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

Would it count as suicide anymore?

Life sucks?

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

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!

The short story collection/sorta novel Haunted 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.

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'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

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?

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

Are you kidding me I'm not gonna repeat all the time I've already served.

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

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

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

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

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’.

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

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 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.

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

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.

They made that movie already

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_(film)