Would You Want a Return Visit?

[North Cali Sammy]

Reincarnation, would you want to do it again? If you could, and if you had a choice, which next life would you want to live? Suppose you could model your fortunes and failures for the return visit. Perhaps you would come back as an animal or some other form of life, something not of this world?

Myself, I wouldn't mind repeating this life, but with insight into where I could do better. All things considered, it's been a good life. I could do it again.

 

[DaveC426913]

I am of two minds whether I would want to retain my memories.

On one hand, it would be way cool to go back and stand up to the schoolyard bullies, knowing what I know now. And I might try harder - say, take school seriously, do my homework, figure out early what I want to do with my life.

On the other hand, I've lived a long life and much of that is learning what things I don't want to explore anymore, and I feel like if I retained my memories I would be ... tired of a lot of things.

 

[C C]

Reincarnation, would you want to do it again?

First, what would make such a possibility legit? Even an unverifiable proposal that there is a transcendent version of me that prearranges the characteristics of its next material avatar doesn't really fly, if the latter receives neither the enlightened memories of the meta-mind nor the inferior memories of the last avatar. IOW, it wouldn't be an incarnation at all, but just another entity such a "doll-maker" has contributed to.

Without memory continuance, there is no continuance.

If an individual named Jane has no recollection of being John in a past life, then there's no justifiable connection between the two. If she does have memory of him, then all the baggage of what he was and did will still be affecting her and derailing a genuine renewal. And if that information is blurred and ambiguous, then the confusion might generate worse or more traumatic consequences than the explicit knowledge.

Without memory validating continuance of my personal identity in a new body, I might as well claim that the nearest-in-time human fetus that acquires consciousness after my death is a continuation of me -- which will likewise possess zero information about my expired life in its head (as with any other random or not-so-random selection).

The awareness of any developing brain in a womb incrementally arises from blankness -- an absence of everything. That's the universally shared factor or provenance that might worthlessly permit a belief months after the funeral with respect to a surviving family member pointing to a haphazard newborn animal or person and claiming that _X_ is the persistence of someone they lost. But in the context of that qualification, so would any other neonate organism be a spurious reincarnation of them.
_

 

[Pinball1970]

First, what would make such a possibility legit? Even an unverifiable proposal that there is a transcendent version of me that prearranges the characteristics of its next material avatar doesn't really fly, if the latter receives neither the enlightened memories of the meta-mind nor the inferior memories of the last avatar. IOW, it wouldn't be an incarnation at all, but just another entity such a "doll-maker" has contributed to.

Without memory continuance, there is no continuance.

If an individual named Jane has no recollection of being John in a past life, then there's no justifiable connection between the two. If she does have memory of him, then all the baggage of what he was and did will still be affecting her and derailing a genuine renewal. And if that information is blurred and ambiguous, then the confusion might generate worse or more traumatic consequences than the explicit knowledge.

Without memory validating continuance of my personal identity in a new body, I might as well claim that the nearest-in-time human fetus that acquires consciousness after my death is a continuation of me -- which will likewise possess zero information about my expired life in its head (as with any other random or not-so-random selection).

The awareness of any developing brain in a womb incrementally arises from blankness -- an absence of everything. That's the universally shared factor or provenance that might worthlessly permit a belief months after the funeral with respect to a surviving family member pointing to a haphazard newborn animal or person and claiming that _X_ is the persistence of someone they lost. But in the context of that qualification, so would any other neonate organism be a spurious reincarnation of them.
_

I suppose you could jump into a kid's head? For me it would be me but not where I grew up.
Or as DaveC426913 said to have some power when confronted by bullies.
If I let my mind wander enough though it always returns to violent revenge and rage, even after all these years.
Watching my son grow up without fear is my cure for that.
My niece is doing the same, university, evening job social life, passing her driving test and seeing her at Xmas is my reincarnation.

Other than that? Born in 1940 and I'm a teenager in the 1960s. I acquire all the skills of this life and make a killing as a drummer! Keep up with science of course because I would know the future up till 2024 would I not?

 

[DaveC426913]

First, what would make such a possibility legit? Even an unverifiable proposal that there is a transcendent version of me that prearranges the characteristics of its next material avatar doesn't really fly, if the latter receives neither the enlightened memories of the meta-mind nor the inferior memories of the last avatar. IOW, it wouldn't be an incarnation at all, but just another entity such a "doll-maker" has contributed to.

Without memory continuance, there is no continuance.

I suppose without giving it much thought I had assumed there was a subconscious continuance. i.e. while my conscious memories were gone, I assumed my personality/disposition/instincts would remain intact.

 

[C C]

I suppose you could jump into a kid's head? For me it would be me but not where I grew up. [...]

In terms of a tortured semblance of reincarnation, there is of course the idea of generic subjectivity, that's even sported at Naturalism Dot Org: Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity

But your mention of jumping into a kid's head (which could as much be an earlier stage of this life) reminds me that I didn't address the OP's: "I wouldn't mind repeating this life [...] I could do it again.". That's something to explore, too, but would mean detouring into the block universe view of time.
_

 

[C C]

I suppose without giving it much thought I had assumed there was a subconscious continuance. i.e. while my conscious memories were gone, I assumed my personality/disposition/instincts would remain intact.

Yah, a "meta-mind" mediating between each incarnation (or whatever label) could optionally choose a body with a life trajectory that restored some rudimentary characteristics of the former one. I just went the route where it didn't so as to highlight the dependence on memory or preservation of information.
_

 

[North Cali Sammy]

To start again without

I am of two minds whether I would want to retain my memories.

On one hand, it would be way cool to go back and stand up to the schoolyard bullies, knowing what I know now. And I might try harder - say, take school seriously, do my homework, figure out early what I want to do with my life.

On the other hand, I've lived a long life and much of that is learning what things I don't want to explore anymore, and I feel like if I retained my memories I would be ... tired of a lot of things.

To start again without the memories of your previous life, fresh and new, life would be an adventure again. A journey of mystery and discovery.

 

[TheVat]

Without memory continuance, there is no continuance.

I liked your takes on this, CC, as provoking a fair amount of reflection on what any sort of continuity would mean. Even eastern mysticism seems to be divided on this, with some groups favoring a reincarnation with memories that linger from before - (especially in small children - much researched by Ian Stevenson) - while others see a more generic kind of consciousness (as in the Buddhist koan "who were you before you had a face" where one meditates on a Self deeper than our quotidian thoughts and ego desires) that follows some karmic path but without any memory transfer. The whole notion of any leap between corpse and womb tends to pare off into wild imaginings. For me it conjures some kind of interlife bureaucracy, where metamind clerks process the newly dead and follow karmic criteria to shunt them on to waiting wombs. IOW, it collapses into incoherence or whimsical Tim Burtonesque parodies of metaphysics.

 

[North Cali Sammy]

I don't want to live forever in this lifetime. It would be a drag to be me for an eternity. Nature provides an escape called death. No, I'm not suicidal, just saying that change is natural and often an opportunity to bring new growth.

 

[TheVat]

On one hand, it would be way cool to go back and stand up to the schoolyard bullies, knowing what I know now. And I might try harder - say, take school seriously, do my homework, figure out early what I want to do with my life.

On the other hand, I've lived a long life and much of that is learning what things I don't want to explore anymore, and I feel like if I retained my memories I would be ... tired of a lot of things

Almost nightmarish. One would be an old adult in a child's body - it does seem like a recipe for massive ennui, alienation from other children, and impatience to reach an adult form. And assuming that one personally didn't alter history significantly (or can't - as in the block universe that CC mentioned) there would be living through the same backdrop of events all over again. But how would one not alter history? Would I be rendered temporarily mute if age 7 me tried to alert the authorities of a threat to the President in Dallas, TX on November 22? Or contacting the FBI prior to 9/11 - hey guys, you want to check out that flight school in Florida...

If I can change things, I have amazing powers - if I have a good memory. If I can't, then I'm in existential Hell. Seems fodder for fantasy/sci-fi books.

 

[DaveC426913]

I don't want to live forever in this lifetime. It would be a drag to be me for an eternity. Nature provides an escape called death.

The older I get the truer this is.

I'm not trying to be cynical. Society is advancing in myriad ways that I don't want to keep up on. Politics, commerialism, consumer tech, music that kind of thing. It has to advance - in order for the next gen and subsequent gens to have their own new things. And many of those things I've made my peace with. (Let the old guard die off so the new guard can live.) I could carve out some fresh new things for my own interest, but those baseline things would stil be there and have to be navigated. I could see getting tired.

And the other thing we haven't touched on is: immortality is useless if you aren't heathly. Imagine living the next hundred years with aching bones.
So, if you ever make a deal with the Devil, amke sure there's a clause in there about renewing your health.

 

[DaveC426913]

Almost nightmarish. One would be an old adult in a child's body - it does seem like a recipe for massive ennui, alienation from other children...

Indeed. I matured that way early. I walked away from schoolyard fights; I didn't care who thought I was a "sissy" or whatever. (I always felt that fighting a bully was condoning their behavior - agreeing to engage with them on their terms. So I didn't give them the satisfaction.)

Remember the film The Lost Boys (1987) (great film!), with Keifer Sutherland and Corey Feldman*? The new kids (Corey Haim, Jason Patric) tried desperately to fit in to the social circles in their new town. They ran - and rode with the local gangs just to fit in. I know I would not have done that. (I suspect the reason I don't have a strong urge to fit in, is because I come from a large family, so I'm not at a loss for people in my corner. This has become more apparent to me after seeing my wife - who lost most of her family early - despairing at trying to fit in.)

* love everything he's been in

 

[parmalee]

On the other hand, I've lived a long life and much of that is learning what things I don't want to explore anymore, and I feel like if I retained my memories I would be ... tired of a lot of things.

Now you know how Dracula feels. But the nature and completeness of memory is a critical factor here: see CC's first post, but also consider Borges's "Funes the Memorious"--these bits particularly:

(Funes) was, let us not forget, almost incapable of ideas of a general, Platonic sort. Not only was it difficult for him to comprehend that the generic symbol dog embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form; it bothered him that the dog at three fourteen (seen from the side) should have the same name as the dog at three fifteen (seen from the front).
...
I suspect, however, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes, there were only details, almost immediate in their presence.

Indeed. On the other hand, you don't want to be like the guy in Memento.

Still, with plain old memory like we've got, I wonder how many, say, 80 years lifetimes it would take to exhaust various subjects? Suppose your "thing" is pre-Baroque European composition and you wanted be to as completist as possible. I'm not going to speculate on the particulars here, but even with something just relatively narrow and obscure like that, it could take quite a long while. Most (many?) of us have several obsessions, and if you've got archival tendencies you've broadened your focus considerably.


Edit: Funnily, I just watched the movie, Caddo Lake. Afterwords--and SPOILER ALERT--I wondered what sort of things an 8 year old kid alive today is likely to be knowledgeable of. Did that kid who went back in time have a responsibility to sound the alarm on 9/11, say? Maybe she did--in this fictional universe--but everyone just figured she was nuts and ignored her.

 

[parmalee]

Almost nightmarish. One would be an old adult in a child's body - it does seem like a recipe for massive ennui, alienation from other children, and impatience to reach an adult form. And assuming that one personally didn't alter history significantly (or can't - as in the block universe that CC mentioned) there would be living through the same backdrop of events all over again. But how would one not alter history? Would I be rendered temporarily mute if age 7 me tried to alert the authorities of a threat to the President in Dallas, TX on November 22? Or contacting the FBI prior to 9/11 - hey guys, you want to check out that flight school in Florida...

If I can change things, I have amazing powers - if I have a good memory. If I can't, then I'm in existential Hell. Seems fodder for fantasy/sci-fi books.

Once again, clear evidence of telepathy at play. I had not read this post, as is my habit, prior to making my previous post.

 

[C C]

I liked your takes on this, CC, as provoking a fair amount of reflection on what any sort of continuity would mean. Even eastern mysticism seems to be divided on this, with some groups favoring a reincarnation with memories that linger from before - (especially in small children - much researched by Ian Stevenson) - while others see a more generic kind of consciousness (as in the Buddhist koan "who were you before you had a face" where one meditates on a Self deeper than our quotidian thoughts and ego desires) that follows some karmic path but without any memory transfer. The whole notion of any leap between corpse and womb tends to pare off into wild imaginings. For me it conjures some kind of interlife bureaucracy, where metamind clerks process the newly dead and follow karmic criteria to shunt them on to waiting wombs. IOW, it collapses into incoherence or whimsical Tim Burtonesque parodies of metaphysics.

If only ancient folk traditions like "reincarnation" and "afterlife" would stay confined to their original, laughable or amusing boxes. Due to their escaping into newer contexts, our "thought recreations" (or mine, anyway) find themselves having to reexamine them intermittently.

I can imagine an archailect in the remote future attaining a state that might be equivalent to biological or human boredom. So one of its subroutines retreats off into its version of video games -- to acquire experiences and knowledge of what it's like to be mortal, vulnerable creatures living in unpredictable environments.

Barring Kant's noumenal take on a transcendent counterpart to our empirical world, I once considered a supernatural realm or "next level" stratum to be impossible or at least an unlikely stretch for our situation. Although the idea of a technological-produced reality being introduced back in the early 1960s and 1950s opened up an avenue of possibility (along with later video games sporting magical wizards) ... A truly convincing simulated world only seemed tenable in the distant future (like that of the archailect). Which in turn kept the possibility of our residing in one down to almost nil.

But I have to confess that the simulation hypothesis looms bigger and bigger for me as AI rolls toward a goal of being able to generate images and audio on the fly that would be very well regulated and inter-consistent with each other throughout an unfolding process (in comparison to our often poorly governed dreams).

Not having to literally maintain an entire world -- of which 99.999... percent would not even be observed most of the time by its conscious inhabitants -- would be a boon to parsimony with respect to computational resources. And if a convincing simulated reality ever does come to fruition, turning that mere speculation into fact seemingly results in artificial realms outnumbering supposedly happenstance ones. Which abruptly raises the odds of our occupying such. (Whether an ancestral replication or some factory for producing innovations akin to Theodore Sturgeon's Microcosmic God.)

Anyway, going back to the first paragraph, it's a tad annoying at times...
_

 

[TheVat]

Once again, clear evidence of telepathy at play. I had not read this post, as is my habit, prior to making my previous post.

I had also given thought to Borges - both FtM, and also The House of Asterion, and The Garden of Forking Paths. Borgesians are everywhere!

 

[TheVat]

But I have to confess that the simulation hypothesis looms bigger and bigger for me as AI rolls toward a goal of being able to generate images and audio on the fly that would be very well regulated and inter-consistent with each other throughout an unfolding process (in comparison to our often poorly governed dreams).

There is Nick Bostrom's hypothesis, that most conscious life is likely to be in a simulation. In this view, the odds that we just happen to live in the dawning of the virtual era are low, and it is more likely we are the future dwellers visiting an immersive educational course called "Life in the Early Cybercene" or whatever. Or, yes, the Microcosmic God scenario, though it's harder to imagine us as Neoterics. YMMV. I feel such theories rest on assumptions about the evolution of sentient societies which I'm not yet able to accept, from within my primitive fossil fuel era simulation.

 

[parmalee]

I had also given thought to Borges - both FtM, and also The House of Asterion, and The Garden of Forking Paths. Borgesians are everywhere!

Between JL Borges, PK Dick and JG Ballard, you've covered a lot of potentially exciting yet incomprehensibly terrifying scenarios. Robert Calvert (Hawkwind, et al) used to talk about science fiction and science fiction, and while there's no hard divide between the two--moreover, for Calvert it was more about poking fun at Michael Moorcock--I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of "hard" science fiction, while quite diligent and rigorous with respect to the science, is still pretty damn fantastical. The worlds and characters of Borges, et al, were not all that far removed from our own and I think they offer a lot more as far as learning about ourselves goes.

 

[TheVat]

Between JL Borges, PK Dick and JG Ballard, you've covered a lot of potentially exciting yet incomprehensibly terrifying scenarios

I need to read Ballard - you're the second person to mention him to me in the space of a few weeks. And swerving back to topic, I have wondered if there were inflection points in one's life where people would want to roll the tape back to, porting the wisdom of a lifetime back to that moment. As it is, all we feel we can do is look back occasionally and think man was I young and stupid! Usually mixed with a yearning for youth and innocence and a simpler worldview. It would be interesting to have a do-over where one loses all the memories of the later life, except for one crucial piece of information, planted as a kind of unsourced intuition.