We just might be able to stop repeating negative history in 60-100 year phases all the time, due to the overwhelming majority of people having living memory of those events, instead of a handful of people due to the restrictions of the human life span.
How detailed would the memory of past lives be? If it’s good enough, school would be very different, if not obsolete.
We would also have a lot more answers, or at least a consensus, on natural and anthropological history.
I actually think life would be much better this way. I think people would be much more empathetic to people’s struggles knowing how it felt in a previous life. And if space is infinite there could be infinite civilizations for people to reincarnate on and every civilization would be different so imagine people comparing what civs they’ve been in. “Oh you were on lyza, I’ve been wanting to go there.” It would just be fun to experience these things.
Most of the time you’d be bacteria, but I don’t think anyone would remember that. You’d probably need a brain of these past lives in order to remember those past lives.
I don’t think debt transfer will be possible. Anyone will just keep pretending they were wild animals in their previous lives or bacteria.
There’d probably be a lot more understanding actually between some people, having been in their shoes and earlier recognition of illnesses.
Wealthy people would buy laws that make a way to transfer money to their next life. It would be endless class division.
How would you verify that?
No real need. They could just bury it at worst, dig it up again as soon as they can use a spade
Kind of like Altered Carbon
Likewise companies would figure out how to transfer debt
Even more nostalgia.
Obsession to continue the previous life. Get back what you had, who you had.
We’d probably have insurance companies that dealt with reincarnation. Laws and regulations around it.
Deposits to be made which only your reincarnated self could get back.
A lot of romantic drama.
(I’m already worldbuilding)
Debts carried over to your next life
Lol, I’ve done this exact thought experiment. Heck I practically brainstormed a version of Eternals in my head once, but instead of being Gods posing as humans, they were mortal Reincarnated Individuals who knew everyone/everything was reincarnated, but what gave them advantages in this world was that they remembered their past lives, and could use that accumulated knowledge for good and for ill.
Its a cool little concept that somebody will turn into a TV series/Movie/Video Game at some point I’m sure.
I could swear I’ve seen this concept somewhere
Terrible. It’s a feature, not a bug.
The point in not remembering past lives is that each life is supposed to be full of learning and growing and experiences that aren’t weighed down and tainted by the egos of past incarnations.
Imagine having been an illiterate miner in the Old West that lives to 95, then showing up with that perspective in the 80s. You’d simply be a cantankerous Luddite set in old ways. Note do that over and over and over.
It’s a joy to shed the ego.
But in the 80s you might get reincarnated into a family that teaches you how to read while having the memories of the life you can’t leading you to be more empahetic.
Most people didn’t have a great life and i’d rather be able to sleep than remeber being tortured, raped and enslaved
But if enough people remeber lives like that, the whole of torture will stop because of knowing previous lives.
Remembering past lives means also taking on all the trauma, anger, and heartbreak of your past lives. No thanks, one life worth of those at a time is more than enough.
Also, I imagine death itself is wildly traumatic. Remembering your own death would fuck your psyche over and severely disadvantage you in your next life.
Oh God. I’ve already got enough baggage 😭
Yeah… No thanks
Prickjobs may be less common if you get reincarnated as anal beads if you were a jerk in your last life
The Dune books have a lot of material on that subject
You’d remember shit like being a plankton, a slug, a housefly, a dung beetle, a rat, a squirrel, a raccoon, a double headed snake (fuck Larry life), a cat, a sloth, and finally a human.
Good luck with that.
Yeah we’d need much bigger brains.
I would not want to know what I did in a past life to deserve this one
Westworld
