can have 'people', those soulless automotons who seem and act like real people but lack souls and the ability to share pure emotion, to help fill out scenery or play roles like 'Butler', 'Cook', etc, but they can't leave your home-space (though in another place someone else could create the same people in their own homes). Really there's no need for them except your own personal ego or a desire for companionship.
You can visit anyone you want at any time so long as they're agreeable to it. However, they must be agreeable. If you're constantly emotionally abusive, or if you were bad to them in life, they're not necessarily going to agree. Not wanting someone to visit doesn't 'bother' you either. You're not even aware they asked unless you want to be. It's like having a perfect butler who knows you better than you know yourself, answers all requests, tells you about the ones you want to know about and politely ignores the ones you don't unless you are curious about whether anyone called. You can also do things like try to contact a random interested person, and there are various 'social locations' in the afterlife that anyone can go to - but again, if it's someone you really don't want to see, then you won't see them, and they won't see you. You can basically visit locations designed for people as wide or as narrow as you want. You could go into a 'chatroom' designed for anyone who ever lived, or into one designed for only those who were alive in 2004 in Toronto. You can enter ones that aren't designed for you (like 'everyone who ever lived in the ancient Roman empire'), but you're basically just exploring. For any category that you fit, you'll know which contain people at any time you check. For ones you don't fit, you can enter, but it might be empty.
I should point out that you may not be able to visit famous people - it depends on the person, and a lot of them may not want every person interested in meeting them dropping by (but then again, Eternity is a long time, so maybe eventually they'd be interested in meeting every single fan). However, there are ways to get around the problem of people who really wanted to, say, meet Elvis but he's not interested. More on that later.
In everyone's home there is a kitchen, capable of preparing any food at any time, as well as any drink. You don't need to eat, but it doesn't harm you or make you fat. If you enjoy it, go for it.
There's also the 'reading room', which contains every book ever written, every TV show or movie ever filmed, every play ever performed. It also has books and shows and movies that were _never_ made, but could have been. If your favorite show was cancelled in its first year, here you can watch the second season.
Next, there's the World Room. It's like the ultimate holodeck, where you can do whatever you want, whatever you can think of. Involve yourself in a fictional world, either as a main character or a Mary Sue. Visit a great historical moment. Meet a famous person. Be a famous person. Do anything from living a tiny fragment of an alternate life, to go into a new life, beginning to end. You can also have varying rules there - if you want, you can set initial conditions, and then make sure everything else flows from that. Or, you can have the ability to make changes on the fly, like a lucid dream. You can choose to feel pain or no. You can go in alone, or with others, or join a world-line that someone else has decided to allow anyone to join in - whether they know you or not. Be a human, a cat, an alien, or anything else.
Almost everyone in any experience in the World Room, though, is without a soul, unless they're a visitor like you. So, if you want to play an action adventure role where you're fighting in an intergalactic war, you don't have to worry that you're killing anyone or being 'immoral'. It's nothing worse than imagining it, except that it's more vivid. If you meet Elvis in one, unless by some bizarre coincidence, Elvis has decided to join you in it, you're just meeting a soulless copy... he knows everything the real Elvis did at that point in time, and in fact he's pretty well indistinguishable from the real thing.
Now I did say 'almost everyone', as I've had exceptions in mind. I do think there should be some provision for having new 'souls' born, both to keep eternity interesting (people will keep showing up), but also because if you're interacting with people, you might form an attachment and want them to 'really' exist.
I haven't completely solved the problem yet, but I have some initial thoughts:
1) You can't be in a 'lucid dream change things on the fly' type mode. You can choose initial conditions and rules (it can be a world where mutant powers are real, for example), but once you're in it, that's it, you have to deal with the consequences. No actual turning back time (you can simulate it, but you're really slipping into another world). Also, anyone whose emotional reactions you choose to dictate in advance will not develop a soul (so if you make a 'love interest' by declaring before you enter that he or she will fall madly in love with you, sorry).
2) The longer you spend in a world, the more chance someone will develop a soul in it. If you're just playing Buffy for five minutes, you're not going to have a souled Willow out of the deal. But if you're living a whole life (even if taking time out regularly and putting it on 'pause' to enjoy the rest of the afterlife), there's a good chance some people you meet and interact with regularly will also have souls.
3) No souls are born of those who are versions of any real people that are meant to be 'as close to the real thing as possible'. If you want to go back to relive your high school days, you aren't going to come out of it with another souled version of your high school sweetheart. (If you go to high school but then have the world attacked by aliens, these different versions of people you know might develop souls, but it's less likely)
I'm not sure how to deal with established Fictional characters in this way. If it worked, the afterlife would eventually get filled with versions of fictional characters. So I'm inclined to use the same rule as 'real people'. If they're meant to be exactly a fictional character, then no, but if events have changed them and made them unique, then maybe, but not likely.
4) Finally, the most important rule is - Love Nurtures a Soul. Whether it's romantic love or the love between a parent and child, if you don't love someone in one of these worlds, they're not at all likely to gain a soul. Which means you can't make a souled being by being cruel.
Now, I speak of 'gaining' a soul, although I'm not sure if it's simply a new soul being born when the character dies (or before) and having the memories of the 'automoton' attached to them, or if it's some sort of retroactive action where the soul becomes part of them since birth, propogating backwards in 'time'.
-
Finally besides the kitchen, reading room, and world room, there's also something else I call 'The Balcony'. It, of course, doesn't have to look like a balcony, it can look like whatever you want. What it is, is something that lets you look out onto the 'real' universe (that is, not a world-room universe, a universe where every intelligent being is a soul). In my model of the universe, there may be the end to any one universe, but there is always a universe going on... when one ends, another begins.
In the balcony, you can look at any part of the universe, watch how it's going, there's even picture in picture. And, yes, if you want, you can throw yourself off the balcony, and into the universe to be reincarnated. You don't get any choice in how you return, it's completely random (although you do enter at roughly the 'time' the universe was in and the 'place' you were looking at when you jumped, it's a very inexact science and waiting lists can screw up any intention to choose a particular new life - plus, you don't see the future of the ongoing universe anyway). You may end up suffering horribly, you may have a great life... and, unlike the World Room, you can't exit it at any time you want (unless of course, you die, but since you're entering it without your memories, you don't know what the afterlife is like). You'll still have roughly the same 'character', but otherwise you're allowing yourself to be shaped by this new life, which may include a completely new perspective if, say, the only life forms in the universe to reincarnate into are intelligent dolphins. When you return to afterlife you'll have both memories but you won't be the same as you started.
Interestingly enough, while there are a never ending string of universes, the number of new souls entering the afterlife will eventually taper off and reach a point where most people entering a new universe are people who've decided to reincarnate. They'll still be ever increasing numbers of people, but after the first big boom there'll be a much slower increase.
-
So, that's the main idea of the afterlife. Now, a while into this, I realized that there's no real division between good or bad in this afterlife. The afterlife looks pretty good (to me, anyway), but I didn't make any provisions for a 'hell', for what happens to the 'bad people'.
I thought about what I should do about this, and finally decided to do nothing. There is no distinction in my afterlife. Everybody goes. If you're an awful person, it's going to have consequences - if you cause people emotional pain, nobody will want to interact with you and it's going to hurt you. You may spend all your time in the World Room, doing whatever awful things you want, but you're not likely to have any souled beings come out of it, so basically you'll just be alone and amusing yourself and hurting no one (and hey, if you're a real sadist, you're already in hell, since you'll be unable to cause any _real_ pain for very long).
But, if you're interested, there are infinite chances for redemption. You can decide to be a better person. Or you can hang out among those who are just like you. But only if they want it. Or, you can decide to sentence yourself to oblivion.
That may not seem like much of a punishment, but I realized that I'm really not all that much about punishment - containment is good enough. I don't need to know that someone is being punished for all eternity for hurting people, it's enough to know that they're being prevented from doing so.
Another point seems to be that a supreme being doesn't have any direct role in my Afterlife. It's almost the same as the pre-afterlife state - one may have set it up, but they're not really around other than that. I guess I've just never really 'got' the whole expectation that you'll be hanging out with God after you die. If he's God, he's likely got more on his mind than answering every question you've got. If you want to hang out with God, go into the World Room and call up a simulation - if God runs the 'NPCs' of all the universes, maybe it's closer than you think. Really, you can simulate many other types of afterlifes in the World Room, if you prefer - if your version of the afterlife is endless bliss, spend all your time in a world where you're immortal and every sensation's like an orgasm. About the only thing you can't do is get 'all the answers' rushing in to you (well, not the real ones, anyway).
Which brings me to another point. You have access to a wide range of information, but there's no omni-knowledge. You won't know everything. You'll be fundamentally the same people, but with a lot more information, and perfect memory (for what you choose to remember), but that only goes so far. If you question why the afterlife is the way it is, you can come up with as many theories as you like, but you won't get the answer (unless, I suppose, you meet me, and hear that I designed it in a LJ post! ;)). If you want to know most things, you have to find it out - ask someone who does know, look it up in the reading room, or go into the World Room and run your own experiments. (Want to know why X happened to you? You may not get an answer, but you can set up a world where everything's the same except X did not happen, and compare the results). But eternity's a lot of time, and if all the answers were given to you, there'd be a hell of a lot less to do.
Anyway, what this winds up with is everyone has as much space as they want, as much material possessions as they want, as much time as they want, and can do pretty well whatever makes them happy - and there's still plenty of things to do with your time. Maybe there's still not enough to fill eternity, but well, it's as close as I can make it. There's peace because nobody can harm you without your consent.
Now, of course, the second part of this thought experiment is what I'd do _in_ this afterlife.
I'd probably look roughly like myself, only better, for the most part (though I'd change it from time to time). I wouldn't stick with any one home style either, but select through and rotate a whole bunch of different fantastic ones - make my home a starship, or underwater, or a castle on top of a cliff overlooking a great forest, a number of any others. I probably wouldn't have any virtual people, for the most part (although I might have some if they fit into a particular home's 'theme' - an AI and crew for a starship, etc), but would probably keep a pet of some sort.
I don't think I'd fully reincarnate, at least not until I got really bored, but maybe if a universe looked particularly interesting. I'd do a lot of reading, and try to see family and friends regularly.
Still, I think I'd spend most of my time in the World Room. I'd probably try out a few full 'alternate lives' of my choice, except skipping through boring parts and taking breaks at will to socialize in the afterlife or do more exciting mini-adventures like being in my favorite books or TV shows, or MUSHes. Of course, some of these alternate lives would _be_ more exciting stuff like being in my favorite books, shows, or games. Sometimes I'd try to get together with afterlife friends and go into a world together for fun, too. I admit I would probably do a bunch of 'If I was in my old life but I knew then what I know now...' type excursions too.
(And, although it has nothing to do with this post, I'm going to mention http://www.unreachablestar.net just for the extra link in)
(Archived in Memories like all WIDWs)
Now, I'm an atheist, so I don't actually believe in any afterlife. Moreover, I don't generally _want_ an afterlife. Most good afterlives I've heard of, while they may sound good to live in for a couple years, I don't want to spend eternity in. Really, what I want after death is oblivion. But let's say that's out.
Since we're assuming an afterlife, we might as well assume souls. Souls are therefore that which gives you free will and consciousness - a person without a soul, although they can perfectly mimic being a human of any form (good or bad), aren't really - they're like hollow dummies, or characters being roleplayed by a godlike intelligence with massive multitasking abilities, but who really doesn't much care what happens to any individual one. Again, I don't believe in souls and in reality, I don't care if an intelligence is simulated by a massive steam-driven computer, if it has sufficient intelligence it's a moral entity IMHO, but souls are a useful conceit when talking about afterlives and it comes up later.
In my afterlife, you can control how you appear, but you're always recognizeable to others, assuming they knew you. There's no physical pain or hunger unless you desire it. You don't _need_ to sleep, but you can if you wish. (I may also allow for people to use sleep as oblivion, waking up only every million years, or billion, or only when someone wants to talk to them, or possibly even 'never wake again', but I'm not sure)
You also have the ability, if you want, to share your true emotions with anyone you meet in the afterlife, and it can't be faked. If you're really sorry about something, and want to make amends, you can share it, and they'll know whether you're sorry because you thought it was wrong, or if you were just sorry that it hurt you or had other negative consequences, and every other shade of meaning. Same with love, etc. Deliberately causing people emotional pain causes _you_ to feel either the pain they feel, or the pain you _wanted_ them to feel, whichever is worse. (Accidentally causing such doesn't have this problem)
You can also block off memories you want to, for any reason. You'll know there are memories blocked off, and how to access them again if you want. There are a number of reasons for this. One, if there's anything really painful you can put it behind you. Two, it can help keep you from getting bored. You can read a book 'for the first time' as many times as you want.
Each person can have their own home, designed to their specifications. It doesn't get dirty (unless for some reason they want it to), and they can change it at will. This includes scenery.. if you want, you can have a home that overlooks Saturn's rings. You can share a place if all parties are agreeable to it, each has the ability to make changes.
Really, there are no physical restrictions: If you want a home surrounded by 10000 miles of forest, and you want to be able to walk through each and every mile, you're welcome to. (You can also just teleport around it at will though). You can have any pets you want, from your life or otherwise. If you really want, you can have 'people', those soulless automotons who seem and act like real people but lack souls and the ability to share pure emotion, to help fill out scenery or play roles like 'Butler', 'Cook', etc, but they can't leave your home-space (though in another place someone else could create the same people in their own homes). Really there's no need for them except your own personal ego or a desire for companionship.
You can visit anyone you want at any time so long as they're agreeable to it. However, they must be agreeable. If you're constantly emotionally abusive, or if you were bad to them in life, they're not necessarily going to agree. Not wanting someone to visit doesn't 'bother' you either. You're not even aware they asked unless you want to be. It's like having a perfect butler who knows you better than you know yourself, answers all requests, tells you about the ones you want to know about and politely ignores the ones you don't unless you are curious about whether anyone called. You can also do things like try to contact a random interested person, and there are various 'social locations' in the afterlife that anyone can go to - but again, if it's someone you really don't want to see, then you won't see them, and they won't see you. You can basically visit locations designed for people as wide or as narrow as you want. You could go into a 'chatroom' designed for anyone who ever lived, or into one designed for only those who were alive in 2004 in Toronto. You can enter ones that aren't designed for you (like 'everyone who ever lived in the ancient Roman empire'), but you're basically just exploring. For any category that you fit, you'll know which contain people at any time you check. For ones you don't fit, you can enter, but it might be empty.
I should point out that you may not be able to visit famous people - it depends on the person, and a lot of them may not want every person interested in meeting them dropping by (but then again, Eternity is a long time, so maybe eventually they'd be interested in meeting every single fan). However, there are ways to get around the problem of people who really wanted to, say, meet Elvis but he's not interested. More on that later.
In everyone's home there is a kitchen, capable of preparing any food at any time, as well as any drink. You don't need to eat, but it doesn't harm you or make you fat. If you enjoy it, go for it.
There's also the 'reading room', which contains every book ever written, every TV show or movie ever filmed, every play ever performed. It also has books and shows and movies that were _never_ made, but could have been. If your favorite show was cancelled in its first year, here you can watch the second season.
Next, there's the World Room. It's like the ultimate holodeck, where you can do whatever you want, whatever you can think of. Involve yourself in a fictional world, either as a main character or a Mary Sue. Visit a great historical moment. Meet a famous person. Be a famous person. Do anything from living a tiny fragment of an alternate life, to go into a new life, beginning to end. You can also have varying rules there - if you want, you can set initial conditions, and then make sure everything else flows from that. Or, you can have the ability to make changes on the fly, like a lucid dream. You can choose to feel pain or no. You can go in alone, or with others, or join a world-line that someone else has decided to allow anyone to join in - whether they know you or not. Be a human, a cat, an alien, or anything else.
Almost everyone in any experience in the World Room, though, is without a soul, unless they're a visitor like you. So, if you want to play an action adventure role where you're fighting in an intergalactic war, you don't have to worry that you're killing anyone or being 'immoral'. It's nothing worse than imagining it, except that it's more vivid. If you meet Elvis in one, unless by some bizarre coincidence, Elvis has decided to join you in it, you're just meeting a soulless copy... he knows everything the real Elvis did at that point in time, and in fact he's pretty well indistinguishable from the real thing.
Now I did say 'almost everyone', as I've had exceptions in mind. I do think there should be some provision for having new 'souls' born, both to keep eternity interesting (people will keep showing up), but also because if you're interacting with people, you might form an attachment and want them to 'really' exist.
I haven't completely solved the problem yet, but I have some initial thoughts:
1) You can't be in a 'lucid dream change things on the fly' type mode. You can choose initial conditions and rules (it can be a world where mutant powers are real, for example), but once you're in it, that's it, you have to deal with the consequences. No actual turning back time (you can simulate it, but you're really slipping into another world). Also, anyone whose emotional reactions you choose to dictate in advance will not develop a soul (so if you make a 'love interest' by declaring before you enter that he or she will fall madly in love with you, sorry).
2) The longer you spend in a world, the more chance someone will develop a soul in it. If you're just playing Buffy for five minutes, you're not going to have a souled Willow out of the deal. But if you're living a whole life (even if taking time out regularly and putting it on 'pause' to enjoy the rest of the afterlife), there's a good chance some people you meet and interact with regularly will also have souls.
3) No souls are born of those who are versions of any real people that are meant to be 'as close to the real thing as possible'. If you want to go back to relive your high school days, you aren't going to come out of it with another souled version of your high school sweetheart. (If you go to high school but then have the world attacked by aliens, these different versions of people you know might develop souls, but it's less likely)
I'm not sure how to deal with established Fictional characters in this way. If it worked, the afterlife would eventually get filled with versions of fictional characters. So I'm inclined to use the same rule as 'real people'. If they're meant to be exactly a fictional character, then no, but if events have changed them and made them unique, then maybe, but not likely.
4) Finally, the most important rule is - Love Nurtures a Soul. Whether it's romantic love or the love between a parent and child, if you don't love someone in one of these worlds, they're not at all likely to gain a soul. Which means you can't make a souled being by being cruel.
Now, I speak of 'gaining' a soul, although I'm not sure if it's simply a new soul being born when the character dies (or before) and having the memories of the 'automoton' attached to them, or if it's some sort of retroactive action where the soul becomes part of them since birth, propogating backwards in 'time'.
-
Finally besides the kitchen, reading room, and world room, there's also something else I call 'The Balcony'. It, of course, doesn't have to look like a balcony, it can look like whatever you want. What it is, is something that lets you look out onto the 'real' universe (that is, not a world-room universe, a universe where every intelligent being is a soul). In my model of the universe, there may be the end to any one universe, but there is always a universe going on... when one ends, another begins.
In the balcony, you can look at any part of the universe, watch how it's going, there's even picture in picture. And, yes, if you want, you can throw yourself off the balcony, and into the universe to be reincarnated. You don't get any choice in how you return, it's completely random (although you do enter at roughly the 'time' the universe was in and the 'place' you were looking at when you jumped, it's a very inexact science and waiting lists can screw up any intention to choose a particular new life - plus, you don't see the future of the ongoing universe anyway). You may end up suffering horribly, you may have a great life... and, unlike the World Room, you can't exit it at any time you want (unless of course, you die, but since you're entering it without your memories, you don't know what the afterlife is like). You'll still have roughly the same 'character', but otherwise you're allowing yourself to be shaped by this new life, which may include a completely new perspective if, say, the only life forms in the universe to reincarnate into are intelligent dolphins. When you return to afterlife you'll have both memories but you won't be the same as you started.
Interestingly enough, while there are a never ending string of universes, the number of new souls entering the afterlife will eventually taper off and reach a point where most people entering a new universe are people who've decided to reincarnate. They'll still be ever increasing numbers of people, but after the first big boom there'll be a much slower increase.
-
So, that's the main idea of the afterlife. Now, a while into this, I realized that there's no real division between good or bad in this afterlife. The afterlife looks pretty good (to me, anyway), but I didn't make any provisions for a 'hell', for what happens to the 'bad people'.
I thought about what I should do about this, and finally decided to do nothing. There is no distinction in my afterlife. Everybody goes. If you're an awful person, it's going to have consequences - if you cause people emotional pain, nobody will want to interact with you and it's going to hurt you. You may spend all your time in the World Room, doing whatever awful things you want, but you're not likely to have any souled beings come out of it, so basically you'll just be alone and amusing yourself and hurting no one (and hey, if you're a real sadist, you're already in hell, since you'll be unable to cause any _real_ pain for very long).
But, if you're interested, there are infinite chances for redemption. You can decide to be a better person. Or you can hang out among those who are just like you. But only if they want it. Or, you can decide to sentence yourself to oblivion.
That may not seem like much of a punishment, but I realized that I'm really not all that much about punishment - containment is good enough. I don't need to know that someone is being punished for all eternity for hurting people, it's enough to know that they're being prevented from doing so.
Another point seems to be that a supreme being doesn't have any direct role in my Afterlife. It's almost the same as the pre-afterlife state - one may have set it up, but they're not really around other than that. I guess I've just never really 'got' the whole expectation that you'll be hanging out with God after you die. If he's God, he's likely got more on his mind than answering every question you've got. If you want to hang out with God, go into the World Room and call up a simulation - if God runs the 'NPCs' of all the universes, maybe it's closer than you think. Really, you can simulate many other types of afterlifes in the World Room, if you prefer - if your version of the afterlife is endless bliss, spend all your time in a world where you're immortal and every sensation's like an orgasm. About the only thing you can't do is get 'all the answers' rushing in to you (well, not the real ones, anyway).
Which brings me to another point. You have access to a wide range of information, but there's no omni-knowledge. You won't know everything. You'll be fundamentally the same people, but with a lot more information, and perfect memory (for what you choose to remember), but that only goes so far. If you question why the afterlife is the way it is, you can come up with as many theories as you like, but you won't get the answer (unless, I suppose, you meet me, and hear that I designed it in a LJ post! ;)). If you want to know most things, you have to find it out - ask someone who does know, look it up in the reading room, or go into the World Room and run your own experiments. (Want to know why X happened to you? You may not get an answer, but you can set up a world where everything's the same except X did not happen, and compare the results). But eternity's a lot of time, and if all the answers were given to you, there'd be a hell of a lot less to do.
Anyway, what this winds up with is everyone has as much space as they want, as much material possessions as they want, as much time as they want, and can do pretty well whatever makes them happy - and there's still plenty of things to do with your time. Maybe there's still not enough to fill eternity, but well, it's as close as I can make it. There's peace because nobody can harm you without your consent.
Now, of course, the second part of this thought experiment is what I'd do _in_ this afterlife.
I'd probably look roughly like myself, only better, for the most part (though I'd change it from time to time). I wouldn't stick with any one home style either, but select through and rotate a whole bunch of different fantastic ones - make my home a starship, or underwater, or a castle on top of a cliff overlooking a great forest, a number of any others. I probably wouldn't have any virtual people, for the most part (although I might have some if they fit into a particular home's 'theme' - an AI and crew for a starship, etc), but would probably keep a pet of some sort.
I don't think I'd fully reincarnate, at least not until I got really bored, but maybe if a universe looked particularly interesting. I'd do a lot of reading, and try to see family and friends regularly.
Still, I think I'd spend most of my time in the World Room. I'd probably try out a few full 'alternate lives' of my choice, except skipping through boring parts and taking breaks at will to socialize in the afterlife or do more exciting mini-adventures like being in my favorite books or TV shows, or MUSHes. Of course, some of these alternate lives would _be_ more exciting stuff like being in my favorite books, shows, or games. Sometimes I'd try to get together with afterlife friends and go into a world together for fun, too. I admit I would probably do a bunch of 'If I was in my old life but I knew then what I know now...' type excursions too.
(And, although it has nothing to do with this post, I'm going to mention http://www.unreachablestar.net just for the extra link in)
(Archived in Memories like all WIDWs)