• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    10 months ago

    People say you come back. Reincarnation. Do you think so? Well, it doesn’t seem mathematically possible to me, man. Uh, 'course at one time what we had on the earth was six people, you know. I avoid “two” because it’s controversial but six… most people agree, “fuck, yeah, we had six at one time.” Six people, six souls… cool. They died, souls went back to the place; six new people souls- still six souls. Now we have four billion people… claiming to have souls. Someone is printing up souls… and it lowers their value, you know.

    – George Carlin

  • MNByChoice@midwest.social
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    10 months ago

    Way easier to lie about it. Just pick babies out to be indentured servants for life to repay some imagined debts. Maybe make them feel it was their fault for not paying off the debt previously. We could even target kids from poor families for this, so they have less hope of fighting back.

    We did this already, a bunch of times.

  • 6buck6satan6@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    This is why reincarnation would come to be. It would then be spun in a way that would be beneficial for people. You can buy that house with a 250 year, 3 lives mortgage!

  • mellowheat@suppo.fi
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    10 months ago

    And the government would make sure you paid taxes for every dollar moving between incarnations.

    • MashedTech@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Hey, you have paid taxes in your first life! The IRS department of past life tax recovery is awaiting your presence

  • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    10 months ago

    Yeah, but it could also fix some things regarding racism, sexism, ableism, trans issues, immigration, geographic disadvantages etc. Maybe climate change?

    • drislands@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Optimistic of you to think people wouldn’t use it as an excuse to be even MORE discriminatory. There would be Ultra-Whites who could claim they were never non-white in the past X years, with seniority by how far back they can trace their reincarnated whiteness. And of course there would be new religions claiming that if you follow them you’ll be reincarnated into the race/environment of your choice.

      • Chekhovs_Gun@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Pretty sure that would result in negative karma, and thus the new reincarnated form would be even less desirable.

        • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          There was no indication that karma or any such system was included, you included that into the scenario and it is therefore invalid.

          There would be people racing to get to the simplest organism incapable of sentience if there were a karmic system.

          • Chekhovs_Gun@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            That’s what the basis of reincarnation is about though… karma. You do good deeds, your karma level goes up, you get a better reincarnated life in the future. Likewise, the opposite is true as well.

            • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Karma is an aspect of the Hindu and Buddhist reincarnation beliefs. They do not have sole ownership of the concept of reincarnation.

              If they had said “What if Hinduism is right and reincarnation is real?” then that would be a different scenario. They only put forth that the concept of reincarnation was real.

              • Chekhovs_Gun@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Ah I see what you mean now. Eh, regardless I’m sure the universe would have some sort of similar karmic system in place to prevent thatt suicidal loop hole.

                • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  There’s no secular reason to think that the universe would care, or that a universe capable of caring would see it as a problem.

        • bob_lemon@feddit.de
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          10 months ago

          The word “desirable” in the context of human-only reincarnation opens a whole other can of worms

        • root_beer@midwest.social
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          10 months ago

          Like what, a paramecium or baker’s yeast or something? At least I can’t have a collection agency coming after me then

    • Neato@ttrpg.network
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      10 months ago

      Yeah. They make great videos and they turned out to have rad politics too. Neato.

    • Madlaine@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      “Where is this going. Debts? Companies? Did I miss some huge lore dump? Wait … are they talking about the lands outside?”

  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    10 months ago

    Rich people would probably set something up so that their future incarnation inherits their wealth, since it’s statistically likely that they’d be reincarnated as someone poorer. I could also imagine a much stronger push to bring the birthrate up even at the cost of using unethical means to force it, because if the population decreases, there wouldn’t be enough children born for an increasingly large percentage to reincarnate into

  • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    .>Be me.

    .>Reincarnate into a cow.

    .>Moo. Moo moo moo.

    .>Moo moo moo moo moo.

    .>Moo

    .>🐮

    • Carl@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Are you going to be a dairy cow? In order to produce milk, dairy cows are kept almost continually pregnant. Unwanted male calves are slaughtered in their first week of life so that their mothers’ milk can be harvested for human consumption.

      I hate milk, but I love my other milk products like cheese, and yogurt.

          • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            The second season had Idris Alba. I don’t know if you’re doing a bit like “There’s no season 9 of scrubs” but there’s definitely a season 2 of altered carbon and it slaps.

              • RealFknNito@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Shit, you’re right. I have no idea how I mixed those two up. And honestly I think it was a bit better personally, they went all out on budget and it was apparently the reason Netflix dropped them.