Asklemmy

I love your optimistic take. You were born with a brain capable of positive thinking, which, unfortunately, doesn't happen to everyone. Enjoy your stay in this body 😊

If that's true, will his next life inevitably be a little worse than now? Average, perhaps? Even bad? Then it would not be about reincarnating for the better each time but a lottery, in which eventually you'll get a relatively better life than the others, right?

Or is the best life the last one before crossing to somewhere else? Will Earth become emptier and emptier then, as we all cross? Then why the number of beings keeps increasing instead of decreasing? Who are these new souls?

Do you believe his humbleness is part of why he has those circumstances? Will he keep the good life because he deserves it? Some systems talk about merits, about reincarnating into what one deserves. Then, every orphan and every Palestinian and every pig deserve what they have suffered? If so, those systems often invite us to compassion, but is there space to absolute compassion when the Universe itself is punishing them for terrible deeds in the past? It would be similar to watching children being spanked; on one hand, you feel bad for them because they need to learn this painful lesson; on the other, you feel good because they deserve them, especially if the harm was against you, you may even feel a spark of joy from something similar to revenge. So are we supposed to feel this mix of feelings for beings who have it worse than us? Happy that they're getting to learn, happy that they're been punished, happy that they won't be doing it again? Because that's not how I feel, and I would feel sadistic to feel it based only on this theory we're imagining. Then there's the question: is this kind of cruel punishing the only way for souls to learn? If so, why such a primitive system? We do not even use it for our children anymore, and psychologists have found it is detrimental instead of constructive. Is this the best way the Universe can help us grow? If it is, it seems suspicious, who is behind? If it is not, then it is needlessly cruel as there would be more peaceful ways, and we should be questioning this instead of embracing it just because it is the thing we've been given.

On a similar line, do you believe we somehow learn virtues that we inherit for the next life? If so, are we all collectively better people than in the 19th century (because some of us would have surely learnt something)? Is humanity walking towards an utopia then? How do we explain the centuries in which we seem to devolve, in which irrationality, wars, hate, and more increased? Today, are we really that advanced and far away from Ancient Rome or Ancient Egypt?

The person you were talking with was happy you have a mind that lets you consider things from positive sides, and said that many do not have that chance. If reincarnation has a purpose in each life, how are we supposed to learn, grow, change, or whatever we are supposed to do (in case there is something to do) if we are partially limited by our brains and many other things? Why would we judge those negative thinkers as if they decided their current life?

...Unless we decide our current life, as some systems propose. Then many things we do are determined already because we knew which were our limits and which were our base characteristics (e.g. our temperament, which is innate). This contradicts a lot of the things we were thinking and makes the scenario more similar to a game than to a learning path. But it poses a lot of new questions such as who or what are we when we're not humans but beings deciding where to be born? Why do we do this? Is it ethical to embrace an identity who has no memory of the deal and impose a life onto it full of things that identity did not consent to? Because maybe the being decided to live as a woman who would be hurt, develop PTSD and learn to live through it all. It sounds dramatic and interesting. But the woman is a new consciousness, a new identity, then is it right to make her suffer all that just because another consciousness, a previous consciousness agreed to? The same question might be asked for whatever case of reincarnation in which we reincarnate in very different identities. If it is possible and a cruel murderer reincarnates in a sweet person, why should a sweet person pay for the crimes of a cruel murderer?

So many questions still in the air that I haven't written down... But all different variations of reincarnation seem problematic at some point already. Do you agree? Because many people who find these metaphysical problems in different postulates (not necessarily reincarnation) tend to say that we are judging high ideas with mundane ideas. How can I say it is an unfair system if whoever designed it is much wiser than us, so it knows better to be fair and good, and we cannot understand such elevated balance so we think it is unfair. Yet, at the same time, the system that they propose is full of explanations, promises, and consequences based on our human values and morality, not higher ones. The Universe gives 'good' things for 'good' deeds or 'good' personality, then it does work with our frames at some point, huh? Then, all our questions are indeed valid. All this paragraph to say that, if you agree that indeed there are things that seem weird, suspicious, or wrong when thinking about reincarnation (or metaphysical beliefs in general), how do we keep our belief in reincarnation?

I'm not saying it does not exist just because it does not entirely "click". I'm asking why to believe in it when we realize this, instead of taking a more skeptical and distant approach, maybe curious, maybe excited, but cautious?