Returning to Star Trek theology, the "Inner Light" episode was not about it being more important to be remembered than to survive. It was about a planet too stupid to do something about planetary warming (like our own), or to take measures to escape, except in their case it was their sun heating up. After it was too late, they were faced with this puzzle, which was how to preserve the "feel" of their culture, and not its artefacts -- classic sociological problem. So they contrived this process of getting someone to live through a virtual life unbenownst to him or her, in that culture. What is most curious about it is the way in which it leaves this eerie idea of people carrying around whole lives that are different than the one they are now living -- but immigrants do this every day, or rehabilitated people in many walks of life. Very powerful story.

I note that in Shakespeare's Hamlet there is an interesting contradiction. In "To be or not to be," Hamlet says of the land of the dead that it is "an undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns" -- when he has been talking to his father's ghost for at least two acts.

yours, Peter T.