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?

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

Life sucks?

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

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.

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.

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.

If I could be a bumblebee for 12 seconds I'd do it

Technically reincarnation is for realsies. Your bits and pieces will be used by nature again.

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.

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

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.

I started thinking that it's crazy that those who do believe in reincarnation always seem to think they are gonna end up back here on Earth. If that shit was real, it would have to be a part of the laws governing the entire universe. Maybe it is real, but nobody on Earth has ever reincarnated back to Earth. They became an alien on another planet trillions of lightyears away.

Come on big money, no whammies… awww sheep liver fluke again

Cultists are already kinda like that, even christians that believe in the afterlife. They don't care if they're destroying the environment, because the real life begins after the current one.

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.

Maybe it does and the queue is so long we just forget about our old life by the time our number comes up

I don't follow. Is reincarnation not usually effected by the life you lead?

What is reincarnation without memory? It's nothing. The same as it is without reincarnation. The same nothing as exists now.

There would be reincarnation preachers, coaches, and scammers, promising you an ideal reincarnated life.

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.

Reincarnation into what?

"Hey, if you die in this life, you can come back as a bug that gets eaten by another bug shortly after hatching. And then you can do this for the next 10,000 years until you get lucky enough to come back as something remotely sentient."

Sounds like that shit sucks, man. You have a real pivotal moment in this life to embrace dharma and appeal to heaven for a higher place in the great pattern. I'll admit, I'm not much of a mystic, but I don't think eating a bullet after a night spent guzzling whiskey is what gets you up the ladder.