Inspired by this article about a jellyfish that doesn’t die of old age, injury or poor conditions, it just reverts back to a juvenile state and is reborn genetically identical. If you could be reborn, as you, would you want to?
Edit: Just the physical you, genetic and presumably epigenetic, no memory.
Hell no.
I dont even want to continue with this miserable life, why the fuck would I want to keep doing it over and over again.
People keep saying that. :(
No memory = no point in doing it.
If you don’t remember something, it might as well have never happened.
Besides, I’m already sick of this time around, and my genetics were fucked to begin with. Give me a redo with my memories and a new body, and then we might have something.
Maybe you could leave yourself hints like the memento guy.
I work with a guy who has a long Polish name that nobody can spell, and it makes me smile every time he’s referred to as John G.
Not without keeping my memory, no. I definitely wish for immortality, just from a curiosity perspective. I don’t think I necessarily deserve it, I am just so interested in seeing how things turn out in the future.
Depends on if you keep your memories or not each rebirth.
How would this change your answer? I fear the thought of carrying trauma forever.
It’s the difference between reliving the exact same life repeatedly with no knowledge of any previous lives. This could actually be happening for you right now, but you’d never know. So, what’s the point? Retaining memories lets you differentiate between the iterations with accumulated trauma, joy, loss, sense of renewal.
If this topic interests you, I recommend Replay by Ken Grimwood.
Replay is one of the best books ever written, fight me!
I think I’d fight with you on this point.
Ever read This Perfect Day by Levin? It gave me similar vibes, although the story is very different.
Thanks for the recommendation! Will check out.
Thanks for the reco!
All that time to work on your trauma? Sign me up!
Would be very bizarre to be like 15yo though, would you like get born in a new family every time? Weird af.
Yeah. You die, become a baby and get adopted (hopefully) by whoever finds you.
I don’t want to make the same mistakes for infinity, at least this way I could make new mistakes for infinity!
Like groundhog day or any of the other time loop movies. If you had the ability to accumulate knowledge over lifetimes, you could progress to incredible levels of understanding and ability.
Imagine spending a lifetime to learn an instrument, then repeat until you are a one person master band.
It has the benefit of immortality to accomplish things, without the issues of being going crazy from being 52 for a thousand years. You’ll be young again, and experience the joys of youth, the pain of heartbreak again as a teebs, your first child, etc. Or spend one life being reckless, then another being a parent, another a space explorer, etc.
All true. Every life would be lived anew but times change, so you would see the futures beyond a single human life.
Even if the new body and I are genetically identical, if it doesn’t have my memories, it is not “me”.
I wonder. You hear about twins seperated at birth that end up doing similar things.
That is a real fear. But part of trauma are the neural pathways it forms. So, that creates a problem whereas remembering a thing as having happened doesn’t have that same effect.
I had not considered the distinction. Interesting.
Why would it matter if you don’t remember?
Edit: Just the physical you, genetic and presumably epigenetic, no memory.
Without the memories, that simply wouldn’t be me though. After all, twins that share the entirety of their genetic material aren’t the same person either.
I also just wouldn’t do it, my genetics aren’t anything special that’s worth preserving.
True.
God no, I don’t even want to live this life let alone living more!
Well now I’m sad. Hope things get better soon for you.
Ahhh! Sorry to bring you down! I hope breadcat can make you smile!
It does. May the sun shine gently on you both.
aww that was a wholesome interaction
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nah humanity is one of the most painful things Ive ever read of or come into contact with . Im actually very eager to see the end of my life cause then I wont have to deal with all this genocidal , selfish, illogical bullshit from people.
Also why would I do this without keeping my memories? Absolutely not. I need to remember why I want to stay awau from other people and what other people have done to me that has led to me becomjng this sad sad state…
Edit: also let me clarify, I am certainly no saint or a messiah or anyone or anything special. Im just some dude. But Ive come to realization… that Im fatigued and jaded by the humans Ive come into contact with in my life including my parenrs who have practicallt ostracized me and the ‘friends’ who I had who ghosted me or betrayed me. And Im tired of this abyss of loneliness I always appear to be stuck in no matter what I do to just be confident and go out more and to be friendly even trying to just be more genuine- it all just never works for me…and…Im tired of it all. Im so tired of it all.
I dont mean to be a meanie to anyone who reads this comment , I wish you all well. I wish you all had better lives than I have had so far and than I will have IF I keep on living (probably wont happen but …so be it…I tried. I failed. And Im sorry. It is what it is) Just please know: Im tired. Im so tired. Im only 30 but I know for a fact Im not long for this world . Sadly. Ive been through some things I cant even type here without being banned forever…
I wish you all the best in your endeavors or if you I dont knkw choose to be reincarnated like this lol. Bye everyone. Peace 🤟🏿🫂😮💨
I see your point. We are a very short sighted species.
no
Sure, might as well
In a way that is temporally continuous? No way. As long as I’m always dead by around 2012? Yeah, sure.
This is the correct answer. Except for the 9/11 part and well… lots of other bad things but ideally I’d be able to stop some of that from happening somehow.
…IF it is just your body coming back and nothing or your mind that it isn’t me coming back.
There are already way too many humans on this planet now. That would just mean that this planet would have 120 Billion people on it.
Not everyone. Just you.
More time to do more stuff, so yeah. There’s billions of things you can be famous for. Tackling one at a time sounds fun.
Assuming reset is not messy, though.
Edit: Without memory I suppose my plan wouldn’t work that well.
Its all fun and games until you grow up and realize that the last “you” from before that you don’t remember and have no affiliation with now was a serial killer or something. Two consecutive life sentences just got a whole other meaning.
Also, I guess after decades and decades of this you’d have to start doing DNA testing before having sex because - you wouldn’t remember all the offspring you have had or the cousins or whatever (this is assuming your family and everyone else is doing this same rebirth cycle thing)
And how would that work? Are you stuck with the same family forever? Count me out I don’t want to go through childhood again like that.
Imagine if you were someone like Donald Trump or Jeffery Epstein and then come back as a normal person like you are now with the same morals and belief system and then have to come to terms with that. I don’t know if I could.
Even if you don’t remember or feel that way now it was still you
I’m not perfect by any measure of the word but I do feel good about having a lot of the beliefs that I do. I know people who grew up just like I did except they drank the koolaid and turned out with some shitty beliefs.
What if you ended up like that the second time? What if you turned into a Nazi or something that would be horrible.
I agree with what one of the other commenters said though, it would be so cool to see just how much our personality and behavior is affected by external factors.
And especially interesting to see how much of it is not.
Sounds like cloning.
We already have a way of doing that but in a evolutionary more successfull way. It’s called fucking and having offspring. Some people opt in doing that, others dont.
If the memory erased thing was off the table we’d have a different talk but parents raising kids and make them learn from their experience is as close as it gets. With access to all sorts of info our way of doing it is even better. One thing im truly missing though is passing learned skills like guitar or muscles to our clones. Re-learning all that shit is a waste of time.
But that is an individual, not you.
