But you don’t retain your memories from the previous life, and what if you are reborn as someone who has a worse life and isn’t aware they can do it again?
Are you kidding me I’m not gonna repeat all the time I’ve already served.
Yes you will.
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.
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.)
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.
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
Or you come back as a cat, but not a pampered rich person’s cat, you come back as a feral cat with mange in some third world ghetto.
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 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.
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.
There are many religions and it seems likely they all are just different interpretations of the same source idea - that our lives have a higher purpose.
But I dont think you can be sure that its the Bible that is correct. What if the Koran is correct?
You cant really optimize your life by following a book we dont even know how much its been manipulated since creation. So most people are just trying to do the best they can.
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 can’t speak for all religions, but in Christianity suicide is a grave sin, so doing that guarantees eternal damnation.
The other bit, people not being happy about a loved one passing, is not really an issue too - it’s just the “logic of faith” vs “emotions of loss”. Even if we knew for a fact that once you die you get reincarnated into a Happy Bunny, people would still grieve, because that’s how our brain chemistry works.
Things explainable with doctrine are explained with doctrine. Things that defy doctrinal explanation are biological or “just because.”
Don’t worry, Chief, I don’t even expect logic from religion, so don’t try.
I have no clue what you mean. Other than stating that suicide is a grave sin, I never touched doctrine or “religion logic”. What are you talking about?
You touched doctrinal explanation when you explained how religious people still grieve for a lost one when their entire religion is about how the afterlife is real.
It does not make sense if you think in the logic of the religion. But we are used to religions not being logical.
Maybe you need to read what I wrote again…?
My doctrinal explanation was about suicide being a sin, which is the reason for people of faith not offing themselves left and right. This has nothing to do with how a person handles grief because it’s a different topic.
In terms of grief, I explained that however people may understand the logic of the doctrine, their physical bodies still react to the chemical signals received, and therefore grief is still present.
I’m baffled at your take that this is somehow a “doctrinal explanation”, mate. It’s literally the opposite, I’m talking about biology here.
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.
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
A writer which is super prominent nowadays with the recent adaptation of his book into a movie, Project Hail Mary. Also the author of The Martian.
His website is also pretty cool. This page is just raw HTML, forget “no Javascript”, this page has no CSS. And the main page is straight out of the 90s, chef’s kiss.
Edit: leave it to me to forget to mention the entire reason I started talking about his website in the first place… Here is The Egg, the short story.
Pretty sure that is the point when people commit suicide.
Yeah and get reincarnated as a stink bug, roll shit all day. And since you don’t have sentience you won’t be able to kill yourself again.
I don’t follow. Is reincarnation not usually effected by the life you lead?
That’s a yes in Hinduism
I seem to recall a warning that bloodthirsty people would get reincarnated as tigers. I mean, I don’t want to hurt anyone, but tigers are awesome. 🤔
We’re not talking about a stage production, movie set, nor a DJ performance; you meant “affected”, not “effected”.
Maybe animals know that, and that’s why livestock are so docile about their situation.
Come on big money, no whammies… awww sheep liver fluke again
