Maybe it does and the queue is so long we just forget about our old life by the time our number comes up
The existence of a queue sparks the follow-up question: What happens if something is born while the queue is empty?
Donald J. Trump.
Miscarriage?
Mushrooms.
They came before the queue got started and will be here long after it finishes.Pillars of Eternity happens.
I read a short story once that there’s only one person constantly reincarnated simultaneously, and everyone you (I) meet is actually me (you) and only realizes it after death before being born into the next person’s body,
That’s interesting. I’ve had that same thought before, it might be cool to see someone else’s take on it. Do you remember the name of the story or author?
The Egg, by Andy Weir.
It’s also on YouTube in various forms. Kurzgesagt, for example, has a version in their animation style.
Oh my god. That was Andy Weir?!
I don’t actually believe this, but it’s the perspective I try to have in life. Always treat others how you want to be treated because maybe one day it will be you.
I’ve found myself having to use something like “try to treat people how they want to be treated” as a perspective. Being autistic I’ve learned the hard way what I want is usually very different from what most people around me want, which means I can’t really rely on myself on these matters. It’s easy to think through ourselves, but considering others through ourselves doesn’t always end up being the best course of action. Though I guess just being compassionate gets you pretty far either way
In my story, Maizy’s Tails, I made it so that souls had to be aged for 1000 years before they could be reincarnated. Otherwise the lingering attachment (which makes souls weightless) won’t allow them to enter into a new body.
The 1000 years is just a nice, round figure the gods use as a safe baseline. Some souls might only need 200 years while others might need 950 or so. Best to just place them all into balloons and let them age in batches 👍
Life sucks?
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Shit I’m a dung beetle now…yes that’s why you don’t do that for reincarnation. Though be better than working for my boss right?rimshot but seriously live out your life it’s the only one you’ll ever know even if you get reincarnated. Maybe it’ll surprise you one day.
Frankly I think there’s already a gap on this with religious belief. If SO many people truly believe in god and an afterlife, there should be more suicides. Okay, it’s a sin. Fine. But then why aren’t people happier when a relative passes? It’s almost like no one actually really believes this shit at the end of the day.
I’ve always said that if I were to believe that there was an eternal afterlife that entry depended on how you lived your relatively short life on Earth, then why would I waste any time in life doing anything other than securing my chances at the good afterlife. Like if you actually believed that, then wouldn’t you live your life as a model person according to how the Bible says you should? It’s shortsighted to do anything else with your life.
Let’s say this life is all you get: wouldn’t you also do a million things to stay healthy and live longer, which most people do not do?
We invented the afterlife because it’s hard to deal with the fact that life is sometimes nasty, brutish, and short. Death is pretty hard to face too. So we lie to ourselves and each other about it. Simple as that.
The problem is that there’s a loophole where you just have to say sorry and all is forgiven.
That’s why suicide is a mortal sin, because you can’t say sorry after.
Although when my step nephew killed himself (didn’t really know him) all they could talk about was that he’s in heaven now.
I’ve always had the same thought. You’d think funerals would be celebrations for the religious.
In more secular societies, over the last couple of years, people are celebrating more at funerals. Which, IMO, is a better way to remember a dead loved one.
I’d rather they have fun once more on my account when I die than just sit around being sad.
Yeah, I’ve seen the “celebration of life” becoming more popular.
Right? We’d celebrate death anniversaries, not birthdays.
I am atheistic and agnostic personally, so not speaking from faith but:
People can have two (or more) emotions at the same time, they can be happy and joyfull that their relative is in a better place now and at the same time sad and tearfull that the person is no longer with them. Happy for the dead, sad for themself.
It is not a contradiction, it only shows the very deep and complicated ways of our mind and emotions.
That’s fair - I’d agree. I guess I just don’t see the happy at all.
I think that is because emotions for ourself are stronger and directer then those that we feel in behave of others. The pain and sadness of the personal loss overshadows the happyness that the other person is in a better place.
But this is only my personal explanation, based on my 45 years on this planet but without any hard facts or scientific data to back it up.
Would it count as suicide anymore?
strategic respwan?
Rerolling. As a Civilization player, I get it. I’d be aiming for that legendary start too.
I would say it’s tactical at best.
I mean I don’t see any difference between death and reincarnating without past memories.
In that case, people with retrograde amnesia are already dead and we should just consider them a new legal person…
Yes. That’s actually how that works.
If no one can identify you and you have the physical symptoms of amnesia (which can be detected… Sorry fakers!) then you get a new, legal identity.
If you lose all your memories due to amnesia, you will still be you, experiencing reality as you, just with your “hard drive” being wiped.
I still don’t see any difference between death and reincarnating without past memories.
It’s like being awake and not remember something vs sleeping and not having dreams.
Well some people who believe in reincarnation seem to also think that at least some memories do get preserved, perhaps subconsciously.
Then there is the whole dualist aspect: if reincarnation is real, something must carry over past death. Call it a soul, or an essence or personality or whatever. While I find dualism highly dubious, I can see its appeal.
That said, one could imagine, at least in principle, that through “some mechanism” your reincarnated body develops the same brain structure that you had when you died, perhaps with some differences needed to account for the different memories. If one entertains this fiction, I would argue there is significant similarity between the person who died and the person who they reincarnated as.
This is a cease and desist on positive anymore usage. Thanks.
cylons can resurrect/reincarnate everytime they die(the show never actually showed how they did it). plus since they had no fear of death thier reincarnation, they can callously keep throwing bodies against thier enemies, and provide useful intel as well.
I’d come back as a butterfly.
Nobody ever suspects the butterflies!
I’ve seen a giant butterfly be blamed for burning down a school ;)
I’ve seen them blamed for literal hurricanes.
You’d have to come back as a caterpillar first.
Now that you mention it, I’m even more excited to experience the living goo in a shell phase!
That’s just my current life all over again. :(
Yet they can cause hurricanes
I like the idea of Death in the Discworld. You get what you believe in. That’s why some isolated tribes kill evangelist on site , hell only exists if you believe in it.
The monk that believes in reincarnation is always so excited to start again but wishes he would remember more, only remembering his other lives in the time he is dead.
The long desert that Brutha believes in is special when he decides to save Vorbis, and walks it together, even though he is like a messiah and Vorbis should be condemned to suffer his loneliness forever.
I fucking love The Small Gods book so much
What happens if someone believes that death is only temporary, and every time they die, they’ll come back to life in an even more powerful form 1 day later?
Death is a specific entity so he has to make it happen and there’s lots of things that he nopes lol Like people that become ghosts, he is always like yeah it’s weird that nobody tells you what happens next bye! and the ghost has to figure it out for themselves
Congratulations, you found Son Goku!
It would depend on how reincarnation works. Do I know I’ll be reborn in a better life? They say the grass is always greener, everyone has problems and perceives others as better off. My old guidance counselor’s husband said that if everyone sat in a circle, wrote down their problems, put them in a hat, and randomly drew other people’s problems, everyone would want their own problems back
It would be a lot like speed runners in games. You just keep resetting until you get a good spawn.
This assumes you don’t get stuck as something that can’t kill itself to re-roll.
But you’d have to suffer through infancy and childhood until you’re old enough to have the capability to kill yourself
No wonder toddlers are always doing the most dangerous shit
There’d still be a five or so yeah buffer on it, and who’s to say that won’t be worse. Fun fact I read a pre fall of the eldar fanfic with this basis, it just kept getting worse until Slaanesh was murder fucked into existence.
I read a short story back in college about a woman who helped people remember their past lives. Somehow she gets transported to a universe where reincarnation is completely real and everyone remembers all their previous past lives. Suicide was rampant and the world generally sucked. She somehow transitions to helping people forget their past lives to make the world a better place. I really wish I could remember the title of the story.
For some reason this makes me think of something I read in a junior high English class. A group of surfers is driving to the beach when they drive through a tunnel and emerge into gridlock traffic. They inch forward for hours and it gets really hot. The driver finally flags down a passing cop and asks what the deal is. “Oh, you guys died in the tunnel back there and now you’re in hell.”
The story was called The Jam.
This sounds really interesting actually.
The short story collection/sorta novel Haunted by Pahlanuik ends with the discovery that the planet Venus (I think? Might have been Jupiter) is essentially an eternal awesome orgy heaven, which everyone will eventually end up reincarnating on when they die. So everyone on earth essentially decides to kill themselves. Stores have to start locking up suicide kits because people will just take them in the store and die before paying.
That entire thing is fucked up. I read it somewhere around sophomore year of high school and existentially traumatized me. There are stories in there that somehow 4chan shock image level in just written words.
Pahlanuik has a certain way of planting images in your brain that stay there for decades. Such a weird, brilliant, fascinating and slightly off-putting author. He really captures the ennui, alienation, despair, and absurdity of late-stage capitalism.
stay there for decades
Yeah. I read that book 20 years ago, and I can still vividly remember someone microwaving some meat and discovering that it was their own ass cheek, or a cis woman being accused of being trans and being sexually assaulted, someone falling into a spring at Yosemite, and of course, “Guts.”
He has a schtick with memorable twists, similar to Fight Club. I think Choke was the only novel of his I remember not really having a giant record scratch moment - Lullaby, Invisible Monsters, etc have huge twists. Like discovering the orgy heaven at the end of Haunted which really just serves to punch you in the gut - absolutely all of the fucked up things that the characters were doing to try to be famous was absolutely pointless, because everyone on Earth is killing themselves anyways.
The only fiction authors I can think of that have given me the same level of intense shock and revulsion would be Ágota Kristóf with the Notebook trilogy (which is spectacular and everyone should read) and Samuel Delany’s Hogg (which no one should read under any circumstances.)
Cory Doctorow has a story set in a society where cloning complete with mind restoration exists and is pretty quick and cheap. People make regular backups of themselves and then engage in dangerous activities like mountain skiing and whatnot. I forget which story it is: might be ‘Rapture of the Nerds’.
Wasn’t that Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom?
Can confirm, it is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Don’t forget deadheading! - everybody being able to basically switch off their brains to a kind of suspend state every time they get bored.
Yeah, could be that, judging by the summary on Wikipedia. I was so weirded out by the Disney World aspect of it, that I frankly forgot to follow the plot.
Pandora’s Star, by Peter F Hamilton has a similar premise. It’s a space opera mystery, at least 2 books. Highly recommended.
There would be reincarnation preachers, coaches, and scammers, promising you an ideal reincarnated life.
Well those already exist.
They’d also probably make it so that debt carries over into your next life.
Are you kidding me I’m not gonna repeat all the time I’ve already served.
Yes you will.
If it were proven, and you could identify your previous identity, would you be able to claim your wealth and possessions from previous life?
that would go for debts too, or alleged debts.
Past life crimes bureau.
Sounds like the premise for a cool novel
The Reincarnationist Papers. D. Eric Maikranz
I guess it depends. If you’re eager to get the fuck outta this mortal coil, would having to go through childhood again really be something you’d be eager to do?
It depends.
If governments don’t restrict this information and you get born in a bad family, then you use knowledge of reincarnation and can just kys and keep doing it till you get a good family and childhood…
Then kys by 18 if you dont got rich parents so you can skip the “wage slavery” phase…
Oh I bet governments will start restricting this information…
Like how they bury history books…
Childhood kinda feels nostalgic ngl…
I mean it felt very fun and intense from memory…
I just didn’y know how to appreciate it back then…
I mean me right now could consciousness transfer to 8 year old me and redo all that and I could make it perfect…
If birth rates decline, you’re gonna be stuck in purgatory for a long time
I mean 1000 years would just be a blink of eye since you wouldn’t be conscious to be aware of it…
Alternatively, maybe I get born into an advanced post-scarcity alien civilization?
See that’s exactly where my mind went. Who says you would come back human… or even on Earth with a vast universe with infinite planets?
If I could be a bumblebee for 12 seconds I’d do it
You can still wiggle your butt and dance, sister!
Oh wait. That’s honey bees. Do bumblebees do anything fun?
They bumble! Bumbling seems fun.
Nah, I tried it and never got any matches
