I don't have any particular philosophy as to what happens after death. However, there's this idea floating around amongst people who believe in reincarnation that really bothers me:
It's the idea that we chose this life. The mechanics will vary a little based on who you talk to, but generally it boils down to this: We reincarnate in soul groups of our chosing. We chose where we will reincarnate and who we will reincarnate with. As a soul, we chose the circumstances (not down to the specific detail) that we have to deal with during our life, making this life a learning experience. Then we do it all again.
The idea as to why we chose shitty people and shitty experiences boils down to this concept: To know good, one must know evil. To truly appreciate the highs, you must experience the lows.
On a surface level, this makes sense. But when you start to unravel this argument, dig even a little beneath the surface, and actually acknowledge the world beyond the little bubble that you live in, this argument starts to unravel.
I've noticed that most of the people who believe this philosophy come from first world backgrounds. They either have no serious life lasting trauma, or exist in a place of privilege where they can heal and get away from what's causing them trauma. It's easy to say that you chose your problems when you aren't experiencing life altering events / abuse in the daily.
The idea that you have to experience the bad to fully understand the good is logical, but it gets twisted so easily by people who live very cushy lives. You need to experience evil to understand what is good, but is it really necessary for one to experience the evilest of the evil to experience and understand good?
I was thinking about this last night when browsing the Watch People Die website. I was on there looking for SN videos, and inevitably stumbled upon gore videos. There are categories for all kinds of fire, but what stuck out to me were two types of videos: Gang Violence and War
The gang violence videos were all of people getting beheaded alive via a machete. The war videos are pretty self explanatory; drone killings, gun violence, and piles of civilian corpses.
What lesson did the countless corpses piled on top of each other learn that they couldn't have learned via less severe forms of abuse. There's probably a bunch of people locked up in someone's basement, who are being physically and sexually abused on the regular, who have been locked up for years and will continue to be tortured until they die. Why couldn't they learn whatever lesson they needed to learn a different way?
There's no limits to human depravity, but there has to be a limit to how good and happy anyone person/experience/thing can make them feel.
I could maybe get behind the idea that reincarnation is generally pretty random but we still have special ties to certain people that we see in some of our lives. Or maybe we have doppelgangers on other planets?
But the idea that we chose this life, it's circumstances, and it's people specifically? Ew. That idea really irks me.
It's the idea that we chose this life. The mechanics will vary a little based on who you talk to, but generally it boils down to this: We reincarnate in soul groups of our chosing. We chose where we will reincarnate and who we will reincarnate with. As a soul, we chose the circumstances (not down to the specific detail) that we have to deal with during our life, making this life a learning experience. Then we do it all again.
The idea as to why we chose shitty people and shitty experiences boils down to this concept: To know good, one must know evil. To truly appreciate the highs, you must experience the lows.
On a surface level, this makes sense. But when you start to unravel this argument, dig even a little beneath the surface, and actually acknowledge the world beyond the little bubble that you live in, this argument starts to unravel.
I've noticed that most of the people who believe this philosophy come from first world backgrounds. They either have no serious life lasting trauma, or exist in a place of privilege where they can heal and get away from what's causing them trauma. It's easy to say that you chose your problems when you aren't experiencing life altering events / abuse in the daily.
The idea that you have to experience the bad to fully understand the good is logical, but it gets twisted so easily by people who live very cushy lives. You need to experience evil to understand what is good, but is it really necessary for one to experience the evilest of the evil to experience and understand good?
I was thinking about this last night when browsing the Watch People Die website. I was on there looking for SN videos, and inevitably stumbled upon gore videos. There are categories for all kinds of fire, but what stuck out to me were two types of videos: Gang Violence and War
The gang violence videos were all of people getting beheaded alive via a machete. The war videos are pretty self explanatory; drone killings, gun violence, and piles of civilian corpses.
What lesson did the countless corpses piled on top of each other learn that they couldn't have learned via less severe forms of abuse. There's probably a bunch of people locked up in someone's basement, who are being physically and sexually abused on the regular, who have been locked up for years and will continue to be tortured until they die. Why couldn't they learn whatever lesson they needed to learn a different way?
There's no limits to human depravity, but there has to be a limit to how good and happy anyone person/experience/thing can make them feel.
I could maybe get behind the idea that reincarnation is generally pretty random but we still have special ties to certain people that we see in some of our lives. Or maybe we have doppelgangers on other planets?
But the idea that we chose this life, it's circumstances, and it's people specifically? Ew. That idea really irks me.
