"Congratulations on your new baby! We wanted to inform you that there's currently a $213,950 balance on their student loans due from their previous life. We've transferred the debt to their name and their credit is already in the toilet."

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

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

Life sucks?

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Would it count as suicide anymore?

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.

They would increase if any afterlife was proven. Even terrible ones ppl will convince themselves are actually good.

I'd come back as a butterfly.

Nobody ever suspects the butterflies!

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

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.

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

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.

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

Cory Doctorow has a story set in a society where cloning complete with mind restoration exists and is pretty quick and cheap. People make regular backups of themselves and then engage in dangerous activities like mountain skiing and whatnot. I forget which story it is: might be ‘Rapture of the Nerds’.

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

If it were proven, and you could identify your previous identity, would you be able to claim your wealth and possessions from previous life?

I guess it depends. If you're eager to get the fuck outta this mortal coil, would having to go through childhood again really be something you'd be eager to do?

Brb respawning

Might actually lower the suicide rate. Might as well figure out how to come to terms with things. Next life things could be even worse. People commit suicide seeking the peace of non existence. If that were proven not to exist, then many might avoid suicide.

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.

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

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.

And get chopped up in the bardo to return as a tapeworm? I don't think so, you're supposed to meditate so hard you return as a lotus flower