Hindus and Buddhists would be dying left and right. Wait, actually, we (Hindus) do believe that if your life’s ruined beyond saving, then ending it so your soul can go back to the universe/come back in a better form is a sensible thing to do. At least, we have legends and stories to that effect.
Heck, the Bhagvat Geeta has God saying that killing others or getting killed is not something to be afraid of, since the essence of a being can never be created nor destroyed.
I think this is why the Catholic Church declared suicide a sin, to keep people from killing themselves to get to heaven
They promised this superduper ultra happy afterlife.
If it were not a sin offing yourself as a would be a no brainer.
the first religious leader coming up with the idea, watching all his followers off themselves: “well, should have seen that one coming”
Wait till Rocko’s basillisk comes online, and we will see about that.
Ugh. Pascal’s Wager for technophiles.
Brb respawning
GG go next
Maybe it does and the queue is so long we just forget about our old life by the time our number comes up
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,
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
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?!
The existence of a queue sparks the follow-up question: What happens if something is born while the queue is empty?
Mushrooms.
They came before the queue got started and will be here long after it finishes.Miscarriage?
Pillars of Eternity happens.
Donald J. Trump.
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 👍
Me im first please
No way, I’m going first
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 mean I don’t see any difference between death and reincarnating without past memories.
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.
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.
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?
Congratulations, you found Son Goku!
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
For a moment i read Suicide rats would likely rise sharply if reincarnation were ever proven. and i’ll just leave it at that.
Good band name, callin’ it.
Technically reincarnation is for realsies. Your bits and pieces will be used by nature again.
I don’t want to live forever through my work. I want to do it through not dying.
- Woody Allen
You’re actually right on the money. Reincarnation based on certain systems is exactly that, when look at it from it’s proper philosophical framework. But you can just pull it out from it’s framework, cram it to a completely different framework (like one that believes in individual souls) and then claim it doesn’t work.
From the perspective of nonduality, everyone is a reincarnation of everyone, always. It’s internally coherent. Also a great reason to practice compassion. Of course people don’t super love the idea of being the reincarnation on people they don’t like, dead or alive. But that’s one of the many reasons nonduality isn’t for the faint of heart.
Is that like how we are all a single consciousness simultaneously inhabiting each person across space and time? That idea appeals to me. Don’t know that I’d say I believe it, but it appeals to me.
Not quite. We have the appearance of (what we call) individuals within one single consciousness. It appears to reflect upon itself from what we take to be individual vantage points (people). That is an imperfect characterization though, try as I might. I’m pointing to consciousness before any thoughts - before you think there’s a you, separate from anyone or anything. Pure experience, before thinking ABOUT it.
To be even more technical. You are being reincarnated constantly.
We shed skin and cells and those become something else while our own body rebuilds itself constantly from other life.
The only cells in the body that dont change out are neurons and sensory receptors.
A lot of proteins stay forever though. Like bones, teeth, and probably a lot of proteins in muscles. A lot of others I’m not listing.
But the cells themselves are always dying and being remade (except neurons and receptors).
thats like the concept of buddhist reincarnation, there is no “soul”, ego is illusion in buddhism
like a stream of consciousness constantly travelling through cycles
Flesh of Theseus.
Theseus of Theseus
I’ve been vegan for over a decade, so with constant cell regrowth I’m photosynthesis with extra steps.
Every animal is photosynthesis with extra steps, some just have more steps.
I think about it in a slightly different way.
Once I’m dead, people will keep being born. When I think real hard about it, it’s pretty much the same as reincarnation except there’s no need for some kind of immortal soul.
There’s no functional difference between my experience of being born and someone else’s after I’m dead. In both cases, a new person wakes up inside a meat suit and thinks “this is me.” This is already reincarnation without a hard drive and a rating algorithm.
even moreso. ever meet people that are a type. where several are really similar. I have even seen and met my own type. not only will people continue being born but ones a lot like you.
Good point. What even is reincarnation if you can’t remember a thing?
Some dinosaurs have been waiting for a loooong time.
Dinosaurs reincarnated as all sort of species later on, including human. This manifests in multitude of ways, for example when a furry person has a weird kink for dinosaurs - it’s very likely they were one in a past life.
If the universe/multiverse is actually infinite, then just regular reincarnation is real as well, from a continuity of consciousness point of view.
Any thought out system with reincarnation would penalize you for suicide. I seem to remember that Buddhists believe your next life is determined by your performance in this one. You like climb a ladder of existence, and just being a human as opposed to an ant or something is a sign of long term success climbing that ladder. I dont recall what the top was, some spiritual being probably. Go forth and Google.
Ritual suicide is very much a thing in certain systems that believe in reincarnation. At some points it seen as a perfectly rational and pragmatic choice, but yes, you need to do it with specific practices and intentions. Not just “well, life sucks, I’ll just reroll”.
That’s just to lure us into the old “Be careful what you wish for” trap.
You think you have it bad, and you pop up in a hut in India five times in a row
I’m pretty sure in Buddha, where the concept of reincarnation comes from, suicide would negatively affect the karma, which would affect how one would reincarnate. CMIIW tho
As if religious teachings ever stopped people from doing certain things…
Lmao, who cares about “religion bad” in this thread? I thought we’re talking hypothetical here. We’re talking if it is real, and I am assuming it would be as the scriptures describe.
One step forward, two steps back.
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
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.)
If I had to go through my childhood and resulting alienated adulthood again, I’d try to delay death as long as possible to NOT go through it.
I highly doubt it. Believers say that when a person dies, their memories are pretty much obliterated. So even if someone is going to be reborn, who they were no longer exists.
In some of the beliefs, your soul maintains the memory, but it’s blocked off by your body. Essentially, when you die, you’ll get your memory back, but you’ll forget it again when you’re doing another cycle.
So the main goal is to get enlightened so that you escape this cycle and graduate to a higher level of existence.
Werent there some book or story where everything on earth is just single being reincarnating endesly in to different points in time.
The Kurtzgesagt team made a video based on this. I think it’s called the egg?
Thank you. It was The Egg by Andy Weir
