Suppose reincarnation is a real thing. Now what?

[JimOfAllTrades]

You do know that you will reincarnate time after time.

You dont know whether or not there is an end to it.

You do remember all past lives.
You never know how long until next time around.
You do know it can be from 1 year to 100 year intervals.

You dont recognize anyone from before. Occasionally you and someone else ssomehow figure out you knew each other before, sometimes were family members.

Everyone knows all those things apply to each person.

You seem to have a contradiction in your hypothetical.

However, assuming everyone has past lives, and everyone remembers them (at least in broad strokes even if not every detail), I think it would certainly have a huge impact on society. Anyone who has cycled through the life of a slave, for example, is likely to look at that institution differently from then on, for good or for bad. If you retain enough details from previous lives to give you extra experience in day to day situations and interactions with other people, it should change the way you interact. You’d be less likely to make the mistakes of “impetuous youth”. Everyone would act older because they would in fact be older.

Granted, all this is “on the average”. Some people don’t learn from experience, and some people seem to act “above their age” without experience. But if you take a big chunk of the populace and bump their experience and knowledge levels by huge factors, it’s got to affect the average behavior.

The fact that none of that actually happens seems to me to be pretty good evidence that there is no reincarnation.

 

[Sideroxylon]

If you knew your past experience, wouldn't all of it be of value just as your current life is a learning curve?

Wouldnt we then be building on all of the past experiences cumulatively ? Hopefully in a good way, but....who knows...maybe thats a reason to add the karma thing to it.

How is this knowing this past experience different from reading about them in a past biography? Do people recall these experiences as they would remember any normal past event? Are they qualitatively the same?

 

[Vortigern99]

You do know that you will reincarnate time after time.

You dont know whether or not there is an end to it.

You do remember all past lives.

You never know how long until next time around.
You do know it can be from 1 year to 100 year intervals.

You dont recognize anyone from before. Occasionally you and someone else ssomehow figure out you knew each other before, sometimes were family members.

Everyone knows all those things apply to each person.

Ooh! Ooh! My turn to make up rules!

You do get to pick which animal or plant you come back as. (I would pick sea slug and go from there.)

You don't get to be bacteria or viruses or fungi because ewwwwww.

You can come back as your own child as you die to your previous body, so that you are your own mother. You will actually remember the moment you were conceived.

You can avenge your own murder.

 

[Foolmewunz]

If reincarnation were real, I would promptly do my best to access weapons of mass destruction, and go on a homicidal rampage, targeting the most poverty-stricken areas of the world, to better my odds of being born into fabulous wealth.

What, wouldn't everyone?

Um....? All those poor people are now coming back, and you just increased your odds of being one of them in your next go-round. The idea, which is appealing on a different level, would be to nuke Aspen, Gstaad, Newport and Monaco, "in season", increasing your odds of coming back as idle rich.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Ooh! Ooh! My turn to make up rules!

You do get to pick which animal or plant you come back as. (I would pick sea slug and go from there.)

You don't get to be bacteria or viruses or fungi because ewwwwww.

You can come back as your own child as you die to your previous body, so that you are your own mother. You will actually remember the moment you were conceived.

You can avenge your own murder.

One of our great 20th century philosophers - I can't recall if it was Johnny Hart or Walter Kelly, though.... once had a strip with characters discussing reincarnation and one noting that we always come back as a lower form of life. The DP (denouement panel) had a character saying "You must be on your last go-round, then."

 

[Hokulele]

Um....? All those poor people are now coming back, and you just increased your odds of being one of them in your next go-round. The idea, which is appealing on a different level, would be to nuke Aspen, Gstaad, Newport and Monaco, "in season", increasing your odds of coming back as idle rich.

Nah, I increased all of our odds of coming back rich, as there would no longer be any poor people reproducing.

Hey, it's just as valid a thought experiment as the OP!

 

[Foolmewunz]

Nah, I increased all of our odds of coming back rich, as there would no longer be any poor people reproducing.

Hey, it's just as valid a thought experiment as the OP!

Well, it is Bubba.

I saw this one with Marcello. I think in the end the beautiful girl turns out to be a dragon from three thousand years ago and saves the earth. Or was this the one with Nick I'll Play Anything For a Buck Cage as Balthazar and the kid was really like the new Merlin or sumfin'? Or Percy Jackson?

 

[xterra]

Or there is this scientific explanation of biological recursion, exactly like reincarnation, but different:

Many, many years ago when I was twenty-three
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red
My father fell in love with her and soon they too were wed

This made my dad my son-in-law and really changed my life
For now my daughter was my mother, 'cause she was my father's wife
And to complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to dad
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad
For if he were my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grownup daughter, who was of course my step-mother

Father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son
My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue
Because although she is my wife, she's my grandmother too

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild
'Cause now I have become the strangest 'case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa

I'm my own grandpa, I'm my own grandpa
It sounds funny, I know but it really is so
I'm my own grandpa

 

[bruto]

You do know that you will reincarnate time after time.

You dont know whether or not there is an end to it.

You do remember all past lives.

You never know how long until next time around.
You do know it can be from 1 year to 100 year intervals.

You dont recognize anyone from before. Occasionally you and someone else ssomehow figure out you knew each other before, sometimes were family members.

Everyone knows all those things apply to each person.

I'd invest heavily in the physical infrastructure of storage, since if you remember everything, you'll want to find it and get it back. Of course the scenario here is self contradictory since if you remember past lives in any meaningful way you must remember people from before in some sense. We are social animals.

The accumulation of wealth would be an even bigger racket than it is now, so I'd work on that.

It's all a little vague, but I'd say that it would probably be a terrible mess, and that many if not most of the injustices and ills of the world would be multiplied and magnified. If you can take it with you, the wealthy and privileged will become more of the same.

 

[shriram]

Suppose science with overwhelming evidence determined for certain that you reincarnate after death, would anything change ?

Set aside the karma angle for now. Nothing religious involved. It is simply nature.

Lets just say you know for sure that you will reincarnate. Would you change? Would this affect the world? If so how? If not, why not?

What comes to mind?

IMHO nothing will change. Hindus already believe in reincarnation, and yet at a broader level you don't see them behaving any different than rest of the people. There are good, bad and ugly among Hindus too. And since believers do not need any scientific evidence, their outlook even after such evidence is presented is not going to change.

 

[shriram]

If you knew your past experience, wouldn't all of it be of value just as your current life is a learning curve?

Wouldnt we then be building on all of the past experiences cumulatively ? Hopefully in a good way, but....who knows...maybe thats a reason to add the karma thing to it.

Will the cumulative experience be really useful?
I started my career as a trainee, where my job was to test the freshly manufactured circuit boards for go/ no go. After few months I changed my job and started as field support engineer for a computer maintenance company. The earlier experience was of no use to me at all.

Similarly, if you were a toilet cleaner, in say Germany, and then you reincarnated as an Afghan woman, tending to kids and doing household chores, and then in this life you happen to be a liquor barren somewhere in east Asia. What us will you put your cumulative experience of the past lives?
You need to learn everything fresh.

When you die, all your experience, knowledge, etc. die with you. So even if reincarnation was somehow possible, that would be useless in terms of utilizing the past life experiences.

 

[Hungry81]

It would make enforcing consecutive life sentences interesting.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

[Susheel]

IMHO nothing will change. Hindus already believe in reincarnation, and yet at a broader level you don't see them behaving any different than rest of the people. There are good, bad and ugly among Hindus too. And since believers do not need any scientific evidence, their outlook even after such evidence is presented is not going to change.

As a fellow Indian and lapsed Hindu...I concur.

 

[Mojo]

Suppose science with overwhelming evidence determined for certain that you reincarnate after death, would anything change ?

Set aside the karma angle for now. Nothing religious involved. It is simply nature.

Lets just say you know for sure that you will reincarnate. Would you change? Would this affect the world? If so how? If not, why not?

What comes to mind?

"0h no, not again!"

 

[shriram]

As a fellow Indian and lapsed Hindu...I concur.

I am borderline.

 

[mikado]

wouldn't it make you behave less ethically? after all, nothing would really matter...
on another note, there's an excellent book, Ferny by James long dealing with it.
while not interested in the reincarnation side, the concept of just how close history really is...

 

[Lothian]

Suppose science with overwhelming evidence determined for certain that you reincarnate after death, would anything change ?

Set aside the karma angle for now. Nothing religious involved. It is simply nature.

Lets just say you know for sure that you will reincarnate. Would you change? Would this affect the world? If so how? If not, why not?

What comes to mind?

This is a very important question but I am too busy at the moment to give it the attention it deserves. Do you mind if I answer it my next life?

 

[Cosmic Yak]

I think one major consequence of this has been missed, which would be the complete collapse of Christianity and Islam. No heaven or hell, no eternal reward or punishment.

I predict weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a huge auction of works of art from the Vatican.

I'm also not sure where this leaves Maarten100's NDEs. (In his eyes, that is).

 

[Bubba]

by Bubba View Post

You do remember all past lives. You dont recognize anyone from before.
Occasionally you and someone else somehow figure out you knew each other before,

You seem to have a contradiction in your hypothetical.

I think no contradiction, because while you cannot visually recognize anyone, sometimes you and they figure it out in conversation.

 

[MRC_Hans]

You do know that you will reincarnate time after time.

You dont know whether or not there is an end to it.

You do remember all past lives.
You never know how long until next time around.
You do know it can be from 1 year to 100 year intervals.

You dont recognize anyone from before. Occasionally you and someone else ssomehow figure out you knew each other before, sometimes were family members.

Everyone knows all those things apply to each person.

No, now you changed the scenario. You said:

Suppose science with overwhelming evidence determined for certain that you reincarnate after death, would anything change ?

SO, since we do NOT currently remember past lives, we won't start doing it even if science discovers reincarnation.

Hans